TRIALS & TRIBULATIONS OF A DESIGN GRADUATE

The story of this project starts mid 2014, I had just graduated from COFA with a bachelor of design. After catching up with many of my peers, much of the evenings conversation consisted of “what are you doing now?” and “I just got a job here, its great!”. Not yet having landed a job in the industry like many of my fellow graduates, I left feeling disheartened. Bright and early the following morning I was on the job hunt. I was going to find my dream job in design! After all that is how it happens right?

After many unfruitful searches, a few applications later I had landed a job in the Kartell Flagship store as a Sales Consultant. I had my own work email and only few short months later my very own business card. I had made it!

The months passed by and my colleagues became my friends, I learnt invaluable lessons about the furniture industry and I genuinely enjoyed work. However as the year came to a close, we were told the unfortunate news of the store closure. I was out of a job again.

Now that I had all the free time in the world, I was determined to get back to my creative roots. I had missed being a maker, and to be completely honest I felt my year had been quite unproductive.

Over beers one warm evening in December, I made a new friend through a mutual pal of ours who also happened to be an aspiring young creative. We found ourselves chatting for hours about our dream design endeavours, though mostly about our mutual love (and guilty pleasure) of youtube. We shared our favourite content creators and marvelled at their weekly and even daily content creation.

Over the next couple of days, a thought occurred to me. Why not join the realms of weekly ‘content’ creators and design and make an object weekly? After convincing myself that this was indeed a ridiculous idea, I decided to go ahead with it. What did I have to lose? Only money, no biggie.

And so @one.a.week was born. Put simply my goal is to design and make a chair a week for the entirety of 2015. Some I build from scratch, some are up-cycled and some draw from the theme of Marcel Duchamps’ readymades. I use to make them all in my backyard, though have recently upgraded to a studio in Stanmore.

To have a look at what I have been up to so far this year, you can follow @one.a.week on Instagram or check out www.rachelvosila.com for more.

Rachel’s products will also be available soon directly through LOCAL DESIGN.