Two design award winners from the same year — a gravity-operated salt and pepper set that seals itself when you put it down, and a storage jar that opens and pours in a single turn.
Two separate entries to a local design competition in 2015 — each winning an award in its own category. PS Salt & Pepper and Boris Storage Jars share a common design logic: let the mechanism emerge from the object's own geometry and motion, rather than adding mechanical parts to solve what physics or a single gesture can handle instead.
Both remained at concept stage, but the core ideas are fully resolved and production-ready in principle.
The name PS started as a small private joke: P.S. — the postscript added at the end of a letter. Here, it's the initials of Pepper and Salt, reversed — because the pepper almost always comes first. That reversal is the kind of detail that makes a product feel considered rather than generic.
Both products were built around the same core question: what's the simplest possible mechanism that solves the real problem? For PS, the real problem isn't dispensing — it's the open shaker left on a humid table, and the moisture that clumps the granules. For Boris, it's pouring coarse-grain ingredients with precision, without a lid getting in the way or a separate pouring step slowing the process down.
The best mechanism is the one already built into physics.
Idea
Salt and pepper shakers have two unsolved problems: they spill when knocked over, and they absorb moisture when left open. PS solves both with no moving parts beyond the granules themselves — gravity keeps the holes closed when the shaker sits upright, and gravity opens them when you invert it to dispense.
Boris addresses a different problem: coarse-grain ingredients need controlled pouring, not just access. A single 90-degree lid rotation opens the jar and simultaneously repositions the aperture to its optimal pouring angle — open and ready in one motion.
Form
PS's outer shell is stainless steel, the inner housing is plastic. The slot openings along the body serve a double purpose: they allow manual dispensing when preferred, and they reveal the colored inner plastic and the S and P markings that distinguish salt from pepper without labeling. The cylinder tapers at the base with a soft radius, and both units share the same silhouette so they read as a pair without being identical.
Boris follows the same cylindrical language in two sizes — large and small — with the same lid mechanism consistent across both. The size changes; the cap logic doesn't.
Function
PS operates without a single mechanical component beyond its own weight. Set it down — holes close, granules sealed from air and moisture. Pick it up, invert it — holes open, granules dispense freely. The slots along the body allow manual shaking as an alternative, while also making the interior color visible from the outside.
Boris's 90-degree lid rotation does two things in one movement: opens the jar and repositions the aperture to direct the pour precisely into a small area without waste or secondary adjustment. One motion. Open and ready to pour.
Differentiation
Most shakers solve the dispensing problem and leave the storage problem to the user. PS doesn't treat them as separate — the same design that dispenses also seals, without requiring the user to remember to close anything.
Boris differentiates by solving for a format most storage jars ignore: coarse-grain ingredients that need controlled, directed pouring — not just a lid that opens.
Impact
Two design awards, two categories, one competition in 2015. Both concepts remain production-ready — the mechanisms are simple enough to manufacture without specialized tooling, and the forms are resolved enough to go directly to production.
The real design challenge here wasn't form — it was trust. Mechanisms that rely on gravity or a single gesture only work if the user instinctively understands them without instruction. If the product requires explanation, the mechanism has already failed.
Getting PS to communicate its own logic through shape alone — so that picking it up and inverting it feels like the obvious thing to do — was the whole problem. The slots along the body were the solution: they make the interior visible, which makes the mechanism readable, which makes the behavior predictable before anyone touches it. Boris applied the same thinking: the 90-degree rotation had to feel like the natural next step after picking the jar up, not a feature to discover.
Two award-winning concepts, both fully resolved and ready for production — a gravity-powered salt and pepper set and a single-motion storage jar, each solving a problem the category had stopped thinking of as a problem.
The design and strategy are complete. Both concepts are ready to license today — get in touch, or let's bring them to market together.
