Making toys…
So I’ve been back in school for a year now and it’s been tricky balancing working full time and school but it’s definitely worth it.
For one class, our final assignment, we had to create a toy inspired by a designer and my group was given Ray and Charles Eames. I was familiar with their chairs but I hadn’t really looked at their work beyond that. They are a super fascinating couple, the line between life and work was basically non-existent their home itself was an original Eames creation.
Trying to design a toy based on the Eames work turned out to be more difficult than I had originally thought as they have created some really beautiful games already, the House of Cards being the most popular.
Ray and Charles Eames “House of Cards”
With my team members, we went with a block design, just calling it “The Blocks” in classic Eames style. We did run into several production issues and had to revise the design. It was a steep learning curve as none of us had really produced anything outside of printed products. We made our blocks of wood… it was a very different material to work with.
We documented the entire process in a notebook and took many photos of the experience. Working in the wood shop turned out to be a lot of fun and even though the final product could use some tweaking, we were all ultimately really satisfied.
