WHATS

WHATS FOR DINNER?

We heard processed foods wer having a rough time, and probably for good reason. Alot of processed food is high fat and high carb. But not all of it is . Some of it is plant based and actually better for you and kinder to animals. Many of these plant based offerings are a little higher brow, and certainly that makes sense as higher educated consumers are more health aware and can afford to pay more. The problem, I think, is they lost some of their fun. This is why we did WHATS. And , just to be clear WHATS does not need to be only plant based nor does a WHAT need to be edible. A WHAT can be anything.

For food, WHATS is like the love child of Tony he Tiger and Annie’s Kitchen. Both are fanstastic brands on different missions. WHATS is healthy (depending on category and amount consumed). self aware and fun. Sort of like HOT POCKETS with health insurance.

WHATS is also a unit of measure. It’s a hand held size that’s easy to snack on WHATS, in this case, can be a synonym for a chunk or a nugget and more. And,, it’s this that can make WHATS cut across categories, whether they be sweet or savory or different temperature zones ( shelf stale, refrigerated and frozen) and more.

Design-wise we created a processed food brand and a simple design language that works across multiple products.

The big pay off for all this is a simple verbal skit:

Person 1: What’s for dinner?

Person 2: Exactly

Person 1, a little more intentional: What’s for dinner?

Person 2: That’s right!

Person 1 ,now more exasperated: C’mon what’s for dinner?!

Person 2: We’re having Meat Whats, they’re delicious and plant based.

Fun , right?!

MONARCH

Transforming what a house is

Housing in America is too expensive. Labor, materials, land, and financing all push costs up. Most solutions chip away at the edges. Monarch starts over.

We believe the only way to meaningfully lower the cost of a single-family home is to change both what a house is and how it is made. Build homes more like cars — at volume, with high-production tooling, and with far less on-site labor. Higher tooling cost, much lower cost per unit. Less waste. Higher consistency. Think Tesla Giga-casting and stamped glass filled thermoplastics applied to housing.

Vertical by design

Monarch is a vertical home. A smaller footprint reduces land and foundation cost. It frees the rest of the lot for outdoor living. Large insulated, UV-tinted glass panels turn height into a daily pleasure rather than a compromise. Climbing a few flights of stairs is built-in exercise. When stairs are no longer practical, every Monarch is designed to accept a compact lift — the same type used by wind-turbine technicians.

The goal is the same feeling many people had the first time they sat in a Tesla Model 3: brief disorientation, then delight. A Monarch should feel new in a useful way.

What a house actually needs to do

Protect from the weather. Sleep. Cook. Eat. Clean. Work. Relax. Entertain, Ceate the next generation, Store things. Stay private. Most of the rest is habit.

Monarch questions the habits. Walls are no longer the primary place for photos and media — devices already hold that. Large high-definition displays and built-in audio are part of the house, the way they are part of a premium car. Primary furniture is designed in or included. Lighting, plumbing, electrical, entry, security, HVAC, and finishes are all Monarch-specified and app-controlled. Vertical integration keeps cost and complexity down.

Fewer choices, more value

Most home builders offer endless options. That flexibility is expensive. Monarch takes the opposite approach: limited exterior colors, limited interior packages, everything else standardized. The result is closer to the original iPhone or early Model 3 — one excellent configuration that replaces dozens of lesser ones. Owners get high value on day one instead of a long options list that inflates the price.

Mobile and decoupled from land

A Monarch can be delivered by rail and /or truck and set by crane. It can sit on a privately owned lot or in a Monarch Reserve — clustered sites designed for short- or long-term placement. The house and the land are no longer a single, inseparable purchase.

MODERN DOG TOYS

Heart Of Barkness

Ruffa, a new start up focused on optimizing canine health came to FUSE wanting to do a line of design forward molded dog toys. Toys dogs can really bite and chew while their human guardians can admire aesthetically. The designs need to be able to offer engaging, mouth feel and possibly hold treats or have surface development that can hold smeared peanut butter or wet food. Seems like a way to wreck your home’s interior to me, but I guess you’re ready for that if you’re taking in an animal that chews everything and poops anywhere already. Certainly, the more uptight can add the smeared food to the toy for outside play.

Also, because the toys are silicone , wall thickness is not an issue. It’s possible to over mold a denser asymmetrical core to create a product with a more random bounce that dogs love.

As our usual, or our fusual ( I’ll be here all week), we did a lot of exploring, but what we and the client really liked were these more abstract computational/generative designs. Much more complicated but still mold-able in food grade silicone. They’re like these beautiful objects worthy of display, but can be fun for a dog’s mouth and brain.

MEM’S LEG

CAT-TASTROPHE

Mem’s Leg is the tribute to a wonderful calico cat, Mem, who got into a tussle with an off leash Pitbull. Mem lost the fight and her rear leg after chewing through the stitches that had put her leg back on. While sounding tragic, Mem moved forward as a very loved and very happy 3 legged cat. She probably received more attention this way than she ever did prior.

The product, Mem’s Leg, is a fun plush super sized leg that doubles as a satchel, ready to carry your phone, keys and wallet. The interior is lined with flannel, reminiscent of that old sleeping bag your parents had as kids ( or if you’re old, maybe it was your sleeping bag). Of course, Mem’s Leg is part of the Furillaverse.

BIO POD

Lifesaver

The SKWRL Bio Pod is the industrial version of the Marwall super insulated twin walled stainless steel storage pod. This version powder coats the exterior of the stainless steel and is targeted for food storage and beyond.

The pod shown features a double wall Triton lid that sandwiches a silicone gasket. This gasket provides a leak-proof seal. This configuration includes eating utensils, though other tools may be employed. An organ recovery version was recently deployed in eastern Europe with scalpels, forceps and suturing tools.

This insulated container can be used wherever temperature maintenance is required. The pod can be used for the transport of food, living tissue, medicines, plant life, pathogens and any temperature sensitive materials.

GWIJ TRANSLATING / TEXTING APP

SPEAK- A MY LANGUAGE

Imagine you’re in high school and the new super cute Brazilian student arrives in your class and they barely speak English. With GWIJ on your phone you can start communicating with them immediately. You set your primary language to English (you’re in the USA) and then make your secondary language Portuguese. Start babbling, I mean, texting away, and you’ll be easily understood ( remember, don’t come on too strong, or they’ll think you’re a weirdo).

GWIJ is a translating and texting App that FUSE helped design. We did the name, the identity and key frame design, even the double bubble text holder! This app is just like your native IOS messaging app, but allows you to set your primary language and a secondary language that instantly translates your primary language. You can then send either your primary or secondary language to whomever you’re texting with. The best part is you can see both your primary and secondary languages in the double bubble text box.

With GWIJ, you can see the Portuguese in real time as you type your words of love, I mean, your words of your native language. Then, if you want to hear what the pronunciation is, you can hit the speaker icon in the double bubble and the GWIJ Translator Robot (she looks like Nicole Kidman) will speak what you’ve written out loud. This means you can practice saying clever things like, “Wow, I ‘d like to eat this bad cafeteria pizza off your beautiful neck”. OK, don’t say that, you barely know this person. Ask them something like, “do you have a pet Tapir back home in Brazil?” And, in Portuguese: “Voce tern uma anta de estinacaao no Brasil?”

Get GWIJ in the Apple App store now!

Runners Orp

BE EVEN MORE SPLATTERPROOF

Orp Industries has always talked about building a running version of their innovative bike horn/ light product, and finally with our help, they’ve done it.

The Runners Orp or “Rorp” is for runners, walkers, hikers and boarders of all types. The big idea, of course, is to make pedestrians more visible by being more hearable, but the Rorp can do more. Runners and walkers who use nights or dark early mornings to run and walk not only have a beacon to be seen but also a very loud horn to let any would be attackers know their attention is unwanted, and if that’s not enough, an accessory cranulator (machined aluminum) is available to cause more serious damage.

The Rorp has a gumby-like malleable metal armature in its body so it holds on to you, works for small and large hand sizes and features a dual tone horn, just like the bike Orp, and the actuator is always under thumb. The Rorp is symmetrical so works on either hand. Multiple light modes including highly visible green LEDs. The LEDs fire every time either horn is fired. Newest versions incorporate a 180 degree Chip On Board (COB_ LED array. This new LED offers better visibility.

SUPER HERO MASK

FACE – ON

FUSE was contacted by a team of seasoned product marketing professionals at the onset of the pandemic. They wanted help designing a face mask for professionals working the front line in health care, teaching and emergency services.The team had identified that seeing the facial expression of these first responders and front liners would be valuable to reinstate the calm and confidence these pros always want to communicate to the people they’re helping. The team was also obsessed with minimizing the waste associated with disposable masks. While the filters are not washable, they are recyclable.

To achieve the crystal clarity, the mask would need to be silicone injection molded. This lower durometer material and process also allowed for the undercuts we needed for a clever face seal and the nesting of the replaceable filters cartridges.

Keen viewers will recognize the Iron Man inspiration in the chin area of the mask. Actually, what we were doing was reinforcing the chin to keep it stiffer so we could achieve greater elasticity in the jaw for mouth opening and talking while still maintaining a good seal to the face.

MARWALL POD

VACUUM PACKED.

A couple of entrepreneurs came to FUSE with a big idea: they wanted to reduce all the CO2 and waste created by single use disposable containers. They wanted to replace all these earth killing, land-filling, leaky containers with a collapsible silicone container that diners could bring with them. This sounded good, but these containers exist. The pandemic certainly didn’t help either.

We thought, “This isn’t good. We can’t take their money to make another plastic container….”. We brainstormed. We drew concepts. Like we always do, we explored. We also knew the pervasiveness/success of all the insulated water bottles. Could we bring this insulated utility to food?

We hated all the fussy bento box-like little containers. Who eats like that? People are eating bowls of low glycemic index carbs and proteins. Or, imagine if you’re a frutarian, wouldn’t cold watermelon be good at noon? Yes it would. Do you really want to risk that thirst quenching red goodness to the office fridge? No you do not. You know your so called trusted office mates are food thieves! Maybe it’s a sign of security that they know you well enough to eat off your containers. Beyond food security, we also imagined other uses (e.g. a nice product to take on day hikes, a way to carry temperature sensitive medicines, etc).

We did some concepts and shared them with our world saving duo. The team liked it. Now we had to find a way to make this product something other than cylinder shaped. I’d get into the details, but you’ll notice almost all twin-walled, vacuum sealed stainless steel containers are cylindrical. There are lots of You Tube videos on how these are made, but our soon to be Marwall Pod would require a new path towards commercialization. This was a problem.

We scoured the world and located a company that believed in our team’s vision and they found a way. Armed with this confidence and this new factory partner, we forged ahead. FUSE did multiple thermal studies and realized we needed a twin walled lid to achieve the insulative properties we wanted. We added utensils (keen observers will recognize this as giving a nod to ancient Inuit tools) and stored them on the inside of the twin walled lid. We sealed the pod and the twin walled lid with a silicone gasket. Sliding latches with rotatable carabiner-able loops lock the lid to the base.

We imagine the metal part can last a lifetime or more (barring a fall off a cliff), but the plastics (don’t worry — they’re BPA-free Tritan) while tough, may succumb over time. All these parts are replaceable, so your pod will last a lifetime (if not cut short by a climbing accident and we know you’ll only be thinking about your Marwall Pod in that event…). We are so confident this is a lifetime-plus product, inside the metal container there’s an area to engrave to whom you want to bequeath your Marwall to.

ANAND SPORT POD

Court Caddy

Serial entrepreneur and avid competitive tennis player, Dr. Rahul Anand (he’s an anesthesiologist), was annoyed when he saw college and pro tennis players throwing sweat laden towels on the court after wiping off. Initially, he had hoped this was just a rare occasion, but it continued to happen. Dr. Anand even contacted the players and/or their management teams to make them aware of the hygiene problem this towel discarding was causing. Still, no change. Exasperated, Dr. Anand decided to take this problem on. This is where FUSE comes in.

Armed with the problem Dr. Anand was trying to fix, FUSE got to work. FUSE retraced the research, and for sure, this problem is a new animal. Not that it’s rare, just that its not been recognized. Lots of products start this way, we as humans adapt to situations. Look at what TESLA is trying to do with the removal of stalks.

After numerous concepts and a couple of full scale prototypes. A tight production budget started to provide clarity. Our team and Dr. Anand settled on the Rocket concept. Initially the Rocket was a single part roto-molded creature. It would hold towels, warm-up clothing, balls, hydration and personal items (phones, keys , wallets, etc.).

While initially designed for tennis, our team imagines the pod being valuable in multiple venues. The Sport Pod is at home pool side, beach side, in the gym and in the world of hospitality. With available accessory trays, the Anand Sport Pod is the perfect guest at your next barbecue.

In order to ship around the country, the world, and not ship air (or cost more than the product), we worked with the molder to make the the legs snap on. It fits into a FEDEX and UPS friendly box and sets up in minutes with no tools.