Getting out there
Generally speaking, any creative project can be divided into 4 stages. Stage 1 is the cloud. It’s lovely up there. At this stage, everything feels light. All that guides us is our gut telling us what’s most exciting, and we feel ever so sure that it’s all within our reach. We say shit like: “We just have to do it, that’s why it doesn’t exist yet, because no one else set their mind to it”. Stage 2 is the course setting stage. We define and map out what excited us up in the cloud, set up a route and start working accordingly. Somewhere around here the going starts getting tough. We realise that we’re merely chimps and have so very little in common with the ones we’re inspired by that it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. But if we manage to contain these feelings for long enough we reach stage 3, the finishing stage. When we think we’re 90% done, we’re just about half way towards the goal. But if we refuse to cut our losses for long enough and push through, fueled by self hatred and determination to prove our childhood soccer coaches wrong, we end up with something, something that wasn’t there before, something that no one directly asked for, but all the while, something.
Stage 4 is a bit more diffuse, at least it was for us. Getting out there. We started off by selling some lamps to our closest friends and family, ordered a bigger batch and started running some ads through our instagram to sell to people outside our social spheres. That was a biggie. However, all of this was done through our instagram, our website, our ads. All within our carefully controlled context. We felt a need to go beyond that.
This might sound assholeian, but we love Assembly_one. It’s our bebe. Still, we have to realize that the creative process has a tendency to blur our vision a bit. Having gone through stages 1-3 means that when we look at Assembly_one, we see a freaking miracle. We have to at least be open to the possibility that when other people see Assembly_one, they don’t see a miracle, they see a lamp. A lamp which they compare to other lamps. And in the end, what other people see and experience, that’s what it is. That tree that fell in the vast forest didn’t fall. If Assembly_one is to fall, at least we want to hear it.
We therefore wanted Assembly_one to be put in a context beyond our control, among its competitors, or friends, where non-owners could see it in person. We reached out to Esteriör, a design store on Södermalm, Stockholm. They asked us to swing by and show what we had going on. We did, they said alrighty, and all of the sudden Assembly_one can be found for sale on a shelf in a store, among products designed by non-chimps.
/John, Communications guy at PX-Lab