ddp design fair

Have you ever thought about the elasticity of a rubber band? Whether you're sealing a bag of leftover snacks so they don't go stale, or tying your hair loosely so it doesn't fall into your food during a meal, you need the right amount of elasticity for different situations. What if you could visually tell how elastic a rubber band is? A "dot and dash rubber band" is a rubber band with the difference in elasticity represented by the spacing of the dots. You can tell how much elasticity it has just by looking at it, without having to stretch it by hand. The idea of being able to finely choose the elasticity you need is somehow reassuring, and the dotted rubber band adds a sense of excitement to the world of loose rubber bands.

Maker TIETYP

"To realize the concept of 'expressing the difference in elasticity as the gap between the dotted lines,' we devised a method of simultaneously extruding TPU (a plastic with the elasticity of rubber) with different hardnesses. For the packaging material, we thought of a packaging material that matches the eco-friendly nature of TPU, which can be melted and reused, so we chose recycled paper. Through the process of creating a product that looks at the familiar TPU material from a different perspective, we were able to break the preconceived notion that there is nothing new about rubber bands."

Designer Min-woo Jeon

"We wanted to create a product that could inspire people with a slight change in the form of an everyday object. We thought about what it would be like if the rubber band, which we thought of as a solid line, looked like a dotted line. Originally, we planned to create a dotted line by printing on a band made of transparent raw materials, but at the suggestion of the maker, we were able to produce it using a special nozzle that can extrude different types of raw materials at the same time. We realized that this production method was better suited to the idea of touching on the conceptual part of the elasticity of the rubber band, as two raw materials of different strengths could be mixed together. It was interesting to see the idea develop and materialize through collaboration."