Nik Bentel questions everything. Can a piece of chalk be shaped like a ball with spikes all over it? Why can’t a pasta box be a purse? Does a slice of pizza need a leather carrying case? His answer to each of these questions is an emphatic Yes.
The New York City-based product designer helms Nikolas Bentel Studio. Bentel is one noteworthy figure within a cohort of thought-provoking young designers keen on subverting mundanity and thumbing their noses at the status quo. Yuliya Veligurskaya of Studiocult is another (she and Bentel are friends), along with clever up-cycler Nicole Mclaughlin of Carhartt bikini fame. Having previously covered Bentel’s viral Pasta Handbag, I was eager to learn more about his uniquely quirky perspective as a designer. Our recent conversation is below.
(This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.)
What organizing principles are at the core of your design process?
Quite a few different things at play create these goofy ideas— and there is a commentary within the mass group of these random-ass objects that come together. One is thinking about the objects that we currently have around us. As an individual, as one person who is not a corporation, as someone who has very little ability to change the status quo just because you’re a single human being, what are the ways and what are the tools and facilities that you can use to rethink these mundane, everyday objects? Whether the corporate emblem of a North Face jacket or a large company like Barilla, it’s about rethinking these mundane objects.
The other thing is thinking about how you even make something. Like how do you get to making a physical object? What’s even possible?
What’s the origin of that mindset? Have you always viewed the world in this subversive way where you question the things around you that others view as inherent?
I grew up in New York and went to Waldorf School, which was very tactile and hands-on. I attended a Montessori school before that, so thinking about the world through objects was a big part of my upbringing. My parents are architects, so that plays quite a bit into the stuff I do, too.
I have a twin sister who is a food designer who makes a lot of things with her hands. Then there’s my brother, who’s the creative director at MSCHF, and he does crazy things as well. We’re all thinking about the world in a physical sense. Storytellers tell stories through words, a poet tells stories through a poem, and my way of storytelling is through objects.
Perhaps there are new ways of thinking about these objects that surround us, and in thinking about them, can we redesign our day-to-day lives to be a little bit more original? A little bit more forgiving? A little bit more functional or non-functional?
Nik Bentel
Growing up, you have all of these things around you, and I think the main crux of all this work is questioning and thinking critically about those things. Like, Why does a crayon actually look like a crayon? Is it the techniques used to manufacture it? Is it how they’re supposed to sit in the box? Perhaps there are new ways of thinking about these objects that surround us, and in thinking about them, can we redesign our day-to-day lives to be a little bit more original? A little bit more forgiving? A little bit more functional or non-functional? The doodle crayons we designed changed how a crayon functions, and hopefully, that will change the user’s hand into drawing something totally original and unique. That’s sprinkled through every single project.
Is there a particular project that especially exemplifies your perspective as a designer?
I appreciate many of them, but some of the drawing tools I’ve done with Areaware—a product company that I license designs to, like the doodle crayons and the chalk toys—are emblematic of what I’m attempting to do, which is rethinking an object in a beautiful way and changing our worldview. So, even though the crayons are just about drawing, I’m rethinking how drawing tools can be used. By changing the shape of a drawing tool from a crayon stick to something else, you can create unique drawings that no one’s ever made before. If you hand a doodle crayon to a little kid who doesn’t have any preconceptions of the world, they’ll think about drawing in a totally different way than a kid who’s handed crayon sticks that are straight and force them to draw straight lines. I think those little moments are very powerful, and hopefully, these moments are duplicated throughout the other projects.
The loopy chair is also beautiful because it’s thinking about manufacturing and how to make something and then rethinking an everyday object into something usable and unique. It looks rendered; it’s so weird.
What’s your ideation process typically like? Where do your ideas come from?
It’s a little chaotic, but it’s good chaos. The ideating process happens six to ten months before any project launches, and I have a team of four here, so it’s a group endeavor. I do most of it, but we have a collective group effort of using what we call the “project gauntlet.” We pile as many ideas as possible into this project gauntlet, and each must pass through it to make it worth our while. We ask: Can we make it? Is this even possible? Is it culturally relevant? Does this resonate with a larger audience? Is it feasible? Can we do this in the span of six months? And if not, is it something that we do differently? There’s a list of things that we go through to make sure it’s a project that fits our standards.
You release nearly one project per month. Do you find the pressure of meeting this quota to be stressful? Motivating? Exciting? All of the above?
In the current climate of storytelling, specifically how vapid stuff is on social media, it’s important to tell many stories at once. Also, it’s about the collective group of objects; looking at one object is fun, but looking at the larger group of objects is very important. So we need to produce this number of objects.
Since the studio is very young, we need to be very aggressive about telling everyone, this is what we do, this is what we do, over and over again in a variety of ways. I honestly hope we slow down, but for now, it’s really fun to have an idea, try to make it work, and then move on to the next thing.
I went to architecture school and graduated two years ago, but architects tell their stories very slowly. If you design a building, it takes 10 to 15 years to build, if that even happens. That timeline is long for me, and I don’t vibe with that. I love this timeframe; I can put pen to paper very quickly.
I wouldn’t be doing this if we weren’t having a good time.
Nik Bentel
ou’ve harnessed the power of social media, creating unique promotional materials to heighten your work. From what I can tell, you and your team are having fun doing those photoshoots. What’s that side of running your business been like for you?
That’s the thing: I wouldn’t be doing this if we weren’t having a good time. I’d be at an architecture firm somewhere. It’s really fun to put all the pieces together. It’s also extremely fun to talk with the people buying things. It’s the sweetest feeling when someone’s willing to part ways with their hard-earned money to get something you made that you were like, Oh, I hope people resonate with this … and then they do! That’s the nicest feeling ever. It’s like, Wow, all this hard work that I put in, people appreciate and understand it.