One of the first projects of my senior studio class was to address the questions “who are you?” and “how do you see yourself in the design world?” The project was really open ended- you could go in any abstract direction you wanted. In class we made quick prototype sketches and I came in with a pinwheel-like thing made of cut up papers. I thought the cutting up papers and weaving them together again was reflective of how I view the design process; In any work we have a little bit of ourselves in it. We take our knowledge, background, and experiences and cut them up- from there we take relevant and necessary parts and combine them with other visual information and sources to try to communicate a message. Different pieces get woven together. Sometimes this new woven piece does not entirely work so you have to cut that up and put it together with something else again. Design can be describes as a process of cutting and gluing ideas together. As a designer, we have control of what pieces we are using and what image we are weaving all this into.

I decided to show this idea by making a stop motion animation. I set up cameras and lights in my room and took many pictures while I worked with various paper cut outs. In the end I had over 1300 photos taken! Now I need to work on finishing it and editing the sequences.

The doortags for my 50+ residents have successfully passed their first stage of making! The paper weaving turned into a family project with both my mom and brother helping me make the sets. (I think we spent like 60 hours making them all phew….) Hopefully they will stay intact during the journey back- all that’s left now is to add the names. Slowly but surely I think I’m ready for RA training!

And all stacked up!