A custom DJ table for Mimm, a creative collective and retail space in Nottingham. Researched, modelled at 1:1, built, then tested in front of an actual club crowd, which is a nerve-wracking way to find out whether you got it right. I DJ, so I was designing for myself as much as for them.
Research. Mimm's look pulls from urban, underground, graphical and tribal references, but keeps everything clean and minimal. That shaped the brief early on. The table needed real graphic presence, while also being light enough for one person to shift and tidy enough to hide a nest of cables.
Those two things fight each other, and the practical one has to win. A table that looks incredible but takes three people to move at 2am is a table nobody uses twice.
Design & construction. To match Mimm's industrial edge I went boxy, in bare unfinished metal with the fixtures left on show, which suits a dark room. I looked at a lightbox early on as a way of carrying their branding. Sketches and 1:1 models sorted out size and feel before anything went near SolidWorks, including a removable top-plate so you can get at the kit and the cabling without taking the whole thing apart.
Sketching. Iterations on paper before anything got modelled. Proportions, how the legs met the body, a detachable laptop clip, contrasting trim on the outer edges, coloured inserts in the leg frames, and a parametric panel to carry Mimm's mark.
Maquettes. Then scale models, starting in corrugated card and moving to foam and greyboard once the proportions were close. The ladder-frame leg propped against them was an option I kept coming back to and eventually dropped. My own note on the drawings underneath reads "like this bold, angular leg, gives off a solid aesthetic", which is as good a reason as any.
Full size. Then the whole body in cardboard at full scale, which is the only way to find out whether the height works against real equipment and whether one person can actually shift it. Both were in the brief and neither is answerable from a scale model.
The selected design. Six views of the direction we went with, modelled up for Mimm to sign off before anything got cut.
Drawing for manufacture. Every part redrawn flat and exported as a DXF the machines could read. The body elevation, the leg profile, and the Mimm panel, each one a cutting file rather than a picture of a table.
Steel legs. Waterjet cut from 1.2mm mild sheet, then folded into closed frames so each leg is one continuous piece rather than a welded box. The Mimm mark came off the same sheet.
The body. 18mm MDF on the CNC, pockets routed out for the three equipment bays and the cable run, then biscuit-jointed and clamped up while the glue went off.
The finish. The splatter came from looking at where that pattern already lives. Speckled snowboard outerwear, the soles of a pair of Air Max, black terrazzo. All of it reads urban and slightly scruffy, which is what Mimm's space felt like.
Getting it onto the table was a matter of testing brushes. A stiff wooden scrubbing brush threw heavy blobs, a fine wire brush threw a much finer spray. Loading the bristles from a tray and flicking them with a thumb gave the most control over where it landed.
I ran samples on painted board until the density looked right, then did the table itself. Too sparse and it reads as a mistake. Too heavy and it stops being a splatter and starts being a pattern.
Paint. Base coat sprayed in the booth, left to go off, then the splatter thrown over the top by hand. The legs were powder-coated separately, on the assumption they would get kicked.
Assembly. Legs bolted on, top plate dropped into place, and the whole thing wheeled out to be photographed before it went anywhere near a club.
Testing. The 1:1 models existed to check height and reach against real equipment before anything was cut. The club night was the test that counted. Kit on top, crowd in front, no chance to quietly fix anything. Being a DJ meant I knew what to watch for: whether the height still works when you've been stood at it for two hours, and whether the cabling stays put once people start moving around.
Plywood adaptation. I wanted the design to reach further than one club, so I worked up a plywood version. Same equipment housing, same removable top-plate and logo block, but the legs redrawn for plywood. I nested the leg profile so twelve cut-outs tessellate into a single 1220×2440mm sheet, which gets you six full sets of legs per board. Getting that up from four felt like a bigger victory than it probably was.
The finished piece. Shot in the studio once everything was assembled and the paint had properly cured. The speckle reads as one surface from across a room and breaks into individual flecks up close, which is exactly the trick I was after. The record rack bolts on at one end, the logo block sits proud of the front, and the equipment wells drop the decks flush into the top.
