Steven Bukowski gives us a look into his design process for Scape Trays, his second design for Areaware.

I wanted to design a little family of trays that would interact and reference each other. The first design was the big blue tray, which I drew up after spending most of my summer near the lakes of the Catskills and Adirondacks. I’m always amazed by the vastness of the mountain ranges, how they layer and hide or show things. There’s a surprise around every corner.

I liked the idea of using this layering to have different parts of the trays peak out when they’re nested. Working from the blue tray I referenced trees or mountain peaks, dunes or sunsets, as well as the bright shining sun.

Paper models were a quick and easy way to check the scale of everything to see if there needed to be any adjustments (there were many).

The color pallette was developed closely with Areaware, as well as the custom textured powder coat. We wanted to have some tactility to the trays when you handle them, to bring a little more attention to the object you’re holding.