JumpFromPaper™

Two young and very creative designers came up with the sweet idea to make two-dimensional handbags. JumpFromPaper™ is a playful and innovative line of handbags with cartoon-like outlines, bright and vibrant colors. JumpFromPaper™ bags have a roomy interior to accommodate a tablet, notebook, your everyday accessories and even a laptop, while also having a zipper at the bottom which expands the bag for extra room.

 1. Can you tell us a little about yourselves and how you met?

 Hi we are Chay Su and Rika Lin from Taiwan. We both majored in commercial design in college, and love daydreaming and hunting for new possibilities in life. We are also very engaged in employing design as the medium to realize their crazy imagination into realness.

 2. How do you come up with this idea?

 We love daydreaming and the whole idea came from our daydream and crazy imagination. We love designer bags however most of them are so expensive and way beyond our reach, and therefore we started imagining that if only we could create our own bags which are beautiful and yet in our style.

 Afterwards we continued talking about this idea and started sketching, and a surprising idea popped up – “How amazing it would be if a two-dimensional hand-drawn illustration could come to life as a real bag!” We tried everything and finally decided to render fantasy handbags in "perspective", and then JumpFromPaper™ came alive.

Both of us are full of crazy ideas all the time and appreciate fun and humorous stuff. We hope to create something that could bring laughs and imagination to people's lives, and that could make our customers look beautiful, unique and speak their own individual styles.

3. Was it difficult as young designers to launch your product and been taken serious?

 We are lucky enough to be able to work with Pinzaan, the company which is responsible for JumpFromPaper™'s branding, intellectual protection, manufacturing, as well as sales and marketing, helping us come this far so that we could focus on creating the best designs.

While more and more fabulous Taiwanese designs come to the fore, many of them are like a flash in the pan. Due to the lack of a publisher who specializes in the commercialization of design, lots of design works fail to be merchandised and soon disappear. Pinzaan therefore has this ambition helping Taiwanese designers launch their works and glow on the world stage. We love working with them!

4. How do you work as a team, and what are each your roles? ( who's doing the design, marketing, eats all the cookies, etc...)

Basically we do all the work together. For instance, we would get together talk about the key element and theme of new collection, and after it's determined we would each sketch 10-20 drafts and then discuss what we regard as interesting and good designs to be executed. We are together engaged in the whole process from the beginning till the end - laughing out at each other's quirky and funny designs together, eating cookies and getting fat together.

5. If you had to describe your brand, JumpFromPaper™, in three words, what would they be?

Chay: Can't be described!

Rika: Believe your eyes! Many customers said when they saw the bag they just cannot believe what they see and neither could they figure out how the bag is a bag instead of a piece of paper.

6. How do you best cultivate your creativity?

Everything could be an inspiration! Comics and animations, which are very popular among Asia, was one of our inspirations of JumpFromPaper™. Taiwan is a place where people embrace diversified cultures. All of these are interactive and help shape up our design.

7. What are you working on right now, and what can we expect to see from you in the near future?

We hope to continuously create something that could bring surprises and laughs to people's lives. We are having our ideas flying around, and new styles, new lines of products...nothing is impossible. Before it gets done we'll simply keep a secret. :)

8. Where can we find and buy JumpFromPaper™ bags?

Besides of Taiwan, JumpFromPaper™ is available from our authorized resellers in the US, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and some countries in Europe. Customers in non-represented countries could find us in on JumpFromPaper™ official online shop (jumpfrompaper.com/shop).

Please visit jumpfrompaper.com for more information.

9. What advice can you give to young artist/designers?

At the early stage of JumpFromPaper™'s launch, many people, especially those who learned about JumpFromPaper™ online, are wondering "Is it a real bag?" Since many would question the functionality and reality, there were not that many orders either.

We then tried to employ many different ways to help people understand JumpFromPaper™ is real and functional, and JumpFromPaper™ started to seriously attract tremendous attention and preference. Now enormous inquiries are coming from other countries as well, including the US, UK, Italy, Brazil, Japan, etc.

We learned from this experience that it is very effective to communicate with consumers about the design concept. Not only do we have to create good designs, we also have to employ effective medium to help others understand what we want to bring to people.

While we're still too young to give advices, we'd like to say to designers that if you love design, do not give up, focus on creating good designs, trust yourself, and learn how to communicate with consumers, so that good designs you create will then generate real value.

BIG monkee love to Chay and Rika for the interview! To check out more from them, look at the links below.

JumpFromPaper™ website: jumpfrompaper.com

JumpFromPaper™ online shop: jumpfrompaper.com/shop

JumpFromPaper™ Facebook: www.facebook.com/JumpFromPaper

JumpFromPaper™ @US: jumpfrompaper.us

JumpFromPaper™ @Luxemburg: www.denicheuse.com/english/designers-marques/jumpfrompaper.html

Interview by Liesbeth Lambrou.