Michael Sodeau to launch stationery range

Product designer Michael Sodeau is planning to launch an international stationery range at 100% Design in London next month.

The designer, who has turned his hand to everything from coat stands to seating, has teamed up with Japanese entrepre neur Daisaku Bessho’s production company Suikosha to create the range, which will go under the name Anything.

The first range, which has been pared down from 25 pieces, includes a pair of scissors, an alarm clock, a stapler, a tape dispenser, a rubber and a set of mathema tical instruments including a ruler, protractor and a set square.

Plans for future ranges will extend to product areas such as bags, vases and bowls.

Sodeau has also designed the logo, branding and packaging for Anything, and will be looking to drum up interest from top-end independent retailers and department stores across the globe, before launch ing in Tokyo in November.

He explains that the concept behind the design stems from how desk space has ‘changed dramatically over the past 15 years’. ‘Stationery is typically done by stationery companies but the [desk] environment for those products has changed.

[What we’ve designed are] tactile, pared-down forms that create a more working table-top environment,’ Sodeau says.

‘We looked at it from several perspectives. Rather than taking an engineering approach, we looked at the range from a furniture perspective, seeing it as an arrangement of a group of objects that relate to each other, rather than individual products. Each product is like a little building with its own forms. The look is minimal,’ he says.

Sodeau explains the design is such that each item takes up less desk space and together form ‘desktop architecture’.

The range has taken two years to come to fruition.