Admittedly, we are all obsessed with our new age touch-screen devices! But taking your warm gloves off in the middle of a January freeze to check a text message can be enough to filter the coldest chill through your body. Impressively enough, the designers at Mujjo quickly created a solution for this modern day problem when they unveiled their Touch Screen Gloves to the world last winter. Fast forward to mid-summer and we sat down to have a chat with Remy Nagelmaeker, Mujjo’s co-founder and design director, about their latest hand-crafted series of iProduct accessories called The Originals Collection. Nagelmaeker gave us some interesting insight into the Mujjo world, their design process, and how the team used a unique combination of wool felt and high quality leather to create some super stylish case goods!
Oh, and on an even cooler note – Mujjo wants to giveaway a pair of Touch Screen Gloves and an iPad sleeve from The Originals Collection to KNSTRCT’s Facebook friends. (Join us on Facebook to be eligible for the giveaway! The winners will be announced on Friday July 20th, 2012)
Knstrct: What is your role at Mujjo?
Nagelmaeker: Founder (one of three). I’m an entrepreneur /designer. I love to to brand early stage startups. I love the part where the idea is still just a concept, I get a kick out off converting that idea into a real product and sales.
Knstrct: Which item from the new Originals Collection is your favorite?
Nagelmaeker: That’s a hard a question because every model has it’s unique qualities. But if I have to pick one, I think it would be the iPad sleeve, I love it’s design, simple yet elegant at the same time. Also, I like the limited edition sleeve we designed for the 15″ Pro Retina. Lot’s of Mujjo admirers requested a good looking sleeve for the 15″ Pro Retina, that’s when we decided to design at one.
Knstrct: The Originals Collection is Mujjo’s first collection of accessories for iProducts. Can you give us a little insight into the process of creating the collection?
Nagelmaeker: There’s lot’s of trying involved, making sample after sample after sample. Trying different materials, different techniques until finally the product is up to our standards. We’re always trying to create a product that 1. we would love to use ourselves and 2. makes us feel proud when we’re showing them to others. The next step is to structure all the elements of the production process, design the tooling and packaging, efficiency is important because all the sleeves are hand crafted. Don’t be afraid to show your product to others while you’re still developing, their feedback is worth a lot, you’ll be able to notice right away if you’re on the right track or not.
Knstrct: Mujjo claims that “every Mujjo design is a reflection of personal taste”, Why was this philosophy your approach to designing the latest collection, as opposed to designing for the masses?
Nagelmaeker: I think it makes things a lot easier if you do what you love. Basically that’s what we do, we design according to our personal taste.
Knstrct: Which items from the collection do you use every day?
Nagelmaeker: I use the 13″ Macbook Air sleeve (brown leather edition) and both the iPhone Wallet and the leather iPhone Sleeve (I like them both).
Knstrct: What should we expect to see on the horizon for Mujjo?
Nagelmaeker: We’re coming with a new touchscreen gloves collection that builds on the success of the touchscreen gloves that we launched previous winter. We also working a new collection of sleeves, this is still in an early stage though. Last but not least, we’ve got something really cool coming up this fall, think touchscreen gloves and leather… Expect to see a lot more coming from Mujjo, we’re working hard on improving every aspect of the brand.
Sunday, July 15th, 2012 at 9:22 pm
