Interviewe mat Maform

Maform was founded in 2010 by two freshly graduated designers, Geza Csire and Peter Molnar. We believe in a future where we are surrounded by thoughtful objects, and solutions that incorporate high level scientific and engineering solutions, seamlessly integrated into our lives. Maform designers are artists, engineers and science lovers in one.

Imperfections and annoying solutions drive us. These things inspire us to do it better. The most annoying solutions are the ones that answer on instantaneous challenges with unnecessary or wasteful use of resources.

We focus on IoT, Life Science and Transportation projects. We like to work on high-value-added products. The greatest and most fruitful challenge, for us, is to design solutions that bring high level engineering and scientific breakthroughs to our everyday life.

Work hard and never give up. You should never forget what drives you and you should never lose your faith.

We believe, good design has to be helpful and thoughtful. It has to give answers to meaningful problems. If something is unnecessary or unhelpful, than it's bad design. The shape should reflect the inner values, and functionality should be self explanatory.

When talking about investments, good design offers higher economic value. It also makes people happier – this is hard to measure, but it's good to know.

We would redesign everything, if we had the time and the opportunity to realise such an ambitious project.

Maform was founded in 2010 by two freshly graduated designers, Geza Csire and Peter Molnar. We believe in a future where we are surrounded by thoughtful objects, and solutions that incorporate high level scientific and engineering solutions, seamlessly integrated into our lives. Maform designers are artists, engineers and science lovers in one.

Maform is a product and interface design firm focusing in IoT, Life Science and Transportation projects. Our mission is to bring tech and science innovation to people by designing great products. Maform designers are artists, engineers and science enthusiasts in one.

We believe design is about the essence – not just the senses. Design should be helpful and understandable: we call this meaningful simplicity. It is reached by designing free of learnt assumptions. The result is a helpful solution with a senseful element of surprise. Crafting and testing everything to the limits maximizes quality and user experience.

We like to work on high-value-added products. The greatest and most fruitful challenge, for us, is to design solutions that bring high level engineering and scientific breakthroughs to our everyday life.

Our first product was an industrial product called the Power Analyzer. It was a remote maintenance tool that could detect malfunctioning devices based on their power usage. Our assignment was to design a casing that reflected the innovation inside.

We feel the most creative when we have to face the most impossible challenges. Mostly due to really strict requirements and deadlines.

We love it when we see the first batch of prototypes. But seeing thousands of identical products, based on our designs, is simply ecstatic.

We believe, good design has to be helpful and thoughtful. It has to give answers to meaningful problems. It also has to inspire people.

Inspiration comes from everywhere. We believe in integrating knowledge from distant fields. We seek inspiration where most people wouldn't. For example, the main inspiration of our paq bed project was perpendicular tube connections and paper folding. We also like to look at insects from up close and geographic patterns from high above.

We always look for a strong character. This is usually reached by unique trim lines, exaggerated by using high contrast colours. After finding the right character, we work on refining all the details to reach state-of-the-art results.

Our studio was founded in Budapest. Hungarians have a traditional mindset of solving problems with limited resources and thoughtful solutions. This is sometimes quite distant from the high class, artisan, super high quality approach of design. It has also definitely nothing to do with the cultural mission of global design. But this mindset helps us finding the most efficient solutions in really tense competition. It helps us in re-utilising resources. And it's useful when it comes to locally sustainable solutions.

We work in 3+1 weeks sprints with a really transparent workflow. We share our progress real-time, through the cloud.

Our sprint-based workflow is a combination of classic product design methodology and SCRUM methodology. We start with a clean sheet and try to design free of learnt assumptions. We then combine knowledge of distant fields. We do prototyping as soon as possible. And we work in highly efficient sprints to shorten development time.

As a company, we might be considered boring: we have everything planned up front and we try to flatten peaks in workload. We encourage our employees to spend as much time with their family and loved ones as possible. Happy and balanced designers make good design.

We use paper, foam and scraps of industrial stuff (metals, plastics etc.) for finding inspiration and modelling. We use 3D printing for validating form, functionality and mechanics. As for software, we use Autodesk Fusion for CAD, Keyshot for rendering, Adobe CC for general graphic design and Sketch for graphical user interface design. For sharing, we use Zeplin and Dropbox.

We constantly improve project management tools and methodologies and take special care to internal and external communication. We learn from engineering and tech companies: we find it a great deal of inspiration for getting things done.

We plan to develop our international presence. We focus on Europe at the moment. It would be nice to open a studio abroad, in one of the design capitols of Europe.

Please visit our website at www.maformdesign.com – all relevant contact information can be found there. We are always open for a talk!