Play

Into the undefined

Nonspace means the place that has not yet been defined. That is an easy sentence to put on a values poster, and a hard one to live up to in a week full of deliverables.

So we made room for it. Play is an open surface where people here can build something with no goal, no budget and no client to answer to. Sometimes it becomes a tool we take straight into client work. Sometimes it becomes nothing. Both outcomes are valid.

We don't see play as a break from the work. We see it as the part of the work where we learn something new. Design gives form, code gives movement, curiosity gives direction.

The distance between an idea and a working prototype has never been shorter. That frees up time, not craft. Everything here was made by people at Nonspace who wanted to see what would happen if they tried.

The experiments

Below is what we have built so far. Some are finished tools we use in client projects. Some are sketches we are not done with. All of them are open to try, and the list grows whenever someone here is left with a question.

01 / Nonblob

Nonblob is a generator for organic shapes. You drag points, adjust softness and rotation, and get a form you can use directly in identity work, as a mask in layout, or as a starting point for motion.

It started as an internal need. We wanted shapes that felt drawn rather than generated, and we needed a lot of them quickly. Today it is a tool our designers reach for in early exploration, before anything is decided.

Try Nonblob

02 / Motion Mirror

Motion Mirror uses the camera on your machine as input. Move, and the surface moves with you. The graphics respond to motion in real time, with no controls and no instructions.

The experiment comes out of something we meet every time we work with exhibitions and installations: how do you make someone realise they can affect what they are looking at, without a sign explaining it? The answer is rarely in the interface. It is in the response.

Try Motion Mirror

03 / [Next experiment]

Placeholder showing the pattern from here on. Every experiment follows the same setup: name and number, who made it, two paragraphs on what it is and why it exists, and a link that lets people try it themselves.