Unpack Flat-Pack

Instructor: Dermot MacCormack

Furniture is an important aspect of our home lives. It allows for us to maximize the interaction with the environment in which we live, whether that is fulfilling our need to feel cozy, have a comfortable place to rest, or setting us in the right mindset to get work done. For most people, these objects are a necessity. However, flat-pack furniture offers a cheaper alternative and thus makes these pieces more accessible and more manageable, merely by deconstructing its original form. 

Unpack Flat-Pack is a furniture design exhibition that focuses on the history of flat-pack through a showroom that displays classic IKEA pieces and their contemporary counterparts. It also touches on the creation process and looks to present-day designers for the future of flat-pack.

Brand Identity

With flat-pack furniture, I liked the idea of the box being the home for the pieces before they get assembled. Since the exhibition is just another house that these pieces would momentarily reside in, I decided to use it within the logo, have it fold up in the animation, and have its basic flaps and folds lay flat and organize information for the website.

For the catalog, this concept continues with the choice of material. Each ‘page’, or card, discusses a featured piece of furniture while the other side makes up a piece of a poster. The slits on the cards also allow for the user to make their own object out of these pieces, similarly vein to flat-pack furniture itself.