The China Trip (Part 2)

 

Recently, I took a trip to the wonderful land of China. It was one of Otis College of Art and Design's first trips to the country.

Our group from Otis was nearly 100% female, with the exception of two of our group leaders. As I mentioned before, the trip was part of a class/workshop associated with Hape, and it is part of Otis's Integrated Learning Program (IL). I suppose the whole point of IL is to get people from different departments and majors to work together on a project that is outside of one’s comfort zone. Our group was mostly made up of Toy Design majors, a few Product Design majors, one (or was it two?) Digital Media student(s), and one Fine Arts major. To add to the Otis team we met up with a few students from China Academy of the Arts (an amazing academy). Our "mission" for the workshop was to design a toy for Hape's Bamboo line.

That being said, the first morning in China we got a tour of Hape's factory. It was impressive; I was expecting the Time Magazine version of things to be honest. The talk of poor working conditions, underpaid near slave labor workers, and cutting corners to save a buck, NONE of that here. Granted, this sort of stuff does exist sadly, but it was nice to see a company that sets their own standards high and strives to push it higher. It was also nice to see firsthand the means of production with children's toys. On one hand it helps to see how things are done when designing a product. It becomes easier when you know what is possible to do in the production process.

At the end of the tour we had a Product Safety demonstration, which is basically a lecture in toy safety. (Something Drew went over before we left.) One of the things that makes designing and selling toys particularly challenging is passing the safety standards.

At the end of this long day we were driven to dinner at a theme-park-like restaurant to meet interns, families and from the company (this included previous workshop "veterans" from the Bauhaus). The entrance had a gigantic Buddha statue and was designed to look like a forest. There were large rooms for dinner parties, ours was an outdoor theme, others are of different sizes and some are enclosed. It was nice that they had a "vegetarian" table, so I did not have to guess what I was eating. So that was that, now on with the "documentations"... :) . Next post is about the "Bamboo Ocean".

Our breakfast cards for Home Inn. Everyday one of the employees knocks at our door and drops these off. They are basically our lunch tickets.

Home Inn map. We were advice to take one in case we got lost, to just show this to a taxi driver. It was a good idea.

This lovely lady (hotel employee) saw me sketching her and asked if she may keep it. After I said okay she ripped it out of my book. She seemed really happy about it.

Mostly spent time drawing people at breakfast. 

Introduction and welcome meeting with CEO of Hape

Dinner at that restaurant

The China Trip (Part 1)

Hello one and all!

Recently, I took a trip to the wonderful land of China. It was one of Otis College of Art and Design's first trips to the country. The trip was part of a class/workshop associated with Hape, an award winning and environmentally friendly company (I encourage you to read over their company's web pages to learn more about their practices.) They are one of the largest distributors of wooden toys in the world, and had asked us students to join their workshop to design a toy for their bamboo line. 

Luckily I got stuck with these guys on the flight. Drew Plakos, bottom, is one of our team leaders, an instructor at Otis

A fella we meet while waiting for our flight

The trip was a month long stay in Beilun, China. We left LAX, stopped in Tokyo, Japan and made our way to Shanghai, China. (Finally, after such a long flight!) The first day we arrived the class was bused, a three hour ride, to the hotel, Home Inn. It was past midnight when we arrived, and you would not have known it was a city of thousands by looking at the streets. It was like driving through a ghost town, dark and empty. But when sunrise would come in the next few hours the city would spring to life.

The nearly three hour bus ride from the airport to the hotel.

 
When we checked in we were asked to turn in our passports to the front desk, they were returned the next day. I and my roommate lucked out in terms of rooms, being one of the few in our group who had an actual window with a view to the outside world. No kidding, most of the rooms had windows to the hallway.

We began the tour to the Hape factory the next morning. It was interesting to see, for the first time, how a factory, like Hape's, operates in China.  That was a very long day.

(PS This blog is not really linked to this http://www.thetravelingsketchbook.blogspot.com/ but it is a GREAT blog and you should watch that too.)