Gabriela Gentile

This entrepreneurial design class was a great asset to my construction as a designer. I always knew that I would like to start my own business, however it’s really hard to do everything by your own without some guidance. This class provided us , students, so many great examples of amazing designers sharing their path and thoughts with us about what really is to be an entrepreneur. Knowing their struggle and their challenges as well as their success it really inspired me personally to really be an entrepreneur. Also , being able to put yourself out in the world, with such an amazing tool as Kickstarter, was an awesome experience. 

This second semester, for me personally was a little more challenging than the first one, having to deal with all the sourcing, production an shipping in such a short period was really challenging. But overall, I was able to balance everything and finalize in time.

I’m happy to say that this weekend I finally started my first batch of my Kickstarter project!

During our class this past week we visited the Experience Institute here at Chicago and had a really great talk with Victor Saad , founder of the program.

With the this program they are trying to create a new type of Higher Education based on experience, through apprenticeships, self-guided projects, meetups, and coaching, they create a space within higher education that helps individuals build creative confidence, agency, and a compelling portfolio. It’s a really interesting way of gaining experience through this new methodology. Everything began when Victor decided that he was gonna take one year off for a self-made Masters Program based on apprenticeship and experience, a project that he named a Leap Year. The result of this year of experience ended up as a book that was featured at Kickstarter. With the help of 342 backers the project successfully raised $31,049.

Inspired by that experience that he have, he had a question in mind : How might we establish experience as a creative form of learning? So he developed this new type of education that provides transformative lessons and costs far less than current models. During our conversation he gave us some incredible advices , such as things that are really relevant in the market as interdisciplinary competencies like :    - Self Awareness - Storytelling - Community Building - Operations - Human Centered design.  

After establishing the Experience Institute, he also wanted to provide some part of what is offered in the Institute for a much broad audience for a less expensive value. So, Also using Kickstarter he successfully funded with the help of 588 backers  and raising $49,736, the Leap Kit to support individuals interested in learning something new, navigating their career and/or taking a path other than traditional higher education. 

A great idea that also helped to promote the Experience Institute with the community . It was truly inspiring to see all of that.

Last week we met the Gramovox team at their office where we talked with Pava Bapu , one of the co-founders of the company. They are a consumer electronics start-up that reimagines vintage audio design with modern technology . They used Kickstarter to launch their product, a bluetooth gramophone where they successfully raised $241,173 .

In their second campaign , with the floating record they reached the incredible mark of  $1,575,976 dollars . 

Hey everyone! My Name is Gabriela Gentile and I am a Design Student, currently studying abroad at University of Illinois at Chicago. During this past year studying at UIC, I could learn and experience so much more about Design, and specifically about Entrepreneur Design. In our entrepreneurial design class, each student developed a product to be launched on Kickstarter this semester and I developed LOCUS. 

The meaning of the word LOCUS comes from Latin, which means a central or main place where something happens or is found. With five different designs, the product is more than just a magnetic surface is an item that you can personalize the way that you want to, where it can be used to display and store your objects, pictures, notes and etc. It’s a place where you are always finding what it matters right before your eyes, a place to remember.

Developing this product, I was able to combine my passion to create beautifully crafted products with my entrepreneur side, launching this as my first independent project facing every steps of its creation,funding through shipping. I hope you enjoyed LOCUS and this could be something that you can share with your community!      

LOCUS will be launched on Kickstarter soon!

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

You can see all of the other campaigns at http://always-be-hustling.tumblr.com/kck2016.

Best Regards,

Gabriela Gentile 

Hey everyone! Last week in our class he had the pleasure to talk with one of our faculty members and really talented designer Ted Burdett, from Strand Design. I felt that he was very passionated about what he does for a living, what is really inspirational. He talked to us about us as designers we are constantly challenged to came up with solutions, and there’s no mystery: we have to look around us. 

For me, the most interesting part of the talk was when he talked about the process of his Kickstarter campaign for Forneau .

The Fourneau Bread Oven is a cast iron bakeware device that will help you make artisanal quality bread in your home oven. An Idea that he and his wife and partner at the Design Studio discussed for years before launching at Kickstarter. The most interesting part of conversation was to see that everyone can face some difficulties, like he did with the manufactures , and the best thing to do is always be honest with your backers.

Another important thing is to know well your target market and get credibility out there. 

Last class, we had the pleasure to watch a lecture by Martin Kastner, the founder of Crucial Detail, where he talked about his work and his career as a designer. I’ve got confess that I was really impressed with his work, it’s such a original path and I was truly amazed by the results of his work, exploring the synergy between food and design.

I didn’t knew that this kind of job existed and how much effort was involved to create such an amazing experience for the customer. The food that he created is so inventive and so unique that they literally had to design tools just so people could consume it.

Another really interesting part of our talk was when he mentioned the experience of creating a Kickstarter project, The Porthole.

A couple weeks ago, our class had the pleasure to talk with Chei-We Wang and Taylor Levy from CW&T Studio, an Art & Design Studio. I thought that this part of their mission statement in their website was really interesting :

“We design for one. We firmly believe the most passionate and thoughtful designs are designed for an individual. If it’s super fine-tuned for one person, it’ll be unconventional, desirable and super-practical (at least for one person). But, surely there are thousands and maybe millions of others out there that will also appreciate the weird thing that we thought was good for just one”

I feel that this really fulfill the impression that I had of then in our talk, and it really connects with the thought that they said that was better to have 100 loyal fans than a 10000 of mediocre fans. It was really nice to talk with two people so open about their challenges and risks as entrepreneur designers. 

They talked about how was the production and challenges for this beautiful Kickstarter project Pen Type-A.

Pen Type-A is a minimal pen and ruler sleeve made for Hi-Tec-C ink cartridges. All of its parts are machined out of solid stainless steel and the sleeve is laser engraved with ruler markings.The production of this pen was supported for 4,049 backers and was successfully crowd-funded on August 15, 2011 making it the 6th most funded project on Kickstarter. They started to manufacture the product in China were they produced 6.000 Pen Type-A, but now, due to some problems with manufacturers, the production it’s made in Vermont, USA.