Weekend Workshop

Not sleeping in on the weekend is worth it sometimes. Not often for me, but I do think so occasionally. This weekend was one of those occasions.

I'd never worked with plaster before, or vacuum forming, and I hadn't worked in our woodshop much before either. Those things changed in the past few days; not only was I able to get experience with each of those, but I was also able to work with other first year students as a design team for the first time.

The way we do most our work in studio feels like I'm learning what my future as a designer may be like in the workforce, but this project took that to a new level. Having four days to develop an idea, create diagrams, a digital model, and a physical one is one of the things I tell other people about and they start to feel stressed, but for me it was another experience that made me even more sure that I've picked the right major; not stressful, just exciting. Working with students in the other disciplines was really great. Figuring out the best ways to communicate our ideas when we all think in not only different styles, but also different scales, was more of an exploration into our own views and expectations than anything else. Even our aesthetics are different and the color scheme for our diagrams isn't one I would have chosen, but I'm glad I got to work with it and explore how to work with a style that goes with our project instead of my default. It was one of many challenges from this project, but it was a skill I think I was lacking.

I feel very lucky about the people I got to work with, not only because of my talented classmates but also the impressive leaders we had through the process. Even the professors not assisting the plaster molding workshop had comments and more ideas for our work. Having people like them and like our instructor, who worked with each group to change the basic guidelines of the project to help us create our ideas in a tangible and well communicated way, around to facilitate learning makes me really look forward to the future. I can't wait to learn more, create more, and get further into this field.

I haven't gotten more than six hours of sleep in one night since January, but I have

• gotten better at Rhino

• worked with people in different disciplines

• used a band sander

• learned a different workflow than I'm used to

• used a vacuum former

• worked with plaster

• broken three nails and two exacto blades trying to get the plasticine off of the plaster

• learned the word voxol

• worked with a new graphic style