Creativity is boundless and ideally, so should the forms for expressing it. For the last nine months, we here at Tabblo have constrained ourselves to products that we could build in a factory and ship directly to you. We’ve done this both because there is an impressive set of items to offer through that channel (books, posters, auto-addressed cards, etc.), and because that is the main way in which we make money.

That said, we’ve always thought of the home printer as a very intriguing and appealing option— a sort of mini-Tabblo factory in your home. The process of printing your creations brings with it the reward of immediacy, which after all, is a key ingredient to the success of the web.

We thought about doing posters from home but decided that most home printers were too small and would reduce the overall product impact. Ditto for all of the other products we already had that we could have launched home versions of— they simply had better big siblings from inside the Tabblo factory.

And then it hit us— what if the first product we launched for home printing was something that we couldn’t easily make or ship from within our factory? What if we took advantage of all of the great things about printing from home (immediacy, cheap [free] labor, and no shipping costs or hassles) but kept the rest of the product design and creation experience at the same level as the rest of the products on the site?

Without further ado, say hello to the Tabblo PhotoCube:

Anyone who grew up in the 1970s will remember the rage that were the lucite photo cubes that you could stuff pictures into— I must have had 20 of them on the headboard of my bed. Consider the PhotoCube, a modern-day upgrade: more eco-friendly, more immediate, and ultimately more disposable. Or consider it an evolution on the photo frame.

Now for the facts: anyone can make one of these as long as you have any kind of printer (laser, inkjet, dot-matrix), any type of paper (photo, plain, card), and a pair of scissors, no tape or glue needed. It’s really easy.

So go ahead, make one or a dozen. And when you’re done, make a tabblo and send it our way— as always, we’re looking forward to seeing what you’ll do with the newest member of the Tabblo product family.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 at 8:14 pm and is filed under product news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.