The basic idea of the Moodboard is simple … a plain wood board that is mounted on the wall and has a series of holes in either a single line or in two parallel lines and with several different styles of wooden peg that can be arranged, as the buyer wants, to store and to display things like keys or glasses but the pegs are more than strong enough to take coats and even much heavier things … Nikki van Roon told me that he has a guitar and a snowboard hanging from Moodboards.

There are different types of wooden peg of different lengths and a very neat key holder. With a choice of oiled oak or smoked oak for the board itself and, with the same options of light or smoked wood for the pegs, it means quite a few possible permutations, to give the buyer an interesting number of options.

More and more designers are trying to develop and extend options for customers to personalise what they buy. We discussed this at Northmodern and agreed that it’s difficult to get the balance right. Along with trying to give some of the background story for a company or for a product, personalisation can give the customer what is now, I think, called emotional ownership - an odd phrase that must have been thought up by a marketing man rather than a designer - but the idea itself is fine. However, it is necessary to limit options in order to manage expectations and prevent people from selecting a combination that does not work well or putting together a combination which they tire of quickly which obviously they would blame on the designer… that’s the down side of ‘consumer choice’ … the customer rarely chooses to accept the blame. And of course too many options can create problems for manufacturing and with packaging.

There is an engineered character to the design. Not just in the quality of finish but also the clean precision of the laser-cut Perspex and the fixing bolts are matt black, tightened with an allen key, and they project forward of the board to hold the perspex and it is that gap that supports the pegs and in a very simple way stops them from dropping out or being pulled downwards by the weight of whatever is hung from the peg.

A bold chamfer undercutting the edge of the board itself makes it look thinner but also has the effect of making the board appear to stand slightly forward of the wall because of a line of shadow. Very clever.

Finally, perhaps the most important feature … a metal back plate to the board and small strong magnets in each peg hold them firmly in place and if you swap them around they are almost sucked back into their sockets in a very satisfying way and with a nice clunk sound as well. What’s not to like?

ROON & RAHN