Nik Bentel Debuts the Playfully Clever Speaker Bag and Mixer Bag

"The functional correlation of these two items actually makes sense if one were to look back at how the boomboxes of the mid-1980s were carried. Like with any handbag, a handle was essential for easily transporting this mobile device. Bentel and his team played up the near geometric contour of this component - not unlike the Tati Bag they released a few years ago - in both the mono-material black and translucent acrylic shell variants. In this case, it's no longer tensile but rigid instead."

"Across his offering of whimsical items for dress and the home, the designer is known for accentuating the graphical, almost semiotical, qualities of recognizable shapes. While the PC Folder wallet cheekily takes a digital folder off the screen into one's hands, Capitalism Knife: Sapphire satirizes the associations many of us have with credit cards and what these seemingly mundane but ultimately powerful objects represent. The early postmodernists must be pleased."

"The Speaker and Mixer Bags are perhaps less explicit in their cultural critique and more clever in their ontological formation. While the former is all white and somewhat see-through (perhaps it has nothing to hide), the latter is more stern with its all black, near monolithic, presence. As their names suggest, one is a speaker, and the other is an "on-the-go" mixer. Its complex, maybe even proprietary, mechanics are hidden."

Two accessory portable devices merge handbag form with compact audio technology, pairing fashion-forward formal qualities with increasingly powerful, miniaturized sound hardware. The design echoes mid-1980s boombox portability by emphasizing a geometric, rigid handle rendered in mono-material black or translucent acrylic shells. Graphical and semiotic treatment of familiar shapes recurs across related pieces that translate digital and mundane objects into tangible, satirical accessories. One piece reads as white and somewhat transparent, revealing straightforward wiring; the other reads as black and monolithic, concealing complex mixer mechanics. Functionality and formal expression are intentionally interwoven rather than strictly hidden.

Read at Design Milk