my first workweek

I know this post is coming a bit late, but its all good :)

Friday the 30th of September concluded my first week of work! It just flew by; I seem to have no sense of time here. During the week I continued work and completed the book on the Ghana School Bag Training Initiative.

I also helped Akrofi and Mr. Morrison in the Design Center to create a mechanism for marking patterns for the Kindle cover. Our main goal has been to streamline the production process of the bags by creating systems and methods of producing several bags at a time. The pattern marking mechanism is fairly simple; after all, we must work within the constraints of the tools and materials readily available to us. We are in Africa, after all. We began by making a tray for a pile of the already cut pieces to rest inside. The template with the marking pattern is another piece that fits perfectly into the tray and is used as a stencil. The template will be on a hinge so it can be easily lifted and put in place as the operator has to move the already marked material. Our only problem was how to account for the diminishing height of the pile. The hinged template would have to be attached in a way that allowed it to rise and fall according to the height of the material pile in the tray. I was able to create a design that used a slot for the template to slide through, allowing it to move up and down. I understand this is a little hard to visualize, so I will post a photo of my sketches:

We made a model of the mechanism to make sure it worked, and put in a request for the materials with our carpenter. Right now we are waiting to construct it- Amazon has just released a new version of the Kindle that has smaller dimensions than the old one. That means we will have to redesign the Kindle cover to account for the new dimensions. We will wait to build the mechanism until the new pattern is resolved.

That's the short version of what I worked on this week. Next up: the weekend!

my previous trip to Ghana

It occurred to me that perhaps not everyone who reads this blog knows that I have traveled to Ghana before. In January/February of 2010 I traveled to the Kokrobitey Institute in Ghana for about a month with a group from my college, the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). We were a group of about 20 students with two faculty members. Our stay there was for RISD's wintersession, a six week term after Christmas break but before the Spring semester. During wintersession RISD students enjoy a lighter course load and have more opportunities to venture into other majors, departments, and disciplines.

Our trip was technically a class in the Furniture Design department (if you don't know, I am in the Industrial Design department). However, the trip was dedicated to the design process overall. We collaborated with the staff, artists, and designers at the Institute to design products out of recycled materials. It was quite a challenge; we RISD students are used to a more structured environment... in Ghana we pretty much just grabbed some materials and started tinkering!

By the end of the trip I had completed my project: a pendant lamp made from recycled plastic water bottles. I even had the opportunity to teach some of the ladies in the Design Center how to make more of them. Here are some pictures of my lamp in progress:



We had an exhibition at the end of our time there, and it was very rewarding to see all that we had made. I really liked the fact that I could leave something behind for the people at the Institute. Overall the trip had a profound effect on me and has definitely influenced me as a both designer and a person.

I'm looking forward to the new things i'll learn on this upcoming trip!