Sumitomo 3M has created a special website for creating fashion items online, controlled by the volume of your voice. The “Scotch Summer Holidays Family Kousaku Paper Fashion Kids” (or just Scotch Kousaku — “Scotch handicrafts”) allows users to design their own clothing using the internal mic in their computer and voice recognition. By printing the design out, budding fashionistas can then assemble the pieces together using scissors or paper cutters.
Scotch Kousaku is live now and is available until August 31st, making it a cool activity for parents to give kids to do at home while they are off school.
The Scotch brand has been doing these kinds of online campaigns locally for kids and parents every summer since 2012 and 2014’s one is built around the idea of turning children into young designers.
The site is only in Japanese but is fairly easy to navigate. 3M provides you with ten wallpaper designs — a few basic clothes (t-shirts, dresses etc) and accessories (bags, hats) that are plain to get you started. You then supply the colors and patterns by selecting certain options — and shouting! The colors then respond to the volume and tone of your voice. For example, the more noise you make the more various multicolored leaves, splashes, circles and other patterns will appear.
Since kids are well-known for being loud, this is the perfect way to vent their vocal and creative skills.
Here is one we tried making… All right, we’re not natural fashion designers! Clearly we aren’t loud enough.
Here are some examples that 3M have put on the website to give you inspiration. They are downloadable as PDFs.
The clothes come in three sizes: Small (100-110cm), medium (110-120cm) and large (120-130cm).
Sumitomo 3M likes to do these kinds of campaigns to liven up the potentially mundane world of adhesive tape and Post-its. A few years ago they even had a very funky pop-up store in Omotesando that was more like an arts and crafts outlet than a shop to buy stationery.
There are no details available at present but the Scotch Kousaku website also promises a bricks-and-mortar store from late August where kids can try their hand at designing clothes.
For really releasing the need to shout, though, we recommend the Shouting Vase!
