This past year, Zazzy went from being a maker of customizable charm bracelets to a site for designing a broad array of custom, 3D printed jewelry. Offering a variety of pieces, including statement necklaces and tasteful earrings, Zazzy allows users to draw their own images and write their own text to be 3D printed in nylon, silver, or plated brass and steel. Though they are one of a few places to turn to in order to purchase custom, 3D printed goods, they’re latest partnership shows the breadth that Zazzy is and may be capable of. By partnering with The Noun Project, Zazzy now gives customers the opportunity to choose from over 65,000 icons with which to create 3D printed cufflinks.
The Noun Project is a huge catalog of small symbols, designed by and meant to be understood by just about anyone around the world. Browsing through the Project’s site, you’ll find almost anything you can imagine. As an example, I typed in the word “butt” and found, not just one, but twelve icons that represented the word in some way, including a series of stick figures symbolizing the infamous human centipede. For a more meaningful example, the site has quite a few icons to represent “climate change” and even more to represent “peace”.
With Zazzy’s new product, Project Cufflinks, users now have access to all of these symbols, via an in-site search feature, to 3D print onto a pair of custom cufflinks. One can choose one of The Noun Project’s icons, the shape of their cufflinks, and the material that their printed in – Gold Plated Brass, Sterling Silver Stainless Steel, Gold Plated Shiny Steel, and Matte Black Steel – for prices starting at €50.00. A percentage of the profits go towards the designers of the original Noun Project symbols. And, if you can’t find the symbol you’re looking for, you can request it from Zazzy. Luckily, they’ve got a geodesic dome, so I don’t need to request one made, but I would like a set of cufflinks with Buckminster Fuller on them!
CEO of Zazzy, Gert-Jan Spriensma, said of the Dutch company’s first design partnership, “We wanted to create really cool cufflinks that anyone could enjoy creating and tapping the Noun Project’s library felt like a natural move for us. They aim to simplify communication, we aim to simplify creativity and we both do this through user-generated design, ideas and input. The cufflinks, which are our first foray into jewelry specifically for men, are a great way of making use of The Noun Project’s fun and original designs.”
Edward Boatman, co-founder of the Noun Project, added, “We are very impressed with the creativity behind these unique pieces of jewelry, and love seeing our creator’s iconic interpretations live in 3-D.”
By quickly building up a massive library of images to inscribe on a 3D printed product, Zazzy’s new partnership is an ingenious way to show off the customization made possible by 3D printing. I can only imagine what other ideas the company has up it’s sleeve.
