An elegant concept and beautifully executed, this thesis project strips away everything but the essentials from the process of printing, proposing a simple solution to reduce visual clutter in your office.

Dubbed Stack, an aptly short title for such a minimal machine, the design represents a thesis solution by Mugi Yamamoto. Aside from its small size and refreshingly spare appearance, its approach also circumvents a classic shortfall of typical printers: the size of the paper tray.

Instead of reloading frequently, you simply set Stack on top of a pile of blank sheets of paper and let it work its own way down, itself a lovely process that also lets you know how far you are through the printing job at hand.

A few points of concern, though, from a practical standpoint: it is hard to say how well the printer would remain stable as it progresses, or whether shifts in weight along the way would cause jams. It is also not entirely clear whether power cords would pose an problem, or how high the finished paper stack could go before potentially spilling off the sides. Still, as a concept, it is lovely, and at least some of these issues could be corrected by introducing elements like guides that flip down to keep the stack aligned below, or higher supports above to stabilize finished sheets.