Zero gravity coffee cup designed by Xu May 4th Movement

Source: Morning Coffee with Zero Gravity Designed by Xu54 in ShangHai

Posted on September 25, 2010 by kongfublog

Designer profile: Xu Wusi, a freelance designer in Shanghai, is also a dynamic and passionate software engineer.

How did you come up with this weightless idea?

The idea originated from accidentally knocking over a coffee cup, and when I saw the cup tipped over, I wanted to freeze this state forever, so I started the design.

How is the coffee cup tilted?

There is a thin sheet at the bottom of the coffee cup that can be tilted into the oblique hole in the middle of the plate. It can be placed vertically when it is used at ordinary times.

How long did the design take?

The pure design work took six months.

It sounds a little weird, but it takes so long to design a coffee cup?

Because I don't want to design a simple and fun idea, I want to use it to express my style and emotion.

Considering his science and engineering background, the overall style is defined as "with a strong polytechnic style, plus a little humor and romance". The shape of the cup body is an abstract flight cabin. A steep plane is cut on the tipped side to enhance the tilted visual effect and to make the pure white cup noodles more light and shadow. The handle uses abstract "angel wings", and the printing on the cup body uses a physical force analysis diagram, which means "the resultant force of love is the cause of weightlessness and can resist gravity and resistance."

But I can't see that the handle is "angel's little wings"?

I don't like naked and straightforward expression design. That kind of straightforward expression does not need design, can not stand pondering, no thinking. I am a kind of feeling through their own abstraction, designed and integrated with the whole, can show my characteristics of the shape. This handle uses the abstraction of cartoon angel wings, together with the cup body in the shape of the flight cabin; more importantly, the perfect ergonomics, when the finger passes through the handle, the bottom of the wing is close to the natural relaxation position of the middle finger, so that you can not feel the weight of the coffee.

How is its production process?

The production process is long and painful, and the whole production process takes more than half a year. First of all, we should choose the type of porcelain: high-temperature white porcelain or low-temperature white porcelain. The rate of finished products of high-temperature porcelain is low, and the glaze is difficult to be smooth and clean, but the hardness is high, but it lasts for a long time; the rate of finished products of low-temperature porcelain is high, and the glaze is brighter and cleaner, but the hardness is low, and the glaze will be worn with the passage of time.

I hope the products I designed can stand the test of time, so I choose high-temperature white porcelain, although it is more difficult to process.

Then there is the place of production, where the high white porcelain has its own different characteristics. At first, it was considered to use Jingdezhen's high white porcelain. I personally went to Jingdezhen to run more than 10 porcelain factories, large and small. But the glaze of most factories could not meet my requirements, so we finally selected several firing samples. After the sample comes out, I feel that the color of Jingdezhen white porcelain is cold. From the design point of view, I still hope that the color can be warmer and slightly weaken the hardness of the shape. Finally, we found the "ivory white" of Dehua in Fujian, with a faint pink in the white, which is called "Chinese white" overseas.

The firing process is also very difficult, first, the handle, the soft mud tire will slowly droop under the influence of gravity, and can not accurately control the flying angle of the handle. Second, the oblique hole on the plate, because the hole is too thin, cracks always appear in the high temperature firing process; at the same time, due to the deformation after high temperature firing, it is also very difficult to match the hole and the cup bottom insert. The ideal product effect is achieved after hundreds of sample firing tests and process improvement. Source: Wang Wei boutique coffee