You probably know Evernote for its organizational app, but now the company is getting into a new product type: furniture. The company recently partnered with Pfeiffer to create a new line of desk products with the goal of organizing the modern desktop. Many of the new products are making their debut this week at Evernote’s annual conference, EC4.
“Our approach to our physical products doesn’t stray far from the original vision that drives our app development,” says Jeff Zwerner, vice president of design at Evernote. “As a company, we are building a workspace that lets you accomplish your life’s work whether you work as an individual or are part of a team in a larger organization.”
This year’s furniture additions to the “ Evernote Market ” follow the launch of several other Evernote-branded physical goods released last year, including a line of Post-It notes and a stylus for the iPad.
Related: Notes Scattered Everywhere? Declutter With This Tool.
“Working with physical materials allows us to exploit the tactile properties of texture and touch in ways we are unable to in the digital domain,” Zwerner says. “The result to the consumer is improved productivity and enjoyment of the work required to accomplish their goals as they switch modes from physical and digital work modes.”
When designing the products, designer Eric Pfieffer says he thought a lot about problems that occur on our desktops and how best to solve them.
“We tried to construct these wood products in a way that would bring a lot of function to the desktop,” he says. The products are meant to be not only functional, but also look like something you’ll want to show off.
The laptop stand, for example, has an extra compartment to hold your phone, keys or other stray desk items. One of the iPad stands has a space specifically for that Evernote-branded Adonit stylus that launched last year.
Related: 13 Business Productivity Apps for the Real-World Entrepreneur
Some of the ideas behind the products came from Evernote’s own office expansion. Zwerner says that they noticed everyone had a good deal of miscellaneous clutter on their work surfaces with no real place to put it. Add to that laptop cables, monitors and tablets, and you have a real mess on your hands.
“Between our facilities and IT teams, we tried to purchase products to manage the aesthetics and the functional issues this working style creates and couldn’t find any universal solutions,” he says. “We saw an opportunity there and had a point of view on what a solution required in terms of both function and form. Knowing what the explicit solutions needed to solve for, we wanted the design to be elegant and emotive.”
You can check out the fruits of that collaboration now in the Evernote Market.
Related: The Secrets of the World's Most Successful Mobile Apps