Forms of Smiles Exhibition

Design Museum Holon

Curator: Adi Hamer Yacobi

How do you sharpen a carrot? Who are Morris the Donkey and Moby the Whale? For the “Monkey Business” design firm every twig is part of a bold game of knights, every elephant is a piggy bank and every wine bottle cork can become a pre-historic dinosaur.

Since it was founded by Oded Friedland in 1994, Monkey Business has released over 100 products, all created by Israeli designers, to the local and international market. The exhibition presents the stories of 17 products and allows for a thorough examination of their development processes. The exhibition additionally affords visitors a glimpse of the evolution of multi-product series and groups, based on ongoing conversations between designers, manufacturers, suppliers, illustrators, distributors and other professionals who influence the design process.

The exhibition was designed as a colorful puzzle, presenting the development processes of the various products. This allows the viewers and especially the children among them, an opportunity to easily examine the stories behind the products while exposing significant junctions and decisions within them. In the “free experimentation” section of the museum, children are able to become the creators of paper images that turn into products, practicing a conceptual process of developing the kind of products created by Monkey Business.

Photo Credit – Dor Kedmi