In preparation for the Mae West event we were asked to design a trophy to award the designers behind that year's best project in each branch. This task had to be done working in a team between first, second, and third year of product design.
The main goal was to fabricate 4 trophies inspired in Valhalla that would represent the specialty they were meant to be given to.
At first, a research was done, to better understand the viking culture and their way of living. The base concept was defined and we settled in trying to transmit the group behabour the vikings had. We proceeded to make some designs and with the guidance of our classmates in the third year of product design the trophy design got further and further closed and polished.
The trophy was closed to a full size viking shield with a metallic rim; and from there each group would make changes and build their own unique piece from that foundation.
Our group had to design for the interior design trophy, and we decided to play with shadows using overlapping sheets of metal that were attached to a wooden rim, that included the handle, and closing it all to the metal rim that would encapsulate the whole piece.
The overlapping sheets will remain in a shiny polished finish, unlike the rim, that will retain the black factory color. As far as the wood finish goes, we chose pine and decided to burn it, in order to get a nice brown color out of it and also get a lot of texture from the grain of the wood.
At the end we accomplished a trophy that represents the ideas it was born to show, and that with a combination of all the knowledge of the group we were able to get the great final result we ended up with.
At the same time the shield was being developed we had to design and produce a stand that would fit and present the four trophies in the final theremony, so we put our hands to work.
Having our budget in mind and the amount of space, weight and the final mission of the stand would play, we designed a stand built out of pine wood, a great material for construction, fairly cheap, and giving a professional end result that would resemble what vikings could have done in their time.
The wood was cut, assembled, sanded, stained and varnish before calling it done. All of this process ensured a great end result that the team would be proud of.
The stand will also have to fit last year trophies, so we also designed a place for those in the final piece.
And at the end all of the process, and all the work prior to the production of both the trophy and the stand were in order to ensure the best quality of results and to represent as closely as possible all the values Esada stands for and all the values the project needed us to show.