The IPLAC Creator of the Year Award is given to honor the creative achievements, primarily in the Chicago metropolitan area, that are eligible for patent, copyright, or trademark protection. This year, IPLAC is proud to recognize Felicia Ferrone as the winner of the 2022 IPLAC Creator of the Year Award, for her achievements in the area of patents and copyrights.
Felicia Ferrone’s Key Achievements
Felicia Ferrone is a world-renowned designer, educator, and founder of fferone. The brand, fferrone, and design studio were founded in 2010 in Chicago. She has since expanded globally due to overwhelming interest. She opened her European headquarters in Milan in 2018 to better serve the European, Middle East, and Asian markets. She is known for delivering exceptional designs that embrace European influences, minimalist aesthetics, mastery of proportion, and meticulously considered details that are the hallmarks of her designs. Through close collaborations with master artisans, each piece is handcrafted allowing for innovative use of materials and production techniques, underlying another fundamental attribute to her design philosophy and approach. She produces and distributes her own work under her brand, fferrone and also does commissioned work for clients, such as Audi, Boffi, and The Macallan among others. Clients include: Trussardi, Audi, Rimadesio, Bulthaup, Poliform, Molteni, Minotti, Peck, Flexform, Meridiani, Ernestomeda, Arclinea, Starbucks, Crate and Barrel, and Society Limonta.
Felicia Ferrone’s work has led to both design and utility patents, and garnered numerous awards. Her work has also received significant and widespread media coverage in the international press, movies/TV productions, including in “essen & trinken” (Jan. 2019), “W Magazine” (Dec. 2018), “Wall Street Journal (Dec. 2018), Wallpaper (Nov. & Dec. 2018), “House Beautiful” (Nov. 2018), “Telegraph Luxury” (No. 2017), “Elle Decoration” (July/Aug. 2017), and “Food & Wine” (Dec. 2016). Her glassware designs have been widely admired and have appeared in a number of movies and TV shows in recent years, including “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” “Alien: Covenant,” “Westworld,” “Stranger Things,” and “Oblivion.”
Felicia Ferrone was featured in Woman Made: Great Women Designers published by Phaidon, which is an immersive and timely celebration of 200 women product designers from the early twentieth century to the present day. She was also named as one of the top 50 designers in Chicago in 2014, 2016, and 2022. Her long list of awards include: receiving a University of Illinois at Chicago Dean’s Research Prize in 2016 and 2022, being awarded Best Collection at NY Now in New York in August 2014, being awarded best furniture collection at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in May 2014, band receiving a GOOD DESIGN Award in 2004. She is also internationally sought out by the design community, she was a Jury Member at The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity for Product Design. The Revolution collection stands out today as one of fferrone’s most iconic glassware designs. Its dual-sided functionality redefined the landscape of the table. Minimalist and original, the collection seems to defy gravity, the result of Felicia’s architectural lens. From there, Felicia has continued to experiment with innovative techniques together with master craftsmen, creating her signature style by inverting tradition with intricate interior detail and unexpected silhouettes. Her glassware, home accessories, and furniture designs have been widely exhibited and published internationally.
Felicia Ferrone’s Impact on the Local Community
Felicia Ferrone’s international namesake brand is based in Chicago, her city of birth. Felicia lives in Chicago and has contributed to the Chicago design community for many years. She continues to garner recognition both locally and internationally. In 2009, the Art Institute of Chicago added Felicia’s first award winning collection, “Revolution” Water/Wine and Liqueur glassware to its permanent collection for their innovativeness and more recently the Shift Table. Felicia continues to “pay it forward” to the next generation of designers through her academic efforts in Chicago. She is the Director of Graduate Studies in Industrial Design and a Clinical Associate Professor of Industrial Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), and previously a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for many years.
Highlights of Felicia Ferrone’s Inventions and Designs:
Felicia Ferrone invented an asymmetrical bottle that has both functional and aesthetic benefits. Functionally, the bottle design allows for closer packing of the bottles as compared to conventional wine bottles. Aesthetically, the bottle design is visually exquisite. These unique aspects of her designs have led to several patents, including a U.S. utility patent as well as two (2) U.S. design patents, and four (4) European registered community designs.
Additionally, the new bottles are a novel innovation in the bottle packaging industry. The bottle shape opens up new opportunities for visual brand communication. For example, no two brand labels would have to be the same again because there are many different ‘sides’ the of the bottle to which you apply a label (e.g., long, skinny labels down the straight wall of the bottle, a label on the ‘shoulder’ of the bottle, a label wrapped around the low few inches that are cylindrical).
Not only does the asymmetrical shape allow for new innovative visual brand communication, but the bottle design also allows for potential economic savings in terms of reducing packing space during transportation and storage of bottles, which also would greatly reduce carbon footprint from shipping given that it reduces the carton size by about half, thus enabling reduced space requirement in shipping and distribution.
Full list of patents held by Felicia Ferrone
U.S. Patent No. 10,059,481
U.S. Patent No. D807,183
U.S. Patent No. D761,109
European Registered Community Design No. 002514380-0001
European Registered Community Design No. 002514380-0002
European Registered Community Design No. 002514380-0003
European Registered Community Design No. 002514380-0004
Many of Felicia Ferrone’s elegant works and designs are eligible for copyright protection, even if she has not yet registered them with the Copyright Office.