Fan project

When I approached the fan project I wanted to explore the ways that fans bring both soothing and joy into my life. Myself and my friends use fans a lot, mostly when we go dancing as both an accessory and for much needed cooling. I interviewed them to better understand our love for the hand fan and used this to help direct my designs. 

 We often fan each other, sharing or passing on fans - even to strangers. It’s a fun and bonding action within the group. But equally if you are suddenly alone you then have something to occupy your hands, which acts as physical and often emotional boundary between you and the crowded room. 

You can fiddle with it, gesture quietly to a friend. Or hide behind it and nonchalantly scan the room. Its help ease the social anxiety we all might feel more acutely this summer when things open up. Sadly due to their delicate nature by the end of the night they are often broken or lost.   

I wanted to reimagine fans as outfit completing accessories, but also as soothing transitional objects of reassurance. They keep us cool on the dance floor, but also soothe us in many other ways.  I’ve studied how other hand- held objects such as fidget spinners are also used to soothe. To generate soothing shapes and to help me create forms,  I analysed wind maps to try and capture the smooth soothing movement of air. 

I created this series of fan-like experiments. Aiming for them to be colourful, sensory and soothing to use, and made with sustainable materials and techniques. To mitigate their inevitable short life span. I utilised discarded objects like twisting lip balm tubes and bulldog clips to offer interesting ‘fiddleable’ alternatives to the soothing motions of a traditional  fan. 

This exercise was helpful in throwing my imagination wide and tearing apart the notion of a fan, but the outcomes where more sculptural than usable. My next step would be to develop a more user -friendly refined set of designs inspired by the findings in these exploratory model. 

I developed a lightweight composite that includes paper from industrial waste, and which dries very hard and can be sculpted or cast. I’m interested in how I can take this traditional fan making material and use modern techniques such as vacuum pressing to create compostable,  wearable, uniquely reimagined fans. 

Which offer soothing to the user and the environment, can be shared playfully with friends on a night out and also offer a reassuring buffer between us and the world for when we finally venture out. Fans fit for the future of socialising. 

I’m interested in utilising vacuum pump pressing to sculpt the paper composite into more technical 3 dimensional shapes, and explore how this material might be formed using an industrial technique  to facilitate making in larger batches or repeat shapes, but still using the hands.

The hope is that I might be able to experiment with this once we can get back to campus.