When 3Doodler was first approached by MoMA to be featured in their Design Store window displays in New York City, the whole team was thrilled. But everyone soon found out how much work goes into a window display—especially one as involved as this!

Here’s a closer look at the process of designing, building, and installing the display, along with spotlight on the incredible Doodles that featured in it.

Creating a Display

The 3Doodler team only had 60 days to dream up a concept, get the display built, and install everything at both the 53rd Street and Soho MoMA Design Stores. The aim was to showcase the accessibility, simplicity and creative potential of the 3Doodler.

The team went through several rounds of late-night brainstorming, finally settling on a final rough sketch before racing to get everything built in time. The design features a wave that goes across the window and four uses for the 3Doodler: Build, Design, Teach, and Play. The wave itself is meant to represent extruded plastic, while the lines in the back are giant strands of filament.

To build the display, 3Doodler joined forces with Chad Lynch and his team at Heywood Productions in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

The waves were made from laminated wood and coated with several layers of shiny white plastic, while the background tubes were painted PVC pipes. The giant 3Doodler tip was made using foam and wood, and then coated with resin and paint.

Once the pieces were built, installing everything turned out to be the easiest part. The team converged on the MoMA Design Store windows, and put on quite a show for passersby with all the miming, pointing, and photo snapping that it took to get things just right.

But the final result was well worth the effort.

Hero Doodle: Metamorphosis Lamp

The window display featured several Hero Doodles to showcase the diverse uses and creative scope of the 3Doodler. The first was the Metamorphosis Lamp by Broolyn-based artist Rachel Goldsmith.

“My artwork is inspired by two sets of contrasts,” Rachel explains. “In my environment, the contrast is between the man-made and nature; and in materials, the contrast is between the control I have over the media and how the media naturally interacts. This inspiration manifests itself in my final pieces through contrasts in color, in line, shape and form, and in textures.”

Rachel explains that she is constantly reacting to how the plastic lands on the canvas, often not in the way that she originally intended: “I definitely have some control over the material, for example I choose the colors, but I certainly do not have total control. It’s almost like every other move has to be a ‘beautiful oops.'” This is why she refers to what she creates as “painting with plastic”, because for Rachel, it is much less like drawing or Doodling and much more like painting. It’s about pushing an artistic piece until she has a complete composition that has both balance and movement.

Hero Doodle: The Boat

Measuring two feet long and about 1.5 feet high, this was certainly an epic achievement and a labor of love by 3Doodler’s own co-founder Daniel Cowen.

Dan began by Doodling the deck of the boat flat on a large piece of paper to get the size and shape right. He then propped up up deck at the right height and Doodled the ribbed hull downwards to create a frame. “I used the existing skeleton to effectively weave a mesh surface,” Dan explains, “and then used that surface as a base to create a thick stable top layer.”

Then followed the complex process of adding the masts and finer details for the water and waves. “I lined up plastic tubes on the table top to act as rollers,” says Dan, “and proceeded to drape melted plastic over them to form the shape of the wave.”

For final details, Dan added a dolphin, starfish, anchor and life saver ring. “I had to Doodle the rope very slowly in mid-air to get that ‘cast out to sea’ look,” he says.

Hero Doodle: Geometric Lampshade

“When I found out we were going to take over the windows at the Museum of Modern Art I wanted to do something new with the 3Doodler that would utilize it in a completely different way,” says 3Doodler’s own Creative Director Faraz Warsi.

“We always tell people you can use the 3Doodler to decorate your house or office,” Faraz says. “Taking inspiration from our new design intern’s passion for origami I wanted to build a lampshade made completely out of triangles.”

Faraz decided to use 3Doodler’s new transparent Clearly line of PLA filament to showcase the range. He began by designing a simple stencil with 12 triangles in eight different PLA colors—two clear colors and six lighter colors from the regular PLA line.

“Once we had all our triangles on the table we tried to figure out the best way to piece it all together,” Faraz says. “The possibilities were endless, with different color combinations, patterns, and angles to create depth.” Faraz ultimately decided to go with a classic cylindrical shape, with 16 triangles in each row.