Weekly Sprint 07 — Gathering Materials
This week, I spent time finally gathering all my materials and testing out the designs for the physical display. First off, the graduation caps will be made out of wood, so I spent some time Home Depot. After wandering around the store looking lost, I was able to purchase some plywood boards. Luckily I had already been working with wood for my projects in digital fabrication, so I had some basic knowledge. I bought a 2x4 foot board of 1/4 inch thick plywood to be used for the mortar board parts of the graduation cap. I also bought some smaller 1/8 inch boards for the hat/base parts of the graduation cap.
I went into the sculpture studio to cut up the plywood into different sized squares for the mortar boards. Each graduation cap correspond to a group of students who took the survey. The larger the cap, the more students who were represented through the survey.
On the smaller plywood boards, I intend to laser cut the kerf wood patterns which will allow them to bend into a circular shape. While doing some research, I found a laser cut lamp kerf design that inspired me to use this type of wood cutting, also known as “living hinge”. I was able to find some resources and laid out a sample pattern in Illustrator. I figured that having different patterns on the base of the cap will also correspond to an element from the survey, so this method will be useful.
Unfortunately, I did not get to actually cut my test design this week. I took a look at some of the smaller examples we have in the digital fabrication lab. I will have to experiment with what designs are most flexible and can bend into the circular shape that I need. Next, I will have to decide how to finish these wood pieces. After sanding and assembly, some options I have are to stain or spray paint them. That’s a Home Depot trip for another day.
For the line graphs, I wanted to find foam boards that were larger than the standard 20 x 30 inch. After searching through multiple craft stores, I finally found some 30 x 4o inch boards. I still did purchase the standard 20x30 inch boards I could test out the string and thumbtacks before creating a final version.
I used the visualizations I created in Tableau as reference. On the test foam board, I plotted a line graph of Race of Enrolled Students per Year on a line graph:
This was a very rough example I used to get a general idea of how the materials worked together and how the final product may look. I am thinking about large format printing the graph axes and numbers and mounting them on the foam board. That way, the board will be more clean and legible. The final display will have labeled axes, a title and a color coded key. This may be something I have to assemble closer to the showcase date. I think it will be best to put this together directly on the wall in the installation room. I could plot the points on the large format print ahead of time, making the setup with the pushpins and string much easier.
