Making mirrors with A Vibe Called Tech, the collective democratising design

Last week, as Design Miami Paris was drawing design collectors to the Left Bank to see Josef Hoffmann cutlery and Maria Pergay chairs, another group of creatives and journalists gathered on the Right Bank to try their hand at making mirrors. This DIY initiative was part of a new project, 'Future Classics', meant to democratise design, conceived by the British creative agency A Vibe Called Tech with the collaboration of WePresent (WeTransfer's art platform).

Charlene Prempeh, founder of A Vibe Called Tech, says that Future Classics has two goals. One is to encourage people to use their hands at a time when everything seems to be digitised. The other is to make design available to all. 'I think for a long time it's felt quite elitist. And it's such an important part of our culture. I want people to feel like it's something accessible, and the process of making helps to achieve that.'

The plan is to expand the project beyond Europe, with different local designers and a range of objects and materials. Ultimately, says Lewis Gilbert, creative director of A Vibe Called Tech, 'We want people to see these items in people's homes and go, 'where did you get that?' And when they need an extra mirror, or an extra lamp, they're like – I can actually make my own.'

The Future Classics mirror workshop

When choosing designers for each Future Classics object, the duo look for talents that share their community-based ethos. The project launched earlier this year in London with a lamp by Andu Masebo. In Paris, the test group would be making a 'T-Mirror' by Franco-Swiss designer Julie Richoz, who was on hand to help them out.

'We set out to create an object that is forgiving and doesn't need millimetric precision,' Richoz explains. Materials and tools had to be simple and readily available. 'These constraints led us to explore a certain aesthetic, a kind of radicality, which took us to this very graphic silhouette.'

And so on a rainy Thursday morning, a couple dozen people sat at tables in an industrial workspace in northern Paris, each supplied with two pieces of wood and a small selection of paints. The first step was to select the colour mix for the mirror frame, which turned out to be an enormous source of anxiety for people who think often about design but don't necessarily make it. Pastels? Mondrian? Light? Dark? An hour later, most had taken the leap (though a few were spotted regretfully painting over their bright shades with basic black).

Once the paint dried, drills and screws were handed out, to attach the boards in a T shape. The wood frame – pre-pierced with holes – was then ingeniously attached to mirrored glass with a cord (another colour choice!) that also served as a loop for hanging.

A digital toolkit for making the T-Mirror (along with each new Future Classics object) is available to download for free via WeTransfer. Richoz notes that her instructions are more of a 'protocol' than a plan, and can be adapted to whatever is around once you've understood the system.

'I think we have a different relationship with our environment when we make it ourselves. That's how things were before industrialisation,' she says. 'I love that Future Classics bridges that spirit with the possibilities of modern technology: open source, knowledge sharing, and inviting a large number of people to take part.'