Esther Laudier

P o r t f o l i o

Product design

Se lec ted wor ks

In this portfolio, four works done during the Product Design BA course at Pontifical Catholic

University of Rio de Janeiro were selected. The works are, in order :

1. Pistache 2. Pendio3. Hyl4. Product illustration

1 2

3 4

1. Pistache

The Pistache lamp is an individual project de-veloped for the subject Volume III, in which students are stimulated to build a lamp from scratch.

It is made up of independent, modular parts which stack up when closed/turned off, and bind to-gether through magnets when open/turned on. Its concept lies in the freedom of interaction between the user and the object, offering a sense of creativity that opposes to products dictated by the manufac-turer.

The first drafts were made inspired by a toy called

Jacobs Ladder (above). This toy folds and unfolds in various ways to create different versions of the same object.

The color choice is based on the pistachio nut, which reveals a different aspect from its shell when cracked open.

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The idea was to make the line of production as simple as possible, as well as diminish costs in manufacture. The parts were created from a CAD

file (right) processed by a CNC router,

which sculpted the part into its shape (below).

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As for the wiring, 4 wires were connected (fused) to the positive and negative poles of a 5cm LED strip. The end of the wires was then fused onto a small piece of copper adhesive. After that, the adhesive was glued onto the magnet (below).

Once the module was finished

and jet painted, the wiring was posi-tioned inside of it and the magnets were properly fixed into the holes (below).

Finally, when the bottom module is connected to a power source, every other module that is put in contact will light up.

1. Pendio

Pendio, Italian for pendulumor inclination, is the concept to an espresso cup developed along the subject Basic project III - Development. For a period of 5 months, we studied the steps of turning a concept into a finished product. The theme for the

classroom project was coffee or tea?

In Rio de Janeiro, coffee houses have become a mark in urban culture. Closest to the commercial

centres of the city, the busiest coffee houses receive a medium of 20 costumers per minute. Because of this large flux of people, most of the public consume

their beverages while standing up and on a hurry. We focused our study on the interaction between espresso drinkers and their cups.

The issue with conventional cof-fee cups is their traditional grip. Often too small for the grip of the fingers

or too large so that the grip is clumsy (not to mention when there is no grip at all and the cup is too hot to hold), cups found in the market make a rough adaptation to the needs of users who frequent busy coffee houses. When in-terviewed, costumers and owners of coffee houses complained about the lack of alternate (and low-cost) prod-ucts for coffee consumption.

After thorough field research and

data collection (medium measurements of height, volume and width of espres-so cups), we established some limits for the briefing of the cup. We then began

to sketch alternatives based on the con-cept of innovation and unconventional-ity.

From the sketches, we began to make three-dimensional models. First we used clay, then we moved on to polyurethane. All models were tested for their grip and visual aspect on coffee house costumers and teachers in class. The best voted model was the one we later named Pendio (below).

For the confection of the final

model we used ureol. We made the body of the cup using a mechanical Lathe and the grip using a band saw, then assembled both using polyester dough.

To finish the model we jet painted it

pearl white so to mimic porcelain texture. The

cup received maximum grade as a project and

was later exposed in the biannual design fair at

PUC-Rio.

3. Hyl

In greek, Hyl means wood. In its Latin trans-lation, the word gained the meaning matter. Phi-losopher Vilm Flusser said that matter is any thing that fills a space or constitutes (serves as material

to) another object. With this in mind, I developed a sculpture for the subject Pattern Design. The chal-lenge was to use patterns found in nature to create any form of art that transmitted the idea of camou-flage.

Prints of the pattern were also made to invite students to an exhibit of the piece, held at PUC-Rio.

The shape of the sculpture was taken from a graphic study of mountain rocks.

After coming to a shaped sculpture, I cov-ered it with broken glass so to create the effect of camouflage through reflection. The result was

a series of photographs taken of the placing of this sculpture in different environments.

4. Product I l lustrat ion

A series of illustrations depicting var-ious products, made for the subject Product Illustration.

Thank you.Esther Laudier Angelo De Oliveirae-mail: e . l aud ier@gma i l . com

* All of the images in this presentation are owned by me, except

for the ones tagged with an asterisk.