Kevin Brand, an Industrial Design lecturer at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, has won the Mercedes-Benz South Africa Art and Public Spaces award for 2008.

Brand, who has lectured in Industrial Design for 17 years at the institution, has always been interested in art and design. To put it simply, he states, “I have always loved building things.”

Artists have to be nominated for the prestigious award which focuses on the artist’s career contribution to the industry. Owing to Brand winning the award he will have an opportunity to exhibit his work in Berlin, Pretoria and Stellenbosch. A competition catalogue will also be published with a large section presenting Brand’s work.

Brand, who doesn’t plan to leave the institution any time soon, enjoys reading, movies and golf during his spare time.

The University, which has a strong reputation for its design courses, is truly privileged to have a member of staff who has the calibre, skills and knowledge of Kevin Brand.

By Tyrone Van Heerden

Written by CPUT News
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The Industrial Design first-year students have again shown the power of design to change the perceived value of a material.

The Department was offered timber offcuts by a local furniture-producing factory, Woodlam. The aim of the project was to find a way to use the waste to create employment for small-scale craftspeople. Lecturers Kevin Brand, Craig Thomas and Veronica Barnes visited the factory and retrieved a huge pile of offcuts (largely hardwoods, but including some veneer) from the refuse bins, which found a new home in the corner of the first-year Industrial Design studio.

Students then worked in groups of 4 or 5 on a design project to devise a family of wooden toys.  After agreeing on the design, the students made their toys from the large pile of offcuts available to them. They worked mainly with hand tools, to simulate the limitations of the craftsperson’s environment. The toy families had intriguing titles such as African Robots, Endangered Animals, Global totem pole, and Animal buses.

Soren Lassen, owner of Woodlam Furniture visited the CPUT Cape Town campus recently to see the results.  He was astonished by the innovation and quality of the results.  All the toy families had made excellent use of the variety of timber offcuts from the factory. These timber toys should be further developed in second year by the same group of Industrial Design students, and will hopefully be manufactured in larger numbers as products made from offcuts – as part of a job creation project.

By: Veronica Barnes, Industrial Design Lecturer

Written by CPUT News
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It wasn’t just the quality of these stunning mosaics that blew Industrial Design staff and students away.

Gale force winds nearly wrecked the entire project, which is a new feature of the Cape Town Design building.

The orientation week project by Industrial Design students took a week to complete.

The mosaic tiles are cut out of recycled magazines and hand-glued to the mountain-facing side of the building.

Each image features an important industrial design which impacted hugely society from simple things like a teapot and watering can to the iconic Behrens fan.

Industrial Design lecturer Veronica Barnes, who managed the project with colleagues Vikki Du Preez and Kevin Brand, says the assignment had a triple purpose.

VIEW FROM ABOVE: The bland wall is given a makeover by the colourful mosaics.

Students got to work together as a team, improve their environment and get an introduction into design history.

“We were having a great time but the wind kept blowing the pixels off,” says Barnes.

“We re-adjusted the project slightly so that some of the work could be done inside and we are very happy with the effect.”

Students started by prepping their wall, making at least three design sketches then using the donated magazines, they cut out the mosaic tiles and made a mock-up on cardboard.

Once the mock-up was approved by a lecturer the group applied the mosaics to the wall and sealed the design with a mixture of wood glue and water.

On Friday students presented their designs to one another making sure the entire class understood the significance of each image.

By Lauren Kansley

Written by CPUT News
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