Frame fronts for children
This project is an iterative development of eye-wear fronts for children. Children grow rapidly in the first 0-5 years of life; to mitigate the cost of eye-wear I explored opportunities to develop eye-wear fronts which are cost effective to make and respond to this rapid development.
Design inspiration
During this research phase it was important to explore the attributes which make eye-wear attractive to users and apply visual principles in the design of eye-wear for children.
On my quest for inspiration I investigated four eye-wear designers, their design choices and the types of materials they selected.
Rough
Sketching
Experimentation
Experimentation was an important element to understand the strengths and weaknesses of materials. I laminated ice cream sticks together with craftsman glue to create a singular block to provide a platform to CNC a frame front out of. Although this experiment wasn’t successful (the timber delaminated during the cnc process) it did highlight the possibility of tilising harder timbers such as recycled kauri, matai or jarrah.
There was some experimentation with laser sintering with nylon as the material, this allowed the iterations of forms to be initially tested and ergonomic features to be identified as it was unresolved in form.
Designing frame fronts.
Designed using a combination of Rhino and Fusion360 CAD software I iterated the forms to express variations that could appeal to junior eyewear users.
