Toy camera design prints outlines of your photos on thermal paper for you to fill colour

While I am very much a digital girl, there are still some things that I enjoy the analog versions of. That includes journaling and scrapbooking. I love printing out photos and adding them to my journals or putting them up on my cork boards. I’ve gone through my fair share of various photo printers but I’m always looking for something new that can make my notebooks prettier or more interesting. This concept for a printer seems to be unique and can add even more creativity to your journaling life.

Designer: Gabin Park and Subin Lee

Potto is a concept for a toy camera that prints different kind of photos. Unlike the polaroids and instax cameras and printers, this one doesn’t print your typical pictures but instead gives you an outline of the image that you took or that you sent to the camera. You get a line drawing that you can either keep as it is or color in the images if you want a more colorful or creative thing to add to your journal. It’s something that both kids and adults can appreciate as both may actually love the coloring part of the process.

The camera itself looks like your typical mobile photo printers with the round and soft shapes as well as pastel colors. The line photos are printed on a thermal paper rather than the polaroid or zinc paper. This means that the heat-sensitive paper is more affordable but will also eventually fade over time (apparently just like our memories). So if you want something that will last longer, then this is not the camera or photo printer for you.

The camera has a yellow button that lets you take the picture and then print them directly. There is also a display screen at the back so you can still see the images first before you take the photo. There is a cutting blade so you can easily cut the thermal paper, which are available in sizes 79 x 70 cm or 2 x 3 inches, depending on what you need. This is something that I would like to someday have so hopefully, this doesn’t remain just a concept.