ODLCO is a design studio that explores manufacturing as a meeting point between design, consumption, craft, industrialism, usefulness, and everyday life. We stage events that explore these themes, manufacture goods by independent designers, and carry a selection of design merchandise for purchase. We specialize in low-volume manufacturing, utilizing regional resources to produce niche products, such as the Wabi Nabe Cast Iron Pot, Trivet Runner, and the Capitol Butter Dish. Explore this website to see more of what we do. 

We are currently seeking a Product Development Intern to assist with tasks related to product development, manufacturing, and distribution. This ideal candidate should be a Junior, Senior or recent graduate with an interest in design manufacturing and background in fabrication, Industrial Design or Mechanical Engineering.

This internship is a non-paying position. Start date is June 1, 2013. The duration of the internship is flexible. Intern will come in 1-2 days per week.  Candidates please send a cover letter, resume (including availability), and portfolio to mail@odlco.com by May 15, 2013.

Responsibilities:
Researching manufacturing processes and vendors
Redsign existing prototypes for manufacturing
Assist in preparing files and prototypes
Packaging Concept Development

Requirements:
Junior, Senior, Graduate student, or recent grad
Background in fabrication, Industrial Design, Mechanical Engineering
Photoshop, Illustrator, and Rhino proficiency
Experience in a woodshop or fabrication shop
Self-driven attitude, attention to detail, and strong communication skills

We teach a Design Events class at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where we experiment with how behaviors, spaces, and objects come together to create experiences. For their final project, our students were charged with producing a public event loosely based on the theme of "factory." The outcome is Confectionairy: A Sugar Inflation Event, hosted at the ODLCO storefront on Friday, May 3rd from 6-9pm. You can RSVP here. 

Here's the official text.

Confectionairy is a sugar inflation factory event produced by Tanner Bowman, Emily Haasch, Katie Hung, Jasmine Marin, Jacy Nordmeyer, Haley Ressl and hosted by small-batch design brand ODLCO. The event features a re-engineering of sugar pulling and blowing techniques readily employed by pastry chefs for decorative centerpieces. The group developed a special taffy recipe using a synthetic sugar substitute which can be blown into molds or into freeform, hollow shapes.

Bowman, Haasch, Hung, Marin, Nordmeyer, and Ressl are members of the collaborative class "Contemporary Experiments in Design Events" at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The class is led by Caroline Linder and Lisa Smith of the small-batch manufacturing brand ODLCO, where the event will be hosted. The students were charged to create a public event as a final project, culminating in "Confectionairy."

Come witness this sculptural sugar production process at the ODLCO storefront on Friday, May 3rd, from 6-9pm at 1136 W. Randolph St.

The event is sponsored by the Course-Related Exhibitions and Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects Departments at SAIC.

"I stayed there the entire day. The only time I wasn't allowed to film was during the lunch break, which was a shame. All the employees sat amidst their creations and ate the food they had brought, which looked exactly like the imitations all around them. You could almost imagine one of them biting into a wax roll by mistake."

-Wim Wenders, Tokyo-Ga

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Wim Wenders' made the documentary Tokyo-Ga in 1985 as an homage to Ysujiro Ozu's narrative film Tokyo Stories. He uses the same slow style as Ozu, pausing at several different spots in the city,  from a nondescript park, to a pachinko parlor, to a wax food factory, letting the common moments unfold to help describe Tokyo city life.

In the wax food factory, we see the process of making a "sample meal" or "sampuru." These models are displayed in restaurant windows to illustrate the menu and entice customers. Restaurants can either buy food elements à la carte or commission specific dishes to be made. Custom-made dishes command high prices for the craft involved. Each element of the dish is cast in gelatin, then wax models are poured, painted, decorated, and plated to create the finished model.

Surprisingly, it is not dissimilar from cooking. Watch the sequence beginning at 4:32 of the tempura shrimp being dipped (or fried) in a batter of wax; a dish of noodles being warmed in the oven to help them take shape on the plate; and a sandwich layered with bread, slices of meat and lettuce before having the "crust"  trimmed off by a hot knife.

Kappabashi street in Tokyo is the hub for restaurant supply and the epicenter for this fake food distribution. While traditionally made in wax, many pieces are also now made from sculpted polyvinyl chloride.  On the list for our next trip!

Last year, we visited Dalian, a city on the Northeastern coast of China, and Hong Kong, where we sought out a wide variety of local street food stalls. We love these operations not just for culinary reasons, but also for the transparent and economical inventiveness of the proprietors. Unlike a restaurant, many street food vendors specialize in only one or two things. This specificity allows the stalls to be tiny and efficient, helped along by home-made food preparation machines (see the cast iron corn roaster in one of the photos below) and a rigid mise-en-place. The specialized tools, practiced techniques, and high turnover rates of street food vendors are as exciting to us as any high level production process, and we thought it high time to share some of our experiences to accompany the collection of miniatures we posted in the shop when we returned.

Above is a snapshot of little dino-bread figurines on display at a steamed bun shop, made by the vendor's son while hanging out with his father at work. 

A handmade corn roasting machine in Dalian, China. 

This dish is called Chee Cheong Fun, or "Pig Intestine Noodles," named so because of the cylindrical shapes. The dish is in fact vegetarian. Glutinous rice noodles are steamed and covered in a variety of sauces. So good at any time of the day, and eaten with sticks.

Macanese food is a mix of Portuguese and Chinese cuisine, found only in Macau. There's nothing like these buttery, brûléed egg tarts, served with sweet and milky ice coffee.

Taiwanese Snow Ice is made by thinly shaving a flavored ice into cascading ribbons and topping with fruits, jellys, condensed milk, and other things of weird shapes. Pictured here is a mango ice with dragonfruit, mango ice, and mango sauce. Not as good as in Taiwan, but we came back at least three times. 

Dalian is far enough north that it's been heavily influenced by Russian and Japanese cuisine. We came across this beachside yakitori barbecue where skewers of meat were sprinkled with cumin, and eggplants and bread rolls were grilled whole.

Sorry if this made you hungry and all you have is a snack-size zip-lock full of raw almonds. More of our favorite street food experiences in the photos below.

Prem Krishnamurthy, Adam Michaels, and Rob Giampietro, principles of the graphic design firm Project Projects, are speaking at the Art Institute of Chicago on April 16th. The firm is known for publication, exhibition, website and identity work for cultural institutions and art and design practicioners, as well as self-initiated publication and curation projects.  The Art Institute has invited them to use the museum's permanent collection to explore their own interests in the curatorial process and exhibition design, culminating in an exhibition entitled Test Fit, on view in Gallery 286 through April 28th.

Don't miss the show or the lecture. April 16th, 6:30pm–8:00pm, Price Auditorium. $5 students, $10 A&D Society members, $15 general public. Tickets here.

More about the exhibition from the Art Institute of Chicago's press release:

The studio was initially inspired by the mock-ups that curators often produce when preparing the layout of an exhibition. Driven also by the unusual characteristics of the Kurokawa Gallery, which is a well-trafficked, transitional space between the Modern Wing and other parts of the museum, Project Projects decided to develop a model of an exhibition that could serve as a framework for addressing issues of representation and reproductions in a playful, yet critical way.

The studio’s selection of works is based on the personal concerns of its partners, as expressed in the accompanying texts they have written. Although they began with an interest in European modernism, as imported to Chicago in the mid-twentieth century by such practitioners as László Moholy-Nagy and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the present collection of works speaks more broadly to Project Projects’ own interest in the history of design practice. Using a consistent format of printed facsimiles at a one-to-one scale, the studio encourages viewers to consider this exhibition as a mode of creative and cultural expression in and of itself.

A sampling of recent work by Project Projects below, but you really should just visit their website. 

The Trivet Runner by Michael Savona for ODLCO is an infinitely useful object with a form so simple it's cryptic. It's a trivet and a table runner, a heat-resistant landing pad for hot dishes and a basic tray for utensils or writing implements. You may keep yours on the table, on the range, or next to your laptop  To communicate all the possibilties of the Trivet Runner, we commissioned a set of illustrations from Jingyao Guo, an illustrator based in New York City. She provided us with the following short and sweet bio, but you've really got to check out her work at guojingyao.com.

I was born in China where I lived until I was 20 years old. Now I live in Brooklyn, NY with my husband where I enjoy working from home, collecting plants, exploring the ever-growing local restaurant scene, and going to midnight movies.

To find out more about the Trivet Runner, head to the catalog. 

ODLCO is now carrying animal sculptures by Kiyoshi Mino, a farmer and felt craftsman based in Forrest, IL. The sculptures are the culmination of hours of hard work, made from nothing more than a clump of wool and a needle. Kiyoshi likens the process to painting in three dimensions.  We are offering both large sculptures (which take over 20 hours each) and more affordable small ones. 

Last week we visited Kiyoshi and his wife Emma at Lucky Duck Farm, just a couple hours away from Chicago, where they raise sheep, cows, chicken, ducks, pigs, and grow fields of Asian vegetables. They founded the farm in 2011, and are about to start their second growing season. In the summer, they sell meat, eggs and veggies in farmers markets in Chicago. We've included some photos of their animals and fields above.

Kiyoshi and Emma weren't always farmers; once working in international development and library preservation. Pursuing their individual careers took them to separate places, so they turned to farming as a way to be together and work with their hands. Before founding Lucky Duck Farm, they attended a one year training program where Kiyopshi was exposed to needle felting for the first time. Kiyoshi's words on the craft: 

In January 2011 I learned about needle felting at a farmer training program my wife and I attended in Massachusetts. I had never heard of needle felting prior to the class but I immediately fell in love with it. I loved to draw as a kid but had never tried any form of sculpture before. It was very exciting to me to be able to draw in three dimensions with nothing but a needle and a clump of wool. I have always loved animals of all kinds and wool is a perfect medium for sculpting them. Using fine wools such as merino, I can quite realistically depict three dimensional patterns of fur and feathers.

We love Kiyoshi and Emma's story, which, in many ways, is not so dissimilar from ours. We're both trying to engage production at a smaller scale, and share many of the same struggles and accomplishments. 

See more of the felted animals here and here. 

This is the last weekend for the ODLCO holiday shop! Come visit us at 1136 W Randolph. Last day to shop in store and online is December 19th. Visit us between 12 and 7pm any day except Monday. 

Photos of the shop and special inventory below. 

Thanks to everyone for making last night a smash success! Over 100 donuts and many liters of rye whiskey were consumed. We're super excited to be open. If you missed it, come visit us from now through Dec 19th. We'll be open from 12-7pm every day except Monday.

Cheers! 

Jonathan Olivares writes about ODLCO (along with Very Good & Proper, Rich Brilliant Willing, and Field) in an article entitled D2C Generation, published in the December 2012 issue of Domus (964). It's our first international print feature, and we're excited to share it! The article reflects on the rise of the D2C business, which stands for designer-to-consumer, in counterpoint to the traditional models of B2B (business-to-business) or D2B (designer-to-business). It's a nice piece, and Olivares' critical voice keeps us on our toes. He points out that while the possibilities of the D2C model are great, the limitations of wearing many hats are an obstacle, and the work being produced by the young D2C set might benefit from more risk taking. 

Here's Olivares' short abstract:

A new production model is emerging in the studios of young designers, frustrated by traditional outlets for design. Helped by the Internet, which supplies a reliable and economical infrastructure for the development of self-sufficient small bususinesses, the designer-to-consumer model (D2C) avoids the traditional forms of production and sales, and aims instead to sell small quantitities of rare goods to large numbers of customers.

We're proud to be recognized by Domus and included among  esteemed peers. You can read the article by purchasing a copy or downloading the Domus iPad app and reading for free. We prefer the second option. Some shots from the article below.