After working with us earlier this year for their invitations, Lenovo (one of the world’s largest computer vendors) invited Senior Artist Frank Ling back to design a fun NYC landmark out of paper.  They wanted something out of the ordinary for their VIP event with clients, and Frank was full of ideas.

The great thing about this project was that Lenovo was already familiar with our work, so they simply gave Frank a general direction and he took it from there.

In all the project was only in the design phase for about a week, and prodution took about a month to bring everything to life.

1. Brainstorming

From there Frank started thinking through some of the touchstones for New York City.  The goal was to find something both playful and unique.  There is of course the apple, but that was a bit too cliché, and something like the statue of liberty didn’t work across different cultures.  Then Frank has drawn to one of his personal hobbies –  vintage cars.

Using one of his favorite childhood vintage taxi toys from Candylab as inspiration, Frank landed on a playful vintage taxi as the model.  There was already an origami version he designed for convention earlier, but instead he landed on a papercraft style.

2. Client Notes & Approval

After building the taxi in blender, Frank incorporated the client note to change the windows to black and the project was off and running.  Below you can see the final render as well as the first prototype before the bumper was installed.

3. Paper Work

Once the basic shape was approved and refined, the hard work of making all the parts and assembling them began.  Frank and Jeff worked through several weeks, cutting, scoring, and gluing cardstock to finish everything.  In the end the playful model became a faithful image of the original render and was about 5 inches in length.

4. Delivery

For a project with as many delicate parts as this, Frank hand delivered all the models to the NYC event space.  The studio can easily pack up items for shipment, but in this case it really paid to be so close to the final destination.  In the end over 30 of the final taxis were brought to life and you can take a look at the final models below.