An Interview with Jacob Thompson

Another winner from our friends at Appalachian State University. Jacob Thompson secured a spot as one of our 38th Design Competition winners with his Bauhaus Bracket. During his last year at App State, Jacob set out to create a visually appealing accessory that translated well to our brand. His minimalist floating shelf design features simple geometry and modularity typical of Bauhaus designs. Cutouts on the tops and sides of the shelf let designers explore endless design possibilities.

What is your background in design? What led you to our Annual Design Competition?

My background with design is I'm a senior industrial design student at Appalachian State University in North Carolina. I had originally started out studying engineering before shifting into doing product design because this was a space where I really got to do that kind of critical thinking and problem solving, but also got to really explore creativity, which is what was most interesting to me. Then, finding out about the competition is something that we did through our school. It was a project we did for one of our classes, and it was just a really great chance for us to kind of get to explore a project that could have a real-world application at the end of it.



Tell us about your design. What was the inspiration behind it?

For the inspiration behind my design, I really started out doing my research, looking through what Mockett already was selling on the website, just kind of getting an idea of both the visual language of the brand, as well as materials they were using to kind of act as a foundation. And then, from there, I took my own inspiration from the German Bauhaus design, which is something I personally really liked, and thought that their visual language, especially with their metal work, was something that really translated well to Mockett, which was kind of like the driving force for my form and everything with my design. My actual final design was a floating shelf bracket made from polished aluminum. I have stamped rubber spacers that give the shelf some adjustability for different thicknesses for what the user might have. And for me, it was important because my designs were all with that super simple single material. So, I wanted to make sure it was something that was still visually interesting and appealing from any way you looked at it. So, it has several different cutouts to allow the material of the actual shelf itself to show through the bracket as well.



What was the process like, and can you explain your approach? How did you envision the concept-to-part pipeline, and how did you execute it?

The process was very fast paced. This is a four-week timeline for this project. So, it's definitely from start to finish. It was a quick move-through, but it was definitely a very interesting process. Knowing that the end goal of this was to have something in production that was physically made, I really took to some of my classes where I learned more about the manufacturability of things and used that as a basic constraint to start off my design, knowing I need to make sure it's able to do this and this before really trying to go out there with a crazy form. And then from there, adding on my aesthetics and thinking about function and use case.



What would your advice be for someone looking to submit but is hesitant about the process?

My advice to anybody who is looking to submit to the process but is hesitant is to use this competition as an experience to grow as a designer and just really get to try something different than you might be used to and really learn about yourself through your own design process and how it might apply to this competition. And as long as you're willing to do that initial research and kind of learn more about the competition itself, it's just been a really great experience, and you'll definitely have a good time with it.

Congratulations to Jacob on his thoughtfully crafted Bauhaus design! We’re sure this piece will make an impact when it finally hits the market. Catch Jacob’s full interview here