Last week Thursday it was time again for the final internship task: Design a Yoyo! This year's task "Paper meets Couture" - the entire design of the Yoyo was to be made of paper. This presented Vincent Delgmann, FH Joanneum Graz, Sarah Franke and Sabrina Kuom, HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd, with the challenge of giving the yoyo enough weight to function.
Vincent decided on a parachute-like design of the yoyo and thus plays with the up and down instead of the rotational movement. Around the yoyo, multiple layers of small, folded paper create a kind of dress that lifts up and down as the yoyo unrolls. "Since paper as a subject and material allows for a lot of options, the temptation was to try a lot of things." However, due to the tight deadline, a concept had to be decided on quickly.
Sarah's Yoyo version "Loop" is characterized by a special folding technique and specially developed pattern made of origami paper. Because of the long paper fibers, origami paper is very resilient and can withstand complicated folds. Elegant folds and the three-dimensionality of the yoyo set it apart from the usual paper properties. The pleating fold is a key "couture element" found in Sabrina's "Flow" yoyo, originally coined by Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake. In addition to the cotton string and paper axis, she used origami paper, 10 circular paper discs, and six cylinders pressed from cardboard. She tested the various folding techniques on different types of paper, as each paper behaves differently. The special feature of the yoyo lies in the golden paper paintings. Once again, we can see, working on the same task shows a wide variety of creative results.
