project 2: carriers
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september 22, 2020
I’ve never given much thought to “carriers” before, especially not ones that are meant to carry extremely specific items. When the professors first introduced this concept, I was really confused about what they meant by a carrier. I didn’t understand how we could “invent” or design a new kind of carrier, and I wasn’t sure what they even meant. Then, Steve brought up the pizza box example and everything clicked. A pizza box is a simple object, designed to hold a very specific type of item, and doesn’t serve many other purposes. It also goes with the pizza, rather than simply serving as a way to move the pizza from place to place. Pizza is often served straight out of a pizza box.
My object is gift-quality cookies. I’ve had a lot of these in my lifetime, so I’m pretty familiar with them. The ones I will be using are from Insomnia Cookies, since I figure that’s the easiest, most reliable way to get high-quality cookies to campus. (They do come in a cardboard carrier already, but it’s basically just a small pizza box, so I’ll make sure to come up with a different design.)
I did a teeny bit of research on cookie boxes. Here are some examples I found.
I noticed that most packaging options involved cookies touching one another unless they were individually wrapped. This seems like it might be an issue, as they could stick together or, in the first two examples, they could easily get jostled around and broken. In my design, I definitely want to come up with a way to package cookies in a way that separates them from one another — possibly like on the rightmost example — but keeps them easily accessible. Another issue with the 3rd example is that only one cookie is available to grab at a time. If there are different flavors of cookies in a box, this will definitely be a problem because certain flavors might be stuck at the bottom.
I sketched out a couple of possible designs for a cookie carrier.
september 24, 2020
Today I learned a lot about crafting with cardboard — how it bends and cuts and how to get it to do what you want. Well, I haven’t perfected that last one yet, but I’m making progress.
As for my cookies… They’re about 3.5 inches in diameter and about half an inch thick. I ordered a few different kinds, and they have varying levels of fragility. The chocolate chunk ones are pretty sturdy, but the snickerdoodles are much more fragile. This means I should be careful to make a container that fits the shape of the cookies well in order to avoid them getting jostled and broken.
I modified my second idea (above) to fit the cookies better — using a rounded, cylindrical shape rather than a square box, but keeping the shelves so cookies are easily accessible. This will also keep them separated from each other. My sketch model currently uses a lot of tape, so in the coming days I’ll be experimenting with tabs and slots and other ways to hold cardboard together without tape or glue.
september 30, 2020
After class on Tuesday, I was feeling really inspired by everyone’s different ideas for carriers, so I made some upgrades to my original main sketch model and created a second one that was based on a different idea.
I changed the closure mechanism on my round model from tape to cardboard. At first, I just cut a circle out of cardboard, and then cut the center out of that so I had a ring that slid over the container pretty snugly. Unfortunately, I realized that wouldn’t work once I made the rest of the construction without tape. There would be tabs in the way of the ring sliding on tight enough to keep the container closed. So I tried a different approach. I cut a long, thin strip of cardboard and .stripped off one of the layers, exposing the corrugation so I could bend the piece more easily. I cut a slit in one end and narrowed down the other end, using that part as a tab to put into the slit I had created. I wrapped it around my container and then put the tab through the slit, and it worked pretty well! It could definitely be more polished, but for now I’m happy with it.
I also added a handle, which I originally wanted to do but never got around to. I did the same process of cutting a long strip and peeling off a layer, and then I bent it around and just stuck each end down in between the shelf layers and the curved wall. Obviously in the future this will need more consideration but for now it seems to work well.
I also made a new model based on some random sketches I did yesterday in class. The concept was basically a cube/box (easier to construct) that had a stacking tray inside, that could be pulled out with a handle. Here’s how it turned out.
I made the inside part first. I drew out a circle and gave it really long tabs. I then folded them up, creating a base with two towers coming upward. Originally I planned to fold them over each other and connect them, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that without tape. So I cut off the extra height and used an extra piece of cardboard and the tab/slit method to connect those pieces. I cut out another circle with shorter, thinner tabs, and cut extra slits in the original “tower” pieces. I only added one shelf (in total leaving room for 2 cookies) because this was just a proof of concept. If I choose this for the final project, I’ll add more shelves so it can contain all four cookies.
Once I had that, I knew how big I needed the box to be. So I measured out a cube pattern in cardboard (it kind of looks like a cross), and added tabs to that pattern in the following manner: I first figured out which 4 squares would be the “walls”. Then on the sides of those squares that would touch, I outlined tabs on one side of each square and marked spots to cut through the corrugation on the other side. I measured them with a ruler to make sure they would line up. Then I cut everything out, creased the parts of the sheet that needed to bend, and attempted to assemble it. I struggled a lot with getting the tabs to actually stick within the inside of the cardboard (hence the tape). I think if I use this model for my final project, I need to do a lot more work with a tabbing system. I might use tabs and slits instead of carving out space within the cardboard to stick the tabs inside of. But overall, I think it turned out alright, and now I have more ideas for the final project.
october 2, 2020
During our breakout room sessions on Thursday, I got the idea to make a carrier shaped like a mug (since milk and cookies is such a classic combination). I put it together during class that day, and it only ended up taking me maybe 45 minutes total. It worked, and I was really happy with it! The handle was strong enough to hold all four cookies, and it looked so cute.
But after our whole class discussion, and some reflection, I realized that this probably won’t actually serve the purpose of the assignment. It’s not very secure, its function isn’t very obvious, and it works better to display the items than to actually transform them. So as sad as I was to have to scrap this one, I ended up deciding not to use it for my final project. (I didn’t destroy it, though! It’s currently happily sitting on my desk in my dorm room serving as a pen/chapstick/gum/whatever else holder).
Instead, I decided to use my original idea (with some modifications). The box idea with the tray that lifts out just seemed like an unnecessary use of cardboard that only served to make the carrier’s purpose less clear. So I headed to studio right after dinner and figured I’d spend maybe an hour working on a model of my original idea without using tape. I ended up spending four hours. But it turned out really good!
I first made some sketches and calculations about what I was going to need to cut out. I came up with the idea of one long rectangle that would curve around and serve as the “walls” of the container, with 25 slits cut in it to support 5 tabs coming off each of the 5 circles I cut out, which would end up as the “shelves.” I did a lot of math to figure out how big all the pieces would have to be, and then how big the slits would be, and how far away from each other they would need to be.
Once I had all of that figured out, I went to work cutting it all out. I started with just one shelf circle to make sure that my math worked out. I didn’t have a compass, but I knew the diameter of my circle, so I used my ruler and a square to create 2 perpendicular lines, and then I folded a little square of cardstock paper to find a 45 degree angle, and another one twice to find a 22.5 degree angle. I lined these up with my existing lines and marked where the radius went out to, and then used those to continue drawing lines to help figure out where my circle should go. Then, I just connected all of the ends to make a circle. (I needed 45 and 22.5 degree markers because I needed to split my circle into 16 equal parts in order for my tab system to work).
I also measured out where my slits needed to go on the rectangle and cut them out, then peeled off the inside layer. Unfortunately, in my math, I had forgotten that the tabs would be bigger than the spaces between them due to the difference in radius length, which meant that I had to redo everything. I also hadn’t cut the rectangle long enough. This was super frustrating, but I wanted to keep going and finish so that I would have more free time on the weekend. So I redid almost all of my math and cut out a new circle (since I had altered the tabs of the original one to try to make them fit in the incorrectly spaced slits on the original rectangle). I also cut out a new rectangle, with new slits that were measured correctly.
Fortunately, this time it fit nicely, so I traced my circle shelf four times onto cardboard and cut those out, then assembled them all together. Then I realized I had forgotten to include the handle in my model (even though I had planned for it). Luckily, my handle design was very simple. I cut a long, thin strip from the original rectangle that had bad slits in it and used that for the handle. I put the corrugations facing inward and just peeled back the “wall” piece of cardboard so that I could stick the longer parts in the gap between two tabs on the circle on either side. Then I put the shelf tabs back into the wall slits, and the handle was secure. The exposed corrugation latched onto the shelves to help hold it in place. However, because the tabs only cover half of the circle, and both ends of the handle fall within those tabs, the handle doesn’t hold the container in a balanced way and it naturally tilts a little bit. This isn’t necessarily a problem — it still functions properly — but in a future iteration I would like to make it so that it hangs in a more balanced, symmetrical way.
I hadn’t planned on making a closure system this round, since I was attempting to build it without tape or glue and I needed to plan a latching system, but I decided to go for it. The wall overlapped itself a little bit, so I cut overlapping slits through both ends in a spot where it overlapped. Then, I took a tiny rectangle of cardboard and cut notches into opposite sides about half an inch away from the end. I stuck the rectangle through the slits I had made and twisted the end to “lock” it.
I definitely need to develop this some more, but it’s a lot easier to use than my previous idea for a closure system without tape. That was more like a belt and it was harder to fasten.
So this is my first model of what I think will be my final concept without using any tape! I think it turned out well for a first shot but there are definitely a few things I want to fix in the future.
october 6, 2020
In our breakout rooms in class yesterday, I asked my group about my two main concerns — the handle and the clasp. They gave me some great ideas, which I was going to implement, but then I changed the way I was constructing the whole model, so I didn’t end up using those ideas.
I had wanted to make this out of fewer pieces of cardboard, but couldn’t figure it out. Then, Stacie came to talk to our breakout room and gave me an idea, and suddenly the whole thing clicked. I sketched out some ideas in my sketchbook, but I wanted to make sure my concept worked before using cardboard, because I knew it was going to take a lot and I wanted to avoid wasting any. I made a super tiny model out of leftover cardstock from the first project we did this semester.
It was essentially 5 circles all lined up together, then a long rectangle, and then a continuation of the line that formed the circles. The circles would become the shelves, the rectangle the wall, and the continuation the handle.
It worked pretty well! One issue I had was that with the dimensions of the cardboard, I didn’t have a choice in which way to orient it, meaning the corrugations of the cardboard didn’t line up in a way that made it curve very easily for the wall. I’m going to get a new piece of cardboard in the next couple of days because I’m almost out, so hopefully in future versions I’ll be able to cut it the other way. The handle relies on the corrugations right now, though — the exposed corrugation is what keeps the handle from sliding up and out. It latches on to the sides of the shelves and they hold it in place. Maybe it’s fine with the corrugation in the current direction. I’ll have to do some experimenting.
For the clasp, I did add an extra piece of cardboard. I do have ideas for how to do it without that extra piece, though! I just wasn’t able to implement it this round. I took my clasp from last time and strengthened it by using a larger rectangle and making 2 “keys” instead of 1. They’re still connected (on the other end), but it’s sturdier this way. Again, I don’t love it and I do plan to do something different next time.
october 10, 2020
After our peer review session, the biggest piece of feedback I got was that the large number of tabs (15!) made assembly a bit confusing. The group mentioned the example Steve brought up of buttons being different sizes to prevent you from buttoning your shirt wrong. I came up with the idea of making a carrier out of two pieces instead of one. One piece would be the handle, and it would also secure the shelves in place. The other piece would be the wall and the shelves. So I went to work constructing it.
I ended up making two of these. In the first one, I didn’t leave room on the handle piece for those vertical slits, and the carrier was extremely unstable. I had a hard time even getting it to stay together. So I made it again, this time with the right slits. (Of course, in each round, I messed up the measurements and in total ended up cutting two wall/shelf pieces and four handle pieces. Because I didn’t learn my lesson about measuring twice and cutting once, apparently.) But eventually I got a set that worked together and stayed constructed.
Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to continue with this model and will need to return to the older model with all the tabs. Yes, there are a lot of them, but maybe I can do something like the peer review group/Steve suggested and make them different sizes so you can’t get it wrong. This model is just too unstable. Since the shelves only rest on a little tiny piece of cardboard, and only in two places, they’re not sturdy enough to work as a functional carrier.
october 16, 2020
While we were discussing in small groups on Tuesday, someone (I think Ana?) suggested that I add one tab to each shelf to put in the back. I thought this was a really good idea, and would work as a good compromise between my last two designs. I also modified my handle a little bit based on Steve and Stacie’s comments that our handles seemed uncomfortable. I sketched out my design and then went to work.
The process was very similar to what I did on Saturday, except I didn’t have to start over, and I had already done it a few times so I was faster and had fewer hiccups. The whole thing only took me maybe an hour and a half to finish today.
