Product design studio
A concept asks whether a thing could exist. The answer gets built.
When a drawing and a part disagree, the part wins. Go to the bench, cut it, and let the material answer.
Every decision has been held in the hand before it was signed off.
Shown when it is made.
Shown when it is built.
Shown when it is right.
Product design studio, Graz
I learned making before I learned designing, so I design with making in mind.
NOT A CONCEPT is the product design practice of Clemens Rath. My training started at the bench as a carpenter at HTBLA Hallstatt, before industrial design and a master's in eco-innovative product design at FH Joanneum.
In between came Box Clever in San Francisco and six months in Snøhetta's product design team in Oslo. The bench stayed.
Nothing leaves the studio that cannot be built.
Constraints are the brief from day one, not a problem found at the end.
Work has to survive contact with the world.
A product that is not good enough does not earn the right to exist.
Because the studio is built around a question rather than a category, whether a thing can be made well and still be worth making, it can move from one kind of object to the next without changing what it is.
A concept can be almost right and still exist. A product can't.
Designed and engineered in Graz.
Information according to § 5 ECG and § 25 MedienG
Clemens Rath
NOT A CONCEPT
Urgental 1
8600 Bruck an der Mur
Austria
Product design and product development.
Information about the studio and its work.
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Clemens Rath, NOT A CONCEPT, Urgental 1, 8600 Bruck an der Mur, Austria.
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Last updated October 2026.
Files shared in the reels
The small calibration die from the business card reel. Print both halves, press a sheet of paper between them and see how your stock takes an emboss before you commit to a full die.
Emboss calibration die DownloadTwo parts, male and female, modelled in millimetres and made for printing with a 0.4 mm nozzle. Free for personal use. Please do not resell the file.
Emboss notes DownloadOne page on what I learned making the blind embossed cards: paper, depth, geometry, pressing and printing the molds. Read it before you press.
More files follow with the next reels on @notaconcept.studio.