It has always seemed progressive to digitalise physical systems. But as our physical and digital worlds continue to blur into one, a need for digital respite has gripped us and so we’re seeing many of our digital manifestations being given a physical aspect - an offline presence.

Email should and could be a more enjoyable prospect. Email marketing service provider Mail Chimp recently commissioned designer and artist Brendan Dawes to expel the negative connotations surrounding email. Six Monkeys (named after six a famous Chimpanzees used in linguistic research) is a series of six connected objects that look at how we might improve our relationship with email by changing the context in which we interact with it. By placing email within our everyday physical spaces we might begin to experience the familiarity of email in a different light.

The objects range from Nim, a switch for your email placed next to a regular light switch that when flicked will prevent email from coming through the network across all your devices, to Ham, a physical box to which you can forward your most precious emails and only unlock with a key.

Attachment is another new project bringing email into the physical world - this time by Swiss Designer David Colombini - that lets you send an email via biodegradable balloon.