Lines for a Walk

Somewhat selfishly, at the tail end of my senior year I wanted to learn to use the laser cutter in the solidspace lab before I left school as a fresh grad. Emboldened by the process I designed my first laser cut card when procrastinating from studying for my finals.

Critical Question

*How do you have your designs scale for impact?

Design Process

I first learned how to use the laser cutter in a materials in design course. We made a bunch of laser cut boxes for a materials show at the end of the semester. I kept revisiting this experience during my capstone project where I floated the idea of using the laser cutter again to my thesis supervisor...

Over the course of my last semester in school I wanted to revisit and learn how to use the laser cutter. I designed my first card "woodland walk" as a test to see whether I could use the laser cutter to its fullest extent. (NB: Subject to change)

Precedence

Over the course of this multiyear project I've started to encorperate references from the Bauhaus (thanks Josef Albers) to other card makers like Emi Hazlett, Richard Sweeney and PORIGAMI. Using a laser cutter allows me to experiement with form, light and shadow while incorperating flare in the form of design and execution. As cards have progressed in complexity over the years I've imposed on myself some restrictions to help refine the process:

1. Cards Must be able to fit in a standard envelope
2. If the card has instructions they must be able to fit in the envelope
3. Parents Card always has gold accents
4. Cards must be able to be mass produced

Selected Cards

These are some of the selected cards (and errata) I've designed over the past 3 years. There is a story for each one, and many many hours trying to ideate a new way to integrate a paper mechanism.

Forest Walk

Forest Walk was the card that this project was derived from. Initially I wanted it to be free standing but I realized later on that I needed something to hold the frame together. The fidelity on this card was achieved with masking each layer and slowing the laser speed to ensure clear line cuts.

As an experiement I prescored the paper with the laser cutter...

CanalHuis

Inspired by Emi Hazlett I designed these houses to be combined together as a line of houses. I designed the cards to be scored and folded by hand, as the scored joints got rid of the paper creases created by engraving.

Quiet as A Mouse

Learning how to design a free standing shadowbox was a bit of a challenge, but the quickness and nimbleness of mice made it all worth it. Paper kerfing was measured with calipers before designing the stands. I used the old bellows style cameras as inspiration for the card sub-units. In the end, I ended up gluing together the pieces for a more cohesive final look.

NB: I actually designed rounded card corners for this card design because of a complaint from last year about pricking their hands on the corners!

Albers Ornament

Researching the affordances and architectural properties of paper lead me to the one of the earliest forms of a Bauhaus excersice imposed by Josef Albers in the 1920's.

Using a piece of paper create a dynamic form that shows the affordances of paper.

Inspired by this notion and the 2018 snohetta star design I wanted to create an ornament that looks like a swirling orb in flight. By taking a circle and making concentric cuts I was able to make the paper curve in 3 dimensions. This created an illusion of an orb swirling in midair.

Chinese New Year

Many red pockets were sacrificed in order to template this project, but I think the results were worth it. I used lucky motifs like coins, bamboo and sacred symbols in order to cram as much symbolism into these lucky pockets as possible.

Having a "money slider" allowed for the bills to be hidden inside and provide an interesting focal interaction for people to play with. No peeking though!