Aalto Studios hosted a 3-day workshop in the Studio Kipsari’s event room on 10.-12.9. as a part of Helsinki Design Week program. The theme of the workshop was “Design with Movements”, instructed by Eun Young Park. Park is a designer who finished her Master’s degree in New Media in Aalto University two years ago. A series of workshops is a part of her doctoral research project ”Pop-up Maker Lab”.
Linkki – simplifying kinetic design
The participants started the workshop with some basic exercises to test motions with Linkki tool. Linkki tool facilitates prototyping trajectories, and can be used for various experiments, such as creating mechanical cartoons. The tool consists of a board, circles, bars and assembly clips, along with magnets, paper and Lego parts that are needed for some exercises. The creator of the tool, Eun Young Park, explains to have used Lego blocks for this kind of research before, but Linkki makes it much easier for her to teach, and for the workshop participants to grasp the basic ideas of prototyping. Each day of the workshop had a different subtopic, such as basic mechanisms, drawing with motion, and using soft materials in making movement.
Everything under one roof
Park has been working on her research at Otakaari 7 since April 2018, thus found it convenient to have her first workshop in the same building. During this time at Aalto Studios, she has been utilizing a variety of facilities and expertise the building and its staff have to offer. Park explains that using the machinery at Väre is much more restricted, especially this summer when the building was not quite finished yet.
Eun Young Park will be hosting workshops in Helsinki and Espoo this fall, in collaboration with schools, universities and libraries. “I want to teach others what can be done using these tools. Participants get to try very hands-on prototyping that facilitates learning. The tool can be used by people of all ages – in fact, six-year-olds are surprisingly good at designing stuff, because they build with Legos all the time and their creativity is not yet pushed down”, Park says.
Exciting library collaboration
One of the participants attended the workshop on two different days. Librarian Antti Luoto wanted to see what Park’s workshops are like, because he is going to be organizing more workshops together with Park this fall. “I’m happy I was able to attend the event here, to see what to expect of the collaboration with Eun. Iso Omena library, where I work at, is hosting two workshops similar to this, one for kids and one for adults. I was impressed of how useful her tool Linkki is in helping me to visualize the motions and prototype them.” Luoto explains that his background is in humanities and that he has no previous experience in motion design. ”With the help of Eun and Linkki, I had no trouble to learn some of the basics of kinetic design and I am now very excited to take this workshop to our library”
Read more about Linkki tool here: https://linkkiblog.wordpress.com
Designer Eun Young Park’s portfolio site: http://eunyoungpark.co