Visitors to the Nooka offices are greeted by this bright green wall inhabited by several Nooka Nookas, the brand's mascot. A longtime collector of vinyl toys, Waldman designed the figures in 2007, his first contribution to a genre that's always inspired him — though they can also serve a more practical purpose as watch-holders.
Though Nooka has been around since 2005 — when its first major client was MoMA — the office space is a reminder that the brand is still growing. In addition to handling the product design on-site, Waldman and his staff manage the company's international distribution, handle all the online fulfillment, service watches, and do small-scale digital photography in this in-house photo studio, with the mannequin as a sometimes-model.
A series of paper printouts are evidence of the team's ongoing design process: While they resemble blow-ups of Nooka watch interfaces, they're actually studies for Nooka wall clocks, due to hit shelves in the fall of 2011. As for the lions, "They're from the Japanese company I.D.E.A, who gave them to us as a gift," reports Waldman. "We exchange products with them all the time."
Inside Waldman's office is where the real stash lies, however. One of the walls is lined with shelves full of toys, the top one in this photo representing the "friends and family" collection: "It's all from artists that I personally know, so there’s stuff from Shin Tanaka that he signed, things from Touma that he sent me, customized Munnys from I Love Dust," he says. "On the bottom shelf is the little character the Quisp, with the propeller on his head, from one of my favorite cereals from the '70s, and a Pantone plastic specification system in the form of Kubriks that you can actually use to specify acrylic color and transparency. For me the appeal of these toys is aesthetic and tactile; I just find them really inspiring as form and color studies."
More gifts from friends: The black rabbit on the left from Mark Landwehr of Coarsetoys and the robot on the right — something called "ColdChic" by Push — from a friend in Taiwan. Aside from gifts, though, Waldman all but stopped his toy-collecting activities two years ago, which he attributes partly to having reached a new echelon of maturity. "It's like eating too much of one type of food," he explains further. "Like having chocolate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, then not being able to eat one more bite of chocolate. It got to the point where I was totally saturated, and I was like I don’t need these anymore, I don’t need to do this anymore." Having finally created his own toy — the Nooka Nooka — didn't hurt, either.
Hence, this shelf above his marketing team's desk is "basically toy purgatory," he says. "When I was a collector I would go and buy everything that came out, and my boyfriend said get these out of the apartment, basically. I don’t have an emotional commitment to them to the point that I need them at home, but there's enough of a connection that I don’t want to throw them out. And I'm too lazy to put them on eBay. I could ask my assistants, but everyone’s too busy — if there comes a point where we aren’t, this is all going up for sale."
These days, when Waldman does collect objects, they tend to be brought back from his travels to Japan, which he visits twice a year. "Japan's one of our better overseas markets, and I also speak Japanese," he says. "I do a lot of press events there, plus catching up with friends and eating the food. And I find plenty of design inspiration there, too." These P-hooks, for example, are "such a genius invention," he adds. They hook over the spines of magazines, creating a tiny handle you can use to yank one out of a tightly packed shelf. They're sold in most Japanese stationery stores, but you can also buy them here.
Equally ingenious: This rare, disco-chic album packaging by Japanese musician Keigo Oyamada — better-known as Cornelius — whose paper cutouts can be folded into a makeshift DIY record player you operate by hand.
Other Japanese finds include this toilet paper printed with the text of a novel — "it's only good if you live alone, because if someone else starts using your toilet paper, you’ve missed some of the story" — and ....
.... this strange toy depicting Mister Contact, the mascot for the allergy medicine, which was available in the U.S. in the '70s but now can only be found in Europe and Asia. "It's one of my favorites," Waldman says of the character. "I've been collecting Mister Contact promo items for quite a few years now. This was actually glued to a package of medicine I bought. My friends in Japan know, so whenever they see it in the pharmacy they try to get it for me." In Japan, he adds, "they have mascots for evvvvverything."
It was in a pharmacy back home — Duane Reade — that Waldman found this little wonder, Dirt cologne. "Not dirty filthy; it smells like soil," he says. "It's amazingly accurate, although I don’t really associate the dirt smell with a 'Pick-Me-Up.'"
The Demeter scent is part of a small collection growing on top of the designer's file cabinet, started in the name of market research for his own new scent creation: Nooka. "To tell the fragrance story, I had to learn a sort of new language," he says. "This one by Hermès is the deconstruction of the lavender scent molecule. The story is more interesting the scent. We didn’t do that with ours, but it was important for me to learn how people talk about fragrance."
Back in the main room, we stumble on the beginnings of Waldman's musical "time machine" for the ICFF exhibition "Sounds Like", opening Friday. Asked to customize a pair of speakers designed by Joey Roth, Waldman hacked up this chest of drawers, turning it into a music player with a special sound piece by former Cibo Matto frontwoman Miho Hatori. "The dresser was a gift from my mom when I moved out as a teenager," he admits. "It’s totally a cheapo Louis XIV reproduction."
"Since the theme is a time machine, I wanted to integrate things that were old with things that were new," he says of the finished piece, pictured above. "It's a perfect use for the dresser. And I haven't compromised its functionality — it now works both as a chest of drawers and as speakers. You can put your iPod inside and plug it in, and one of the dresser knobs serves as the volume control."
In terms of actual product, Waldman's latest creations include the Zub 20 Zirc watch (left) and the Zub 20 Zot watch (right). Underneath is the Strip belt, made from the same Ellastolan thermoplastic polyurethane material. "The belts are a re-imagining of a very common object, but with a closure that's super easy to use," he says. "They work well with ski pants because you don't have to take your gloves off to tighten them. Another thing that’s not so sexy is that my 92-year-old aunt can use them, but elderly folks aren't going to pay $80 for a belt. They'll be like, 'Why aren't these $18?'"
A recent Sight Unseen favorite was the ZenH Hyper Space, an original Nooka design updated with '80s-style geometric patterns.
That playfulness extends well beyond the brand's offerings and into the office itself. "Who made the horse poopy drawing?" Waldman shouts to his staff after we inquire about a silly drawing above one desk. Turns out it was Paul Isabella, Nooka's in-house junior designer, who quickly replies that it is, in fact, a magical unicorn with no horn.
The staff also keeps a Rock Band set at the ready for when they need to blow off steam.
And just by the entrance hangs a whimsical painting by Hiroyuki Nakamura, a local artist whose studio Waldman was taken to visit by his friend, the Andy Warhol Museum curator Eric Shiner. "There’s a word they use in Japanese manga called hentai, which in English doesn’t translate well," he explains. "It basically means perverted. There's something very creepy about Nakamura's art — it intersects creepy with cute, and I love all kinds of intersections. My work is all about intersections as well, where design intersects art and technology intersects design."
Waldman makes his own art, as well — this unfinished painting of an "evil dust bunny" being one example — and has filled tons and tons of sketchbooks with it. Sometimes that work makes it onto collabs like his new Graniph t-shirt, but he never shows off the books unless he's asked.
This piece is a sketch left for him by his friend, the Japanese artist Shin Tanaka, famous for making paper robots you print out and assemble yourself. "His fiancé is also an artist, and she did the drawing on the left while he did the one on the right," he says. "They visited New York in March and came to the studio, and in Japan it’s customary if you’re an artist to draw something to leave behind — it's like a signature. I did one for them as well."
Matthew Waldman
