Right here’s a riddle: What do you get once you meld twenty first Century expertise with 18th Century creativity?
You get Victoria’s Puzzle Lab, in fact. Positioned at 1322 Authorities St., the Puzzle Lab manufactures and sells heirloom-quality wood jigsaw puzzles that includes the creations of practically 50 Canadian artists.
Owned and operated by enterprise and life companions Tinka Robev and Andrew Azzopardi, the Puzzle Lab prints a replica of a particular portray on its state-of-the-art UV printer after which adheres it to a 1/4” sheet of Spanish Poplar plywood, sourced from bushes grown sustainably on plantations.
The second step, utilizing a proprietary algorithm designed by Azzopardi (the agency’s self-described Mad Scientist), is to slice the artwork into advanced items utilizing a laser cutter. The outcomes are puzzles starting from 100 to 500 items, with problem ranges listed as “Simple Peasy” to “Not Enjoyable” for its extra sophisticated creations.
“Andrew and I’ve mainly been in enterprise collectively since we met, transferring to Victoria in 2014,” Robev defined. “However for the primary six or seven years we operated a design enterprise, doing set up artwork like stage designs, commerce present cubicles and issues like that. We had been constructing bodily design objects along with the extra common graphic design jobs like branding, bundle design and web site design.”
However the world pandemic, and the adjustments in interpersonal interactions it created noticed a lot of the pair’s workload immediately evaporate, lowering a lot of their efforts to web site design solely – which didn’t present Azzopardi with the hand’s on artistic satisfaction he loved.
“Andrew was getting antsy on the lack of bodily tasks, however sooner or later noticed an commercial for some Russian-made wood jigsaw puzzles. He mentioned ‘wait a minute, we’ve got a laser cutter, we will in all probability make this higher’ – so we gave ourselves six weeks to prototype, determine branding and to place a product on the market. That’s the place the Puzzle Lab got here from,” she mentioned.
Initially launched as an internet enterprise in November 2020, the Puzzle Lab didn’t open its storefront location till April 2022. Utilizing a sequence of algorithms that mimics the expansion patterns of coral reefs offers the puzzles with a pure, nearly natural feeling, enhanced by the sleek laser-cut end of the wood items.
Whereas the primary formal jigsaw puzzles are believed to have been marketed in England through the 1760s, they bear little resemblance to the attractive, advanced Puzzle Lab creations.
“Andrew is single-handedly chargeable for driving all of our prospects loopy along with his scrumptious and diabolical lower patterns,” Robev joked.
Basically promoting all the things it produces, for the long run the Puzzle Lab hopes to increase its productiveness by including further laser cutters, introducing extra designs, and even the opportunity of including different venues.
“Development isn’t all the things for us. I would like us to be referred to as a healthful native enterprise, placing artists on a pedestal and producing a product that could possibly be a part of your loved ones for generations – good individuals doing good enterprise,” she mentioned.
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