When Sabine Affolter wondered whether pain can be visualized, the Bernese designer did not imagine that she would, one day, make a real contribution to pain therapy. Creative Hub played an essential role in this process.
When a well-known Swiss toy manufacturer launches a new product and names you as its designer, then you’ve arrived – right, Christian Spiess? We talked to him about his adventures, and how Creative Hub helped him in the process.
How to get the perfect snowboard for every rider? Custom shaping. That was Andreas Abel’s answer when he decided to follow his passion and open a snowboard manufactory with a keen eye for detail. Creative Hub provided support during the start-up phase.
Wafer-thin metal lamp shades. Industrial designer Giulio Parini’s brand “Metallo Dolce” builds on this idea. And coaching from Creative Hub gives him the tools to create a radiant identity.
Diiis Designstudio, based in Liestal, Switzerland, develops everyday objects that are anything but ordinary. Its two founders are connected by much more than friendship. Creative Hub helped the designers get their business off the ground.
“Europe’s terrycloth culture is underdeveloped,” Jan Leu and Nina Hebting said to one another – and set out to revolutionize it. With hand and bath towels that not only delight the skin, but also thrill the artistic eye. To develop their company “Frottee di Mare” they received coaching from our Creative Link programme.
Pierre Naveau has taken two courageous leaps. The first was giving up his profession as a sales manager in order to devote himself to product design. And the second, when he decided to become an entrepreneur. A brilliant idea – and coaching from Creative Hub – helped him reach his goal.
Patrick Mueller loved building furniture. But something seemed to be missing at work. Until, one day, he decided to study Industrial Design. Step by step, he developed his own design language, and founded the agency PAMU. Our “Creative Link” coaching programme helped him achieve this – in a quite surprising way.
Isabell Gatzen, graduated from the ZHDK in 2005. She lives in Zurich with good connections internationally, is a prolific and talented designer. Her work can be characterised by notions such as simple, elegant, surprisingly new and yet timeless, made in high quality materials like marble, brass and porcelain. She has developed vases, candleholders and many other pieces of furniture and home accessoires. Her 721grams candleholder won the German Design Award (a special mention) 2015. She showed her products at Blickfang Zürich last November and got "style approved" by the women's magazine Annabelle. So we can say with confidence that the community, experts, and customers respect her as a real design talent.
When we talk about Creative Entrepreneurship today, we actually have to add a word to it: sustainable. „Sustainable Creative Entrepreneurship“ does reflect much better, what many designers and artists are about. They do not only want to sell their products but design them in a way they can be produced sustainably. The label Ait Selma – high quality carpets, uniquely manufactured in Morocco by Berber women and designed in Switzerland – is a very good example of this. It is actually part of the DNA of this start-up to safeguard a craft in Northern Africa that is about to be extinguished by using it in contemporary designs for western people. This supports some women to stay true to their cultural heritage in the High Atlas as well as to make a living weaving these carpets.
The ceramist Nathalie Heid stumbled over a “business opportunity” a few years ago, when one of her close friends died. Friends and family asked Nathalie to design and manufacture an urn for him; and almost by chance, she found out that by not burning the urn, it would maintain its natural properties and dissolve when put in (running) water such as the river Aare.
Few people moved as swiftly through our programme Creative Link as Hanno Schwab. Since he quit his job as an architect in October 2014 and started to work a 100% for the development of his business, many good things have happened to him. There was quite a bit of media coverage for his ecological freeriding downhill ski and he won the prestigious ISPO gold award 2015/2016 for JACKDAW, his innovative product with the small carbon footprint. Even though he did not receive any cash, ISPO opened a lot of doors for him; he had offers for several hundred pairs from companies abroad.
