Each snowflakes gets its unqiue form by the elements of chance, temperature and the route from the cloud to the ground. Physicist and snow researcher Ukichiro Nakaya gave snowflakes the more poetic name of “Letters from the sky” because like a letter, every snowflake is unique.
Peter Dahmen is this year’s designer of the Iggesund Paperboard Christmas greeting card. He visited the Swedish town on a snowy day in November to get inspiration for his design. Peter Dahmen, who is known for his brilliant paper engineering and mathematical pop-up designs, decided to make a unique Christmas decoration instead of a pop-up card. Not just a unique design, but also a design that would make every card unique, like real snowflakes…
44.000 unique snowflakes
This snowflake card, that also functions as a decoration, is formed by a hexagonal frame of seven different snowflakes and a folded base plate of metallic cardboard. The laser cut hexagonal frame is very detailed and folds out with ease. Both sides of the snowflakes are printed with cyan and blue colors. One side contains glossy diamonds and the other metallic details that give every snowflake its unique identity. By folding all seven snowflakes around the base plate, you can create up to 44.000 unique snowflakes. The overlapping cut-outs create a different snowflakes every time you use a different order or combination. And that’s not all. This decoration can be folded into the “standing position” to display it wherever you want or you can attach a ribbon to hang it up.
Peter Dahmen about this project:
“When I received the proposal from Iggesund, to create this year’s greeting card, I was very happy – but at the same time, I felt that this was going to be a very challenging project, because I knew the wonderful designs that other designers had created for Iggesund in the years before. For this project I could not create a pop-up card, because Iggesund asked me to design something that can be assembled very quick – rather within seconds than minutes. So I came up wit the idea of a foldable decoration. I knew from the start, that this design would provide many different variations. I estimated, that there would be some dozen combinations possible. But when I started to calculate the actual number of variations, I was very surprised to see that you can create thousands of different images of snowflakes. 44716, to be exact.”
This Christmas and winter decoration by Peter Dahmen is more then just a Christmas Card. It’s also a gift that lets you puzzle and discover the most beautiful patterns and shapes. It’s a kaleidoscope of paper and colors that is easy to build, even though it looks a bit complicated.
More information about this Christmas Decoration and where to get it: iggesund.com
