GRAZIANO

ACP - Association for Craft Producers

With cows taking an afternoon snooze in the middle of the highway, and motorbikes beeping and bustling through the corners of the streets, I set to work at ACP, a Kathmandu-based company that hires lower class women to create craft soft goods and products.

For eight and a half weeks I worked with ACP, designing craft goods, such as soft goods, bags, and textiles.  One of the reasons I was brought into this program was for my interest in menswear, so I attempted to introduce products that were more geared towards men, and utilized modern design.  Existing products from ACP generally used bright colors and intricate, traditional designs and graphics, because much of the Nepalese market prefers these colors and designs; so to introduce geometric modern designs, and neutral colors was quite a challenge.

It was also communicated to me that ACP makes many products for children, so I decided to make another product line focused on cute animal themes, inspired by contemporary Asian products but also utilizing geometry and modernist principles. Negotiating with craftsman, seamstresses, and metalworkers through rough translations was quite difficult and stressful, yet conversely, invigorating and exciting!

After extensive prototyping, testing and editing, I came up with a couple collections: a) an animal collection, with reoccurring animal faces across pillows/stuffed animals, pencil bags, containers, toy containers, backpacks, sitting poofs; b) a full bed set with pillows, fabric containers, aprons, bags, and sitting poofs, all with the same or similarly altered extruded square pattern, and c) a couple backpacks and tech cases, that also fit alongside the modern bed set.