Bouba? Kiki? Oddjects!

Quick Quiz: One of the shapes below is called BOUBA and the other is called KIKI. Even though they’re both nonsense words, not from any particular language, can you guess which name belongs to which shape?

If you’re like most people – across cultures, languages and ages – you’ll likely have called the soft, friendly shape on the left BOUBA, and the sharp spikey one on the right, KIKI.

This universal association of sounds and shapes is called the BOUBA/KIKI Effect, and I don’t know about you, but it feels like there’s waaaaay too much KIKI energy in the news lately.

But don’t worry, we’ve taken steps to balance things out by adding more BOUBA energy to the world: We’ve called our Oddjects print back into service!

We’ve even supersized those yummy Bouba shapes on table runners!  (I mean, excuse me, but are these cute blobby shapes and colours not the absolute polar opposite of a Tesla Cybertruck?)

PS: Who remembers the original Oddjects? It all started 10 years ago in a ceramics class in 2015… Read more