Do Post by Dawn Finley for Do Create Droog Design x KesselsKramer
Dawn Finley
Do Post, 2000
Do Post formed part of Do Create, a collaborative initiative by Droog Design and KesselsKramer. The compact metal box was made to be fixed to a tree, street pole or interior wall, turning an ordinary location into a place for unexpected communication. Each time a new note was placed inside, the box dispensed one written by a previous user.
With no addresses, postage or waiting time, the box transformed ordinary mail into an anonymous exchange between strangers. Participants could leave almost any kind of message, from personal thoughts or complaints to poems and everyday notes such as shopping lists. Like the other objects in Do Create, it remained incomplete without the user’s participation: each person contributed something to the system and received something unexpected in return.
The three diagrams on a card show the instructions:
- Open or lift the upper section.
- Insert your message.
- The box dispenses another participant’s message through the receiving opening.
The attached card appears to be an original-style Do Create product sheet. Its photograph shows the prototype strapped to a tree and stocked with small folded messages bearing the do post identity.
Do Create made its debut at Spazio La Posteria during the 2000 Salone del Mobile. Bas van Tol designed the exhibition using brightly coloured doors as walls, platforms and display structures. Each object was also shown alongside a large photograph of someone putting its “do” instruction into action, just like the image on your postcard.
Other works included:
- Do Hit by Marijn van der Poll — a metal cube hammered into the form of a chair.
- Do Scratch by Martí Guixé — a black-coated lamp whose surface was scratched to release light.
- Do Frame by Martí Guixé — decorative tape used to frame any chosen object or surface.
- Do Add by Jürgen Bey — a chair with a deliberately shortened leg that had to be supported with books.
- Do Link by Martí Guixé — an incomplete lamp assembled using an object supplied by its owner.
Like Do Post, these were deliberately unfinished propositions. At the heart of Do Create was the idea that a product was not truly finished until someone interacted with it. The designer set the process in motion, while the user completed it, either by changing the object or by allowing the object to change their experience.
