Product design studio · Buenos Aires

We design products that get made.

From the first sketch to thousands of units in real hands.

Start a project See how it works
Blue Bud in its open box on a desk: the finished product, ready to ship.

Blue Bud · boxed and shipping

2026

Red Dot Award · Product design

3,000+

Units built and shipped

Worldwide

Startup clients, incl. Y Combinator and Kickstarter teams Factory partners in Asia, Mexico and Argentina

Why Basalt

Nice to look at. Built to work.

Many products look great on a screen and fail in the factory. Ours are designed for both.

A leather notebook stuck to the back of an iPhone with built in magnets.

Nice to look at · noble. note

Engineering drawing of Blue Bud with sections, dimensions and a 0.2 mm case gap.

Built to work · a 0.2 mm gap, on purpose

  1. 01

    Made, not just drawn.

    We plan how it will be made from the very first sketch.

  2. 02

    One team, start to finish.

    Idea, design, tests, factory. The same people all the way.

  3. 03

    We speak factory.

    We work with factories in Asia, Mexico and Argentina. Fewer surprises, fewer delays.

How it works

From idea to thousands of units.

Never made a physical product? This is the road. Five stages. Join us at any of them.

01 · Understand

First, we ask a lot of questions.

Who uses it? What must it do? Where must it fit? For Blue Bud: a 3 mm gap under the phone, and only 0.2 mm with a thick case.

02 · Explore

We draw. A lot.

Around 20 ideas before we narrowed it to four. Napkins, paper, whiteboards, screenshots: no surface was safe.

03 · Build and test

Print it. Hold it. Test it.

We print it and test it: fit with and without a case, finger position, grip. The first prints covered the mic and speaker, so the curve moved.

04 · Ready for the factory

Make it easy to make.

Design for manufacturing, or DFM. A dense circuit board, a tiny fixed envelope, and a surface that still looks good. Then the drawings the factory builds from.

05 · Make and ship

Then thousands leave the factory.

Test builds catch problems early. We check every sample and sign off every change. Then the line runs and the boxes ship.

Drawing of the space Blue Bud must fit, with its maximum size and the case gaps.
A hand holding a 3D printed phone dummy with an early Blue Bud fitted to it.
Two sheets of pencil sketches of Blue Bud on a crowded desk.
A sheet of blue pen and marker sketches, many versions of the body.
Close up of quick red pen sketches.
Early 3D concept of Blue Bud with notes, shown on and off the phone.
Four concept directions, labelled A to D, drawn over a phone on a tablet.
Three numbered 3D printed prototypes in yellow, pink and blue.
A prototype fitted to a phone inside a thick leather case.
A prototype measured with a digital caliper.
More than twenty printed prototypes in different colours laid out in rows.
Section drawing of Blue Bud under a phone and its case, at scale 2 to 1.
CAD view of Blue Bud under the phone with the circuit board inside.
A red pen sketch working out how the housing closes: snap fit or screw.
A factory worker assembling a Blue Bud by hand.
A plastic basket full of moulded Blue Bud housings.
Finished Blue Bud units in red foam production trays.
Two finished Blue Bud units on a desk.
A stack of boxed Blue Bud units.

What we design

Four jobs. One product.

  1. 01

    Product design

    How it looks, how it feels, and how it works in your hand.

  2. 02

    Packaging

    The box, the tray inside it, and the first five minutes.

  3. 03

    User experience

    Setup, daily use, and every small moment in between.

  4. 04

    Design for manufacturing

    Parts a factory can build the same way, thousands of times.

The studio

Four people. One studio in Buenos Aires.

  • Tomás Rivero

    CEO · DFM

    Gets every part ready for the factory.

  • Hector Marchesi

    Design · UX

    Shapes how it looks and how it feels.

  • Farhan Hossain

    Engineering

    Makes sure it works, every single time.

  • Natalia Donis

    People

    Keeps the team, and the studio, running.

Selected work

Every one of these got built.

Four products, from the first sketch to the factory.

Blue · 2026

BlueBud

Red Dot 2026

An AI assistant that plugs into an iPhone. Say “Hey Blue” and it runs the phone. The hard part: make it fit in 3.2 mm.

Plastic parts · DFM · Packaging · Renders

Blue Bud, the finished product, on a desk.
Blue Bud boxes and label sheets at the packing line.

Hoopfit · 2023

Hoopfit

A machine that passes the ball back, so you never chase a rebound. One person carries it. Setup takes 90 seconds.

Product design · User experience · DFM · Renders

A player using the Hoopfit machine on an indoor court.
The Hoopfit machine outdoors, holding two basketballs.

Our own brand · Ongoing

noble.crafters

A leather notebook that sticks to your phone, and a pen that opens as you pull it out. We keep improving it, batch after batch.

Product design · CMF · Packaging

Someone writing in the noble. note at a kitchen counter.
Stacks of cut leather covers at the factory.

Far Futur · 2022

FarFutur

A clip that holds your phone, so your hands stay free. Film, call, record. Launched on Kickstarter.

Product design · Prototypes · Testing · Video

Three Far Futur phone clips in grey, black and blue.
A Far Futur clip holding a phone, lit in red and blue.

Our name

From base to summit,
we are BASALT.

Like the rock that makes mountains, we strive to be the element that brings your ideas to the top.

Start a project

Have a product in mind? Tell us about it.

hello@basaltstudio.io

Reply time

Within three working days.

Studio

Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Clients

Tech startups around the world.