Vanilla ink

For the past eight Wednesdays I have been attending a night class in the Vanilla ink studios. Vanilla ink is a business run by Kate Pickering, a DJCAD jewellery graduate. Her business supports other jewellery graduates as they find their feet as designers; providing them with an affordable studio space for a year, alongside expert mentoring, business advice, and support.

So, my night class, as you may have guessed, was one in jewellery making. I love to learn new skills and I love rings so this course seemed like a perfect fit. And low and behold, the first night we learned how to make a ring – so perfect! It took far more finger strength than I would have assumed, but it was great fun to do. Having a finished product so quickly was really nice, and a great start to the course. The following two weeks were all about learning different techniques, making jump rings, sawing (embarrassingly and frustratingly, I broke around 12 saw blades, not my forte I guess), using the rolling mill (A king of mangle type device which flattens and stretches the metal), adding texture with hammers, soldering and so on.

Having learned the ropes, weeks four onwards were set aside for creating whatever we wanted. I chose rings, obviously. I started mocking up designs with copper, and was really surprised at how fast I was able to work. I broke more saw blades. Gosh. And decided what metal I wanted to use and how much. My silver arrived on the Monday of week five. I had made a bit of an error. I wanted two things, a piece of silver wire, that was fine, got that bit right, and also a more rectangular piece of wire. What came in the post was a really heavy, thick, rectangular block. Oops. Come Wednesday I had resolved to put this block through the rolling mill, which I mentioned earlier, to try and reduce the silver to a workable thickness. After rolling the metal about 40 times it was far slimmer and ready to become a ring. Everything was going smoothly, the ring was circular and it fitted my finger. Too smoothly. After a final blast with the blowtorch I picked the ring up (with tweezers of course) to drop it in the water bowl (this cools the metal down so it can be handled). However, the water bowl was not where it fell. It slipped out of my grasp, burnt straight through a piece of fabric and shattered on the floor. It was quite a dramatic sequence. With hopes that this would be the night’s only casualty I moved on to work with the silver wire. This was far more successful, only one broken saw blade but two finished, shiny rings.

I missed week six as I was unwell. I got sent home from Uni on the Monday, because I looked as if I was about to pass out. A week long rest and I was back in action. My penultimate jewellery session was very successful. I made five more rings, Two for me, one for a friend, one for a cousin, and one for Mothers Day. I had to do quite a bit of sawing. However, practice certainly does make perfect, as I broke not a single blade! I had gotten so into making the rings that I didn’t have enough time to polish any of them. Which brings us to week eight, which I spent sizing, buffing, and polishing my rings. I also soldered together some of my scrap silver to produce a kind of wonky and wobbly ring.

I really enjoyed my time in the studio and would definitely do another course, Kate is a great teacher and producing your own jewellery is really rewarding. The rings I made are pretty basic but they are so valuable to me.

The Photos I have included in this post were taken by Kitty, you can see more of her work on facebook.

Day two of jamming!

To get things going we started off with breakfast and a skype session with Aberdeens jam. I printed some more t-shirts (they are going down rather well) Then we started getting down to business!

Today we sent the teams out into the city to generate some more ideas by talking to members of the public. Each team went out with different cardboard props to try and grab peoples attention. This form of gathering information is called ‘design ethnography’ It’s all about putting yourself in someone elses shoes and seeing things from their perspective. The idea is that if you see something from someone else’s viewpoint you can better understand how to design services that cater to their need or improve services which just aren’t working. When all the teams returned we had a quick refuel and then got back to it. They all had to give us a status report of their ideas. It was interesting to see what they had all found out whilst out and about. Here are a few images of the presentations.

After presenting the teams all started their prototypes and we had two guest jam doctors (mentors for the jammers) pay us a visit. Our Guest doctors were Scottish designer to the stars Hayley Scanlan and Gillian Easson, the founder of Creative Dundee (which is an online platform that aims to connect Dundee’s creative community, through events, projects, and online). Both Hayley and Gillian had very different insights to share with our jammers and they seemed to get a lot out of it. After they both left the prototypes were starting to take shape and it was time for some fun! We skyped with our twin jam in Palermo, Italy. They had suggested having a huge thumb war. In which each person would be having a three thumb wrestle on each hand. They would be doing the same as we skyped each other. It was absolutely hilarious! Here is a video of the whole thing; 

Next on the agenda, pizza party!  We slightly over ordered and there was a whole sea of slices;

After eating energy was quite low, everyone was full and sleepy. What we needed was an energiser, queue music! I led this session, teaching everyone some moves from the Charleston, a dance I myself had learned mere minutes before. I decided to go with this dance as it would be new to everyone and they would have to learn together. I taught a simplified version of the dance, but that does not mean it was an easy version, but the difficulty made it funny to learn and watch. See for yourself;

Revitalised and unable to stop laughing, the teams were sent back to finish off their prototypes. I checked in with each group to see what they had come up with.

The stereotype group had made a cardboard room with different doors, the idea is that invitations will be sent out to people from different backgrounds, inviting them to an event with similar people. They arrive in this room only to discover that there is a mixture of people there. A series of games and icebreakers will encourage everyone to interact and break down the prejudices they have.

Growth and community were working on a seed package for children, which would connect with an online game. The product aims to encourage children to grow their own vegetables and fruit and to eat healthy as well. The online game allows the children to share their progress and interact with others who are growing the same vegetables.

Under the theme of construction and building the team were producing modular housing for first time buyers. The housing would be customizable to suit the individual’s needs and is sold in room sized cubes. The minimum purchase is three cubes, which would be a basic studio apartment, but cubes can be added together and adapted to make larger rooms and larger homes. The cube system would make it easier for people to start climbing the property ladder, allowing them to buy cheaper, standardised homes.

The Play team had started to design an app that would encourage adults to get in touch with their inner child through a game of hide and seek. The game utilizes the smartphone location feature, letting the seeker know if they are near someone who is hiding and letting the hider know if they are about to be caught. The game could be played with friends, colleagues or even people who you haven’t met yet. As well as encouraging play the app would help people to de-stress during their lunch break from work or University.

A final presentation of the groups up to date prototypes before heading to the pub again (most of us went home actually, Jamming is tiring!)

Day one of the jam!

This past few months I have been helping to organise the service jam in Dundee, which is running this weekend (07.03.14-09.03.14). A service jam is a global event, taking place in over 100 different location worldwide, from LA to Hiroshima which aims to come up with new ideas to design public services.

One of my tasks was to produce screen printed t-shirts for the participants (jammers) to buy, which you can see in the photos below.

But what actually is a service jam? This is something I had to explain to the STV camera when they came to find out what was going on. It was really funny doing the filming, we had to pretend we were at the jam so that people could get a feel of what goes on. We were really just having a laugh and messing around.

So, it’s a 48 hour event which encourages it’s participants to think in new and different ways, learning new skills and unfamiliar techniques. Service design, which is what the whole weekend is centered on, is a relatively new practice. It’s all about designing the experience of the consumer, as opposed to a solid object. This could be something like designing a better commute or a better way to do your weekly shop. So, over the course of the weekend all of our Jammers will be coming up with their own working prototypes of a service. The first step was finding out what the secret theme is, which each jam finds out on the first night. And here it is;

The theme is open to interpretation and after a brainstorming session different topics are decided on. A human bar graph, seen below, allows people to decide which is the topic for them and our teams are created! We ended up with four different themes; construction and building, growth and community and play.

Some further team work is done, more brainstorming and to round the night off some one minute presentations about what each group intends to do. Then off to the pub, of course, for some chatting and a few drinks. There is a great mix of people jamming this weekend, both under and postgraduate students as well as professionals, who have no experience of design. It’s sure to be fun filled!

Bleaching

My favourite of the screen prints from the SDC project are on black fabric with bleached sections. The first sample I did on this fabric was just an experiment but it turned out so well I did some more. You can’t really tell which layer of the print was done first, which gives them extra intrigue.