Clear Silicone

For this week’s Quirky brief, we’re going to do something different: rather than challenge you to think up a product in a particular category, we want you to use this material as a starting point and let your imagination run wild! As long as it’s a consumer product that doesn’t involve integrated software and could retail for under $150, we’ll consider it.

It was a tough decision, but we finally settled on a super innovative focus for our first materials-based brief:

Let’s make a product out of clear silicone.

As far as materials go, clear silicone is the best of both worlds: all the properties of silicone, with the transparency of glass. Other characteristics include:

- Non-toxic
- Microwave safe
- High heat resistance
- Impact resistance
- Good electrical insulation
- Can be made in various durometers from rigid to flexible

To kick off this project, we visited our friends at Material Connexion, a local materials library, to check out their collection and talk shop. We’ll be posting a video with our findings later today. Submissions are open until April 18th at 12 noon, and are completely, totally, 100% free!