The Story Behind...

Our design studio where asked to design the first product and together we decided on the most iconic type of furniture there is; the chair. Chairs are particularly tricky because it’s hard to find an angle that feels genuinely new. But because ONFC has a new angle as a company, we felt that there was an opening to add something to the world of chairs. As designers we work best under constraints, the more constraints there are, the better the product usually becomes.

In this project there were several specific constraints. Because of the fact that ONFC sell their online products to a large geographical area, we were first faced with the question of effective shipping. Commonly, the shops order a batch of chairs (that can be stacked when shipped) and then the consumer buys one or a few at a time and carries it home. In ONFCs case we were dealing with the prospect of consumers ordering one or more chairs online that are then shipped over great distances directly to their homes. For this scenario, the box size for every single product seriously matters. So we needed to
have the chairs packed and shipped in reasonable sized boxes. This led us to ask; how do you ship something big in a small box?

We strongly felt that the holistic design approach should stretch to the area of assembly as well. We didn’t want the design thinking to stop at the shapes, materials and colors of the chair; we wanted it to include it in the feeling of opening the box and assembling your product. For us this meant no screws, no tools and no manuals. It should be easy and understandable for everyone. And perhaps most important of all, the constraints of shipping and assembling should not interfere with the look of the chair. First and foremost we wanted to design an attractive chair that people would want to buy.

All of this together, the easy assembly, the instant like-ability and the feeling of bringing something new to the table, became the fundamentals of our design brief. This resulted in the Bento chair which was then accompanied by the Bento table. They are delivered dismounted and have easy-to-understand fittings that don’t require any tools. Style wise they are inspired by the Nordic tradition of bending wood, but we have also added a bit of contemporary style into it by making the appearance wider and bolder. The style is messing with you, but at the same time it has a friendly character.