experimenting with origami

I have been attempting to teach myself origami, it's actually harder than it looks! I've done a few things with paper that you can see above. I love the effect that you can see in the bottom photograph. As part of my wedding materials idea, I have also pressed some flower petals and leaves and dipped them in resin. I'm not sure if the effect has been very successful so I am going to try some other techniques. I have also laser cut an origami pattern on some wood which looks quite nice. I have a board in the studio that will display all of the materials I am using. I am finding it quite hard to transfer origami folding techniques to solid materials but I am trying to think outside the box to create some unusual results. 

origami jewellery

The idea I decided to take forward onto the play stage was origami jewellery. This idea stood out to me to be the one I would have most fun with for the rest of the year. It's quirky and individual. When talking to Jon, he suggested looking at Wedding anniversary materials. Making the origami jewellery out of each material given as wedding anniversary presents, from paper to flowers to silver. I think this is an interesting route to go down so I plan to do more research and start testing different materials and my origami skills!

find: 100 ideas

I produced my sketchbook of 100 ideas based around the research I did through cultural probes and questionnaires. This gave me 10 insights, based around personalisation, why people do it and what would encourage them to do it. 

After coming up with my 100 ideas, I then narrowed them down to 20. These 20 went forward to ideas day. People from design and academia came to help us decide which of our ideas were the best. This allowed me to narrow down to: origami jewellery, secret message ring, music bead necklace, earring earphones and drum trousers.

4th year

My fourth year project is based around Personalisation. Making objects feel more personal to individuals, displaying aspects of their personality and making them feel unique. I have discovered through research such as cultural probe packs and questionnaires that personalisation is a way to help people create a sense of individuality and promote creativity. This can be displayed not only in the way you look but also by the products you use and how you use them.

I discovered that making objects yourself gives some people a sense of accomplishment and empowerment. I wanted to create a product that was not completely ready-made, allowing the user to adapt it to how they want and make each one different.