A designer’s job is to make sure that the model can be converted into a working prototype – a blue print for the manufacturer. However, it is in our nature to measure individuality. Since the 1980s designers have been injecting unique identity “chromosomes” into their products on an industry scale.

High-income earners – which are the industry target – fill the empty space of boredom in their lives by shopping. But possessing the exact same product as everyone else only creates a new kind of boredom. The era of uniform consumerism has ended. Mass products are now being challenged by truly individual designs. Yes, it’s pseudo individualism.

During the 1980s, the concern for environmental damage was no longer exclusive to environmentalists. The call to stop deforestation, environmental pollution, and the green house effect entered into popular culture. Terms such as Eco, Green, and Global Warming were often used, while at the same time the importance of the 3Rs (Reuse – Reduce – Recycle) became ever more apparent.

Recycling can sometimes be too expensive and requires a lot of energy. Which is why some people turn to upcycling, which means converting waste or unused materials into something useful, like the products developed by Freitag. In Bali, Nafka initiated a laboratory for creative designers focused on developing responsible lifestyle products. In June 2011, Nafka showed their first exhibit in Denpasar titled Wonderground. Nafka will once again be showing the creations of their designers at the Ecologically Sustainable Solutions Week on April 16–22, 2012 at Little Tree in Kuta, Bali.

To create designs out of used materials, Nafka designers focus on planning the shapes. Through the process, the used materials can offer unexpected visual surprises. It’s as if looking at a montage or photo collage by artists from the Dadaism era on products such as bags, sofas, room partitions and lamp shades, all made from reclaimed waste or used plastic wrappers. Cut up images, numbers or letters, a build up of colors.

Nafka products seem to fuse the line between art and craft in the shape of everyday accessories. Visually they are attractive. Nafka products are a refreshing surprise in the droll of everyday standard mass-produced products. Nafka products are truly one-of-a-kind.

The products may represent individual expression. But the production process is fueled by a passion for community movement and empowerment. Nafka outsources its production to local handicraft community groups. Handicraft producers, much like other traditional production workers, are marginalized in today’s modern economic distribution routes.

In modern sales systems, the middleman marketing the products can be a necessity. When the producer and consumer are too far apart and there is no access between them, the role of the marketer grows ever larger. The role of the middleman in sales is to dictate the price to maximize profits. The producer has little power to sell at a higher, or more profitable price.

This inequality in the marketing stage is only beneficial to the seller and too often exploits the producer. In Bali, these symptoms have long been visible in the industry, for example in the sales of art or crafts. Art shops in Bali have a very high profit margin, sometimes as high as 60 percent on the handicraft products they sell. By the time they are sold, these handicrafts can be expensive, but the amount the producers receive is too far below the selling price.

The partnerships Nafka builds with local handicraft producers follow fair trade standards. In this way they are supporting sustainability, not only the environmental aspects, but also the social aspects.

It takes hard work to follow the principles of fair trade while also successfully conducting business. To make sure the products are not just salable because they are “fair trade” and pulling on heart strings, but because they are of high quality.

If upcycling has it’s own attraction for consumers, could upcycle product hold special economic value? Anyone can take unused material around them and transform it into something new and useful. So, is there still a market for Nafka products? Here the idea of branding comes into play. A product will not just be valued in a utilitarian perspective or at face-value use. Urban residents want to communicate and declare their individuality in the midst of their lonely disoriented lives. Brands provide this.

Brands become a tool for interaction, a celebration of togetherness, even without having to communicate it. A brand is a message in itself.

In the era of computer graphics, ancient graphic techniques come as a pleasant surprise.

“What you see is what you get” may not sound that interesting. But the results of these graphic prints can be a happy surprise.

Happiness was the general feeling throughout the wood cut workshop with Jogja’s art collective Taring Padi at Taman 65 in Kesiman, Denpasar, on October 8^th. The workshop participants looked so happy, especially when lifting a woodcut print from their own t-shirt or piece of paper.

Happy surprise was the expression most people displayed when they first saw the results of their woodcut prints. Even though the prints were monochrome created with only black ink. But the the results were not so predictable: One print on two different shirts could be very different, depending on the thickness of the paint upon the woodcut surface. The method of pressing the woodcut upon the medium of cloth or paper also impacted the resulting artwork.

The woodcut leaves an impression on paper or cloth by pressure placed firmly on top of it. In this case, participants tread or jumped on their woodcuts. If  you don’t step long enough, the paint may be too thin or the image unclear because some sections of the media are not pressed as hard as others.

The woodcut leaves an impression on paper or cloth by pressure placed firmly on top of it. In this case, participants tread or jumped on their woodcuts. If  you don’t step long enough, the paint may be too thin or the image unclear because some sections of the media are not pressed as hard as others.

The workshop was opened by M. Yusuf from Taring Padi, who explained why this ancient graphic technique is perfect for creating propaganda media. To make posters using a woodcut, for example, one is able to maximize the number of prints that can be made from a single piece of wood.

Modern reproduction techniques are impersonal and require a relatively large number of printed copies in order to keep the prices reasonable. But with woodcuts, a person’s hand and the wood become the printing machine.

For collective community movements like Taring Padi, this independent reproduction method works well, because they do not need to involve external parties to reproduce their propaganda media, which would be like leaking the information before it is released. “Visually, a wood cut retains the human-touch, and it can be reproduced on all types of media. The size also isn’t limited to the size of a printing machine,” said Yusuf, who goes by the nickname Ucup.

The process of making a wood cut starts by sketching a work of art on a medium-density fiberboard or block board. The art needs to be created as if it is horizontal reflection in a mirror, where right becomes left and left becomes right. After that, the illustration is carved, using small-edged razor blades or woodcut chisels. There are a number of different types of blades which produce different effects when carving the wood surface. The section of wood that is not carved is what will be printed on the artwork medium, and the carved section of wood makes sure that the medium does not touch the paint.

Once the woodcut is carved, paint is poured onto a flat, smooth surface, like a mirror.  Then, the paint is smoothed out using a roller. The roller is then used to apply paint to the woodcut surface. Once the paint is evenly distributed, the woodcut is placed on top of the media in any position you like. The media should be placed on top of a flat surface, such as a flattened, used cardboard box.

When placed on the surface to be printed, the backside of the woodcut should be covered with a piece of used paper to make sure that the medium does not get dirty. Then apply pressure to the wood cut until you think the paint is evenly distributed. Voila! Enjoy the surprise underneath: a work of woodcut art.

Freitag is a statement that makes the wearer feel different.

Strong, unique and authentic are three words that definitely represent Freitag bags. “The visuals are very attractive to the trained eye. Freitag is a happy surprise in this day-to-day world filled with mass-produced and standardized products,” says Windelin Hess (33), a designer who first bought a Freitag bag in 1994.

Freitag distances itself from imitative trends which result from mass production. The phrase “Each bag is unique” isn’t just the Freitag tagline: Freitag offers a unique declaration for the urban person suffering from “a feeling of disorientation and a need to communicate in the center of disconnectedness and individuality of urban life,” according to the authors of Freitag: Individual Recycled Freeway Bags.

The aforementioned book was printed with the same creative enthusiasm: 10,000 unique copies were printed with different covers. This 500-page book is not heavy on the text, but exposes the ecological, economic, and sociocultural motivations of Freitag since its foundation, as well as images of 3,000 Freitag bags and their owners. These are members of the neurotic metropolitan generation, who are surrounded by consumerism but want to look different.

To understand the context of Freitag’s success, you have to understand that Switzerland is a small, wealthy country. This country, which is often shown on post cards with blue lakes and flying geese, has a population of only 360,000, and its per capita income is an staggering US 587,000 dollars. According to the same book, “Swiss people are ready, willing and able to fill the big hole of boredom in their daily lives by shopping.”

Freitag’s success was supported by their smooth arrival into the Swiss underground scene. Freitag became a mandatory accessory for young people going to clubs or rave parties around Europe.

In 1999 Freitag opened a main outlet in Davos, a small city in the heart of Switzerland. Two years later, another store was opened in Hamburg. In 2006, Freitag opened yet another store in Zurich, which got a lot of attention because it was constructing by stacking 17 rusty, shipping containers. With a height of 26 meters, the store became a bonsai skyscraper in the city of Zurich, despite strict regulations of tall buildings.

Freitag products can be purchased online through www.freitag.ch. Since October 2002, Freitag offered a feature called F-cut, which allowed customers to design their own unique bags online. This Flash application presents a range of tarps from which to choose. If you’re not totally satisfied with the ones available, you can come back in a few days to check the new tarps in stock. Customers simply place the bag design on the section of tarp they want to choose. At the factory, the tarp will be cut following the customer’s specifications. Two weeks later, your new, custom-designed bag arrives at your doorstep.

The Top Cat Freitag bag has been added to a design collection at the New York Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), a huge honor coveted by artists the world over (to date no Indonesian artist’s work has been accepted by MOMA).

Since the 1980s, the question of environmental degradation has been a widely discussed topic, and not exclusive to environmental activists. Cries to stop deforestation, environmental pollution, and green house effect have all become popular movements. Terminology such as Eco, Green, and Global Warming are often used when discussing the importance of Reduce – Reuse – Recycle.

Some environmentalists consider recycling to be too expensive and too energy consuming. This is where upcycling provides a great alternative solution by turning useless, discarded material into something useful and new, like what Freitag has done. Anyone can find used, discarded objects and transform them into something newly functional.

If upcycling becomes a new trend, do upcycle products hold special economic value? Freitag’s success suggests as much. And it also suggests some important questions about what consumers want: For example, why would people spend 250 Euro on a bag made from old truck tarp?

It’s not hard to spot the young people in Europe walking around with these colorful bags, displaying a patchwork of fragmented letters and images and made of synthetic materials like thick plastics. These are the Freitag bags.

If the bags look a bit dirty, it’s not because they’re rarely washed. Most likely it’s because these bags are made from the plastic tarps that were once used to cover commercial trucks, accumulating dirt and silt that are difficult to remove during production of the bags. It’s hard to make them look completely clean. But that is what makes Freitag bags special.

It all started when Swiss-born Daniel and Markus talked about wanting to own bags like the ones used by postal delivery people in New York. These bags are practical, waterproof, large, and easy to carry on a bicycle. But these graphic designer brothers felt the price of a courier bag was just too expensive.

One morning in 1993, Markus headed into the industry district on his bicycle. He returned with a few sheets of used truck cargo tarp, which he hauled upstairs to their fifth floor apartment and dumped into the bathtub. Once the tarps were cleaned and dried he spread them out on the floor, between his mattress and a stereo, and he started cutting the tarp into patterns. Old seat belts were used as straps and broken inner bike tires were used to protect the edges of the bag.

A concept was born. They were making quality bags from used material. The materials they chose were waterproof, strong, and available in a variety of colors. The only new materials they utilized were wire, velcro and buckles.

Their new bag production changed their apartment living rapidly: “For weeks our bathtub was filled with dirty water and smelled like old tarps. The apartment was cluttered with various materials, bicycle tires and seatbelts,” recalls Oliver Gemperle, their former flatmate—his tone discontent with the state of their apartment at the time.

Gemperle also mentioned that an industry standard sewing machine had taken over their dining table. The used machine was purchased for US 500 dollars and was the first investment the Freitag brothers made in their new enterprise. And Gemperle was consoled with the gift of two pieces of the first version of Freitag bags. A gray Freitag bag, one of the first designs, is now part of a display at the Zurich Museum for Gestaltung.

These days, the Freitag brothers no longer make bags out of their apartment. They first expanded by opening the retour Gebr in 1995. Then in 1999, the Freitag lab.—a shorthand meant to signify both “laboratory” and “label,” was established. It reportedly grossed US 52 million dollars in 2003 and employed around 40 people fulltime. Freitag also supports 1,760 outsource staff through a manufacturing company which employs people with disabilities. This commitment to humanitarianism, combined with the environmentally thoughtful practice of making new products out of used materials, is what makes the Freitag business special.

In their first year of operation, Freitag only produced 40 bags. By 2007 they were producing 160,000 products a year. Now there are over 40 styles of Freitag bags, including courier bags, DJ bags, laptop bags, iPod cases, backpacks, wallets, shopping bags, purses, punching bags, and even footballs.

Freitag products are available in 350 stores spread out all over the world, including Switzerland, Germany, Austria, England, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Israel, Turkey, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Canada, China and Singapore. In Switzerland, the Freitag signature style is easily spotted as the bike baskets of girls on their way to school.

“Innovative,” “creative,” “niche market,” and other similar terms often used to describe some of the most noteworthy modern production systems definitely apply to this company. Freitag bags are like a shimmer of light in a dark urban market that reveals: “Look, it is possible to make good products, even when most people are limiting their creativity by only following their obligations and investing in stock.”