As a design team known for its scientific and technological product design, LEAPX made a different attempt on the occasion of its fifth anniversary. This time we designed a very inconspicuous simple object-a tissue box.

In order to decorate LEAPX's office environment, we have bought several tissue boxes, many of which are more expensive brands or the handwriting of home masters (such as those of Naoto Asawa). Their shape and texture are quite good, but their use experience is very poor:
The paper towel will fall back into the paper towel box from time to time. It is very troublesome to pick out the paper towel with your fingers;
The weight is not enough, and the tissue box will be drawn up every time the tissue is drawn, which is only rattling and irritating;
When replacing the paper, you need to open the bottom cover, which is slightly cumbersome.

Accordingly, we think a good tissue box should be like this:
It can draw paper smoothly with one hand, and the tissue box will not move and will not make abnormal noise.
The tissue does not fall back into the tissue box.
Easy to change paper towels
· Simple and beautiful, can be integrated into the office/home environment

We didn't find such a tissue box on the market, so we decided to design one by ourselves. After careful design and repeated polishing, we finally made their own satisfactory results: yoyo tissue box (YOYO).

First of all, in order to solve the biggest pain point of the paper towel falling back into the box, we set up the paper towel box. This is the simplest and most direct way to solve this problem, and it also brings two additional benefits:
The erected tissue box occupies a smaller desktop area;
At the same time, the direction of extracting paper towels faces the user, making the paper extraction experience smoother.

The paper towel can still be easily extracted at the end, and there will be no problem that the paper towel falls back to the paper towel box and is difficult to extract when the traditional paper towel box is used.

The morphological exploration on the sketch also tried the direction of the upper opening and the lower counterweight base.

This form also brings a new problem: the erected tissue box is easy to move forward or even dump when drawing paper. After trying and exploring various methods, we finally adopted 4 methods to solve this problem:

· Tilt the box back and move the center of gravity back to resist the forward tilting moment generated during paper extraction;
Along with this, the paper extraction angle is also tilted upward to reduce the forward torque generated by paper extraction;
The box body is made of thicker ceramic, which greatly increases the weight and stability;
The bottom of the box is equipped with a silicone anti-slip sticker.

In a more rigorous physical language, the adjusted design reduces the force arm r1 for drawing paper, increases the weight G, and increases the force arm r2 for gravity, which increases the stability of the tissue box in a multi-pronged manner.

This is the torque analysis diagram of the paper box pouring forward. It should not be difficult for students with some physical knowledge background to understand.

These designs allow Yoyo to stand firmly on the desktop, and users can easily and confidently extract paper towels with one hand.

In order to simplify the process of changing paper, we designed an inclined opening at the bottom. After putting the paper in, we can rotate it slightly to jam the paper towel to prevent it from falling. In this way, the whole product is integrally formed, the structure is simple, and all functions of the tissue box can be well completed without an additional cover.

The paper changing process of the long tissue box is simpler and faster than the traditional open lid type.

The shape of the tissue box is simple and seems to be designed in one day, but it is actually the result of repeated adjustments and polishing in the span of more than half a year by combining traditional ceramic handicrafts and modern industrial design. In order to do a good job in the design of ceramic products, the designer went to Jingdezhen to learn the creation of ceramic handicrafts from scratch, and made the first generations of prototypes of Youyou tissue boxes by hand.

The prototype iteration of the long tissue box created by hand in the early stage is also a process of learning ceramic handicrafts.

The author used sandpaper to polish the plain blank of the first version of the tissue box, ready to be fired into porcelain.

Use a scraper and a grinding tool to trim the curved ceramic blank, and cut out and grind the front opening by the scraper.

After glazing and porcelain firing, three hand-made final editions were brought back from Jingdezhen to Shenzhen to test the effects of different clay, glaze, and opening shapes. Finally, we chose the simplest and most durable design on the right to enter the next step.

We use the hand-made tissue box to obtain a 3D point cloud model through laser scanning, which is used as a reference for model reconstruction in 3D software to optimize and improve the surface modeling of the tissue box.

The left side of these two pictures is the model scanned by hand, and the right side is the model reconstructed in 3D software.

Next, we 3D print the model in real size to review the physical look and feel and use experience, and then go back to optimize and correct the model based on feedback. This process is repeated many times.

Check the surface quality with the zebra tool in the software to ensure the continuity and smoothness of the final surface.


After more than a dozen versions of the design iteration by hand and 3D printing, we finally got a satisfactory result. Its function and shape are integrated, simple and elegant, and can be integrated into various environments. As a partial home product, we hope that tissue box not only provides pure rational function coldly, but also integrates some sensibility and reiki into its organic curved body, and provides enough space for interpretation and imagination.

For you, it may be gentle and peaceful, clever and lovely, or leisurely; it has the poetic flavor of looking up at the moon, and the rebellion of raising your head and chest. Of course, it can also be just a simple and easy-to-use tissue box.

Looking back at this design process, it is found to be similar to the design process of the most demanding industry: automobiles. Car styling is also a staggered fusion between sketches, clay models, and 3D modeling to get the best look. In the process of directly shaping the clay by hand, I also got the feeling that computer modeling does not have: people's binocular stereo vision and touch are fully mobilized, and they have very intuitive and perceptual perception of the shape and shape. The adjustment of it can also get physical feedback immediately, so that the creator and the created objects can establish a more direct and multi-dimensional connection.

(Through manual shaping, Yoyo tissue box also inadvertently acquired a small feature. Its touch feel is very good, and it is quite decompressed after touching. You are welcome to try it when you have the chance :)

Modeling on a computer, on the other hand, only the flat vision provided by the screen, without stereo vision and tactile feedback. Many modern industrial designers only design in front of computers, which is a limited and unsound way of working.

It is still necessary to make more physical products, watch them with your own eyes, touch them with your own hands, test the functions, and then go back to the computer for iterative design, so as to design good physical products instead of just staying on dazzling but superficial renderings. This is also the way LEAPX has always insisted on working. Although it costs money and time, these improvements are worth it when it comes to the final product.

After opening many test molds, playing many rounds of samples, and trying a variety of colors and surface processes, we got the final satisfactory mass production version.

We finally mixed a matte glazed ivory white ceramic as the main material, so that the yo tissue box is low-key and gentle, versatile and durable. However, matte glaze is easier to wash mud, mold and glaze defects appear, so the production of good products is also more difficult.

We also adjusted a semi-high pea green color, fresh and bright without losing elegance.

The matte white ceramic surface has a fine texture similar to the paper surface, which can be painted directly on it with colored pencils, crayons or markers, and users can play it as they please.



The shape of the tissue box is simple and seems to be designed in one day, but it is actually the result of repeated adjustments and polishing in the span of more than half a year by combining traditional ceramic handicrafts and modern industrial design. In order to do a good job in the design of ceramic products, the designer went to Jingdezhen to learn the creation of ceramic handicrafts from scratch, and made the first generations of prototypes of Youyou tissue boxes by hand.

Taking environmental sustainability as the starting point, we tried to design a set of corrugated liner structure on packaging, instead of traditional foam to provide ceramic support and protection.

In order to allow users to use the tissue box directly when they receive it, we also placed paper towels in the tissue box in advance. The surprise when opening the product is progressive layer by layer. The product information card wraps the paper towel, which is convenient for the user to pull it out. After opening the paper towel package, it is put into the box for use.

Welcome card pulled out of tissue box

Yoyo (YOYO) is the simplest product designed by LEAPX so far, but it has been refined and polished by us many times, condensing our ideas and thinking about design and life. I hope it can bring a touch of calmness and warmth to everyone's busy life.

Over the past six months, leisurely tissue boxes have been filled with LEAPX's desktop (all the product pictures in this article were taken by ourselves in LEAPX's studio). we have experienced it very well and have been well received by many friends.

I accidentally found that Yoyo can also be used as an earphone holder on the desk.

We hope that more people can enjoy the high-quality experience of YOYO tissue box, but as a design team, we want to focus on the design and the product itself, and do not want to be distracted by marketing and sales. Therefore, we now want to find a brand that pays attention to design and values to bring YOYO to the market. We can provide design copyright and auxiliary mass production import, as well as direct supply. Interested brands are welcome to contact us (contact information is at the end of the article). If you know the right brand, please also help forward the recommendation, thank you very much.

Careful friends should notice the logo of LEAPX HomeWork in some photos, which is our newly established design series.

In our daily life and work, we find that in the field of home (Home) and office (Work), there are good-looking products and easy-to-use products, but the products that combine the two are relatively scarce, and even blank in some categories. Can't find a product that can satisfy us.

Therefore, if we have time in our main business, we will do some designs by ourselves, bring our design concepts and thinking into these categories, and make products that we are satisfied. HomeWork, the combination of the two words means homework, which is in line with our beginner's mentality to learn and create in new fields, and also coincides with the "homework" we do outside the main business of scientific and technological products ".

While our previous designs have been known for their rationality and restraint, at LEAPX HomeWork this collection will reveal some of our emotional and personal side. In the near future, we will also release HomeWork next work: readers, please look forward to it.