In November 2025, our client inquires a door gift customization for raising awareness of ocean protection in the East Malaysia-Semporna, Sabah. They seek a proposal on creating a lookalike building of coastal village as one of the elements in the door gift design to meet the theme of the event. Instead of purchasing a general house, we show them a building of 3D printing prototype. The client adopted this proposal and let us duplicate 50 pieces of ocean coasters.
The 3D printing building comes with four roofing colours – blue, red, milky cream. We clustered these building in the coastal area to replicate the village view, a real dense houses arrangement is the symbolism of the mutual support of the villager. We remained the tradition of gable roof as it is the speaks the wisdom of ancestor. The gable roof facilitates rainwater drainage during heavy downpours and provides shade from the outdoor sunlight.
For the consideration of aesthetic, we also using 3D printing technology to mould a smaller perahu nelayan (fisherman boat) to match the proportion of the houses. It was placed alongside of the coastal line like a fisherman park their boat near to the house. We noticed this similar scene after visiting several fisherman village in Malaysia, the boat is a significant vehicle to reflects the real life of the fisherman. It beyond the means of livelihood, it playing a role of companion for the life of fisherman.
Although the placement of the miniatures and the coastal line remains the same across all 50 ocean coasters, each piece carries its own subtle variation – wave making. Due to the limited surface area of the coaster, a high level of precision is required when controlling the thickness of the white resin pigment. Excessively thick lines may cause the wave patterns to spread across the entire surface, resulting in the disappearance of the sea area and creating an awkward visual effect. Each wave pattern is entirely unique that determine by resin chemical reaction and the surrounding temperature.
We leave blank on the sea part and just stick a logo transfer sticker on sea part before pouring the resin to meet the client’s request – keep the design simple. The purpose of this step is to seal the sticker with resin to extend the lifespan of the sticker. For the consideration visual experience, we decided to print a transparent logo sticker, the fusion of the sticker and the sea creates a coherence. We always consider the functionality and aesthetic to meet the design outcome as visual comfort is a key factor of design as it will determines the usage rate of gift receiver.
We also put effort on packaging part to ensure receiver feel the warmth delivered by our client. The coaster was wrapped by the tissue paper and seal with the logo transparent sticker. It solved the excessive wastage of the logo sticker printing when applying to others purpose. Besides, we attached a featured postcard on top of the tissue paper, we picked the particular postcard design that looks similar to the sunset of the village to fit the theme of the whole design.
This project took approximately 2 weeks to complete from the scratch, encompassing communication with outsourced partners as well as the in-house production process. It marked a breakthrough for our company, as we adopted custom 3D-printed miniatures instead of existing ready-made models, we are grateful of this commission work as we discovered the new border of the designing scope. The most rewarding moment was seeing the client unveil the box with a beaming smile.
Video Reference Link:
1. Client's Unboxing Reaction
2. Discover Our Packaging
