Tim Liles

This project began as a very simple solution to the theme of “color” for a show sponsored by the American Design Club. Since then the product has taken off and is sold in shops, museums, and galleries all over the world such as the Future Perfect in Brooklyn, the Tate Gallery in London, Oye Modern in Australia, The Norweigan Centre for Design and Architecture in Oslo, Handmade in Switzerland, the list goes on.

Sold in multiple color assortments and a universal size range, the Crayon Rings have proven to be a product with true mass appeal. They seem to hit a nostalgic and happy spot for so many different types of people, and that makes me happy.

For wholesale information please email me directly: timothyliles [at} gmail.com

A theme I’m always working towards is the idea of a person or a thing being everything to everyone. A few years ago I tried to write a very unspecific and innocuous message that could be applied to everyone I saw in a vaguely positive way. I began giving out these business cards to strangers without saying anything else or giving them time to respond to me directly. I continue to give the cards out without any specific goal or end in mind. If you’d like one, email me and I’d be happy to mail it to you.

This was a project completed for 225 Forest, which is a store in Laguna Beach, CA bringing all the action sports products from Nike, Hurley, and Converse into one retail location. The brief from Converse was to simply create a piece of furniture which is compatible with their brand. The final result is three found chairs whose forms are very different from one another, brought together into one object by a skin of hundreds of feet shoelace.

Another tenet of good design that I’m constantly chasing is simple manufacture. This stool was made in a few short hours, from conception to completion, with found objects as well as common materials bought at a hardware store. The unique form of the seat comes from pouring cement into a bucket and the joints between the seat and the legs were made simply by sinking the tops of the legs into the wet cement. The objects used were the casting bucket, an axe handle, a small shovel, and a rake handle. 

I continue to be interested in shared experiences and shared nostalgia. This is a refurbished pellet gun which represents an early rite of passage. It’s a personal piece which many people won’t immediately relate to but I wanted to take an object which is inherently childish and mature at the same time and enhance those elements even more by presenting it in sophisticated materials and finishes and include a message that is very clearly delivered to someone perhaps too immature to handle the responsibility. The metal components were found and chromed, the stock is hand-carved maple with laser-etched details.

This chair was the premier example from a series titled “Be Well.” The aim of the project was to explore something we all generally want: to be well, then take it to an extreme that might make us question that desire. The form and materials of the chair are all carefully selected to be at once familiar and off-putting. The simple, blond wood is familiar in a domestic setting, but the crepe sanitary paper has a home in the doctor’s office. The user is meant to advance the roll and tear off the excess for a clean sitting surface every time. For someone like my father, an extreme germophobe, this is a practical solution to a reasonable problem. To most people, however, it’s just a bit much.

Into infinite puffiness. #puffinity

Puffy faces.

Puffy hand holding a folded pizza slice. Kinda large scale.

We finished moving into our new house. Just installed our first custom piece.

Meeting doodles. Puffy style.

This guy. (Taken with Instagram)

Wrinkly pizza. (Taken with Instagram)

Pizza face 2. (Taken with Instagram)

More pizza. (Taken with Instagram)

Same parts, different outcomes. (Taken with Instagram)

Taken with Instagram

Stoked on liquor. (Taken with Instagram)

You had me until you got to non-sticky. (Taken with Instagram)

Yay trash! (Taken with Instagram)

Have a great summer! (Taken with Instagram)

Squirrel woodcut knife. (Taken with Instagram)

New garbage can. Plus google eyes. (Taken with Instagram)

Impossible sausage! (Taken with instagram)

Infinite universe inside of… (Taken with instagram)

nevver:

Licensed to Ill