Year 12’s James, Faith, Kat and Ollie, along with Raph, Lucy, Lulu and Kira were tasked to develop a product from leather, and manufacture a small batch as part of Year 12 Design Enterprise. Items are entirely hand made using traditional leatherwork methods.
Alongside prototypes which were created ahead of finalising ideas, students also developed a brand identity, packaging and promotional video; part of the brief was that the products had to be high quality in order to be marketed and sold to the public.
Group 1 chose leather notebooks, branding them ‘Valleymade’.
Group 2 chose card wallets branded ‘Woodbridge Wallets’.
Presentations were made to Miss Norman and her sister Hannah Norman in School. Hannah, who is an accessory designer specialising in small leather goods/bags, jewellery and sunglasses and who works freelance for companies such as Céline, Mulberry and the Louis Vuitton Group commented,
“I thought overall both groups presented extremely well and were engaging, enhanced by the media of film telling their story. I especially liked how they kept their school in mind. Team one’s whale logo was particularly nicely thought out and its clean style lended itself really well to logo/ branding design. The overall products were beautifully executed. The reclaimed wooded boxes and packaging were finished to a very high standard too.”
Year 12 Faith’s own experience of Design Enterprise:
“The leatherwork enterprise project served as a brand new experience to learn from that, as a group, we hadn’t done before. Learning how to work as a group at the beginning to successfully solving problems together and completing our objectives by the end, gave us experiences that can help us in the future in the workplace through how we communicate and work alongside each other. Seeing all the work that we’d created come together at the end, alongside seeing the other group’s work, made for a great end to the project as we learnt how to talk about our products and our reasons for the steps taken within our design process, alongside being able to see the other group’s process and outcomes through their presentations. “
Products will be made available to purchase very soon, information to follow; all profits will be donated to a charity chosen by Year 12 students, with the remainder used to re-stock materials ready for the next year’s new enterprise.
