THE PROBLEM
When I first started this all about five years ago it was just me. I was a graduate design student with a physics background and a passion for coffee. I noticed faculty and peers bringing French presses to their offices and to the studio and, more often than not, I noticed these press pots still had grounds mashed in the bottom of them for days. It was clear to me that people didn’t much like cleaning out their French presses, and to be honest I didn’t care for it either.
So I drew some sketches, doodles really, of an idea for making a coffee press without the mess, one that would keep grounds contained in a pod so they’d be easy to remove. I wound up spending my entire thesis year in the university machine shop fabricating the first prototypes.
THE DISCOVERY OF AN EXPERIENCE
After proving that this innovative new coffee maker was possible, I set out to create something that would show off not just how well the American Press worked but how good it could look.. I learned how to use CAD programs and CNC machinery to complete an entirely new prototype, one carefully crafted to capture the beauty of the American Press concept. I knew it looked great before even making coffee in it, but it wasn’t until I actually tried it out for the first time that I realized I not only had a concept that made great coffee and was easy to clean, but one that provided a visually unique brewing experience that captured attention from across the room.
As soon as I saw coffee brewing through the hand-polished walls of this second prototype I knew the American Press was about so much more than just being easy to clean, and that people might fall in love with the experience of seeing coffee brew in an American Press as much as they would fall in love with the coffee it made.