When I think about this amazing experience of sharing some basics concepts and knowledge of design with people that were having way too much more experience than me and my co worker together in the practice and process of developing their own handcrafted products, it is almost imposible to deny that we all learned a lot from each other.
This was a professional support and a practical work before graduating as Industrial Designers and we joint this kind and gentle group of sewing women in the small country side town of Guacheta which is close to Bogotá in Colombia where one of the main sources of money is the sheep wool production. This was arranged by the state of Cundinamarca and the Industrial Design School of the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University, where the goal was to help and support different small groups of artisans of the area that were going to joint the biggest comercial convention of handcrafts and tradicional manufacturing of Colombia “ExpoArtesanos 2008”.
We started the process by visiting this associated women at their home town and getting to know more about their personal lives and the impressions and expectations they where having about design as a discipline. It was life changing for us to see and recognise and even for them also, how their hobby had been evolving and how it was transforming their lives, turning this activity into small company capable already of paying a rent and one salary at the showroom at the main plaza of the town.
One of the most amazing things of working with handcraft process and products is that it is very inserting and it become easy and wonderful to see the changes in technique and then off course in the products. We realised they had an incredible development of the hand sewing and needle technique when we had the opportunity to see and count the amount of crochet stitches they were capable to do. It was certainly something we could not understood at that time in perfection and anyway that was not the objective of our cooperating work. We had no time for that much pretension, instead of that we focused in helping them understanding some basic concepts of consumption, like a way to connect their already enough knowledge in the technique process with some almost null acquaintance about current segment market needs and consumer perceptions.
We point special attention about function and shape relation in the products but always being so carefully at not rejecting their personal tastes and essences as artisans which would be worse than the most raw crime if we think about our profession and social responsibility. We suggested the appropriation of main principles of manufacturing clothes but using their own methods and crafts. We had some conversations about color and techniques of concept development when companies refers at a group of products as collections, series, originals and special editions.
The result after several talks and mutual sharing of prejudgement was so rewarding for us as mentors of new ways of expressing trough products in this group of Artisans and for them was even more when their sales increase notoriously as well as the recognition of their products as a brand with a mark of origin with their own visual and funcional language.
Portfolio 1.4 Handcrafted Cooperative Design When I think about this amazing experience of sharing some basics concepts and knowledge of design with people that were having way too much more experience than me and my co worker together in the practice and process of developing their own handcrafted products, it is almost imposible to deny that we all learned a lot from each other.
