2024, Fashion Toy Design
Collaborative project by Eva Kramer, Laynie Berkey, Sebastian Vladimir, Diego Paniagua Heredia, and Daniel Ratzloff
EcoFriend was a conceptual design for a sustainable dress-up toy made of bioplastics that aimed to teach STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) to children through the science of bioplastics and the art of fashion design. Children would make clothes for their EcoFriend using reclaimed fabrics, build furniture from interlocking bioplastic tiles, and could even open the original packaging to form a house for their EcoFriend. The toy had an androgynous design and a variety of skin tones, body types, and facial features to try and help represent as many children as possible. Each EcoFriend box would include the toy itself, a character card with their hobbies and name, reclaimed fabric and glue for simple clothing construction, a character-specific booklet of easy-to-follow clothing patterns, and the shipping box itself that would transform into a reusable playhouse. I was in charge of the visual design for the brand materials and the characters which I completed in Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign. I also was in charge of most of the bioplastic formulation, experimenting with many different formulas to try and develop a potential material to create the dolls with. I carved several potential head mockups out of bricks of some of these bioplastics, and developed an interactive display of the brand concept to show these bioplastics, brand concept art, and example shipping container that our team collaborated on for Spring 2024 Open Studios at the Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts in Lincoln, NE. This project was part of University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s 2024 participation in the international Biodesign Challenge program, and my write up for the project as well as some documentation can be seen on their website.
