Dance Anatomy Ring and Earrings by Ksenia Zagaynova

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DI: What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?

KZ : I love dancing and find some kind of magic in the movement of dancers. My idea was to capture the moment and translate it into graphic language and further into real objects.

DI: What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?

KZ : The main focus was to analyze the processes occurring in the body of a dancer and to choose a principle that would allow to translate them into graphic language and into real wearable objects, bionic and sophisticated.

DI: What are your future plans for this award winning design?

KZ : I'm planning to dye these pieces in different colors using gradients as well and selling them in the Russian market.

DI: How long did it take you to design this particular concept?

KZ : The whole proccess took me around 3 months – from idea to research, 3D modeling and printing and implementation.

DI: Why did you design this particular concept? Was this design commissioned or did you decide to pursuit an inspiration?

KZ : This design was my diploma (graduation) project in the Higher British School of Art and Design in Moscow. So I chose this topic as dancing inspires me greatly.

DI: Is your design being produced or used by another company, or do you plan to sell or lease the production rights or do you intent to produce your work yourself?

KZ : This design is produced by myself for my brand XENIA GAI.

DI: What made you design this particular type of work?

KZ : As I've mentioned before, I've always been inspired by dancing and as I design wearable objects, I wanted to capture the processes ocurring in a human body and transfer them into jewelry.

DI: Where there any other designs and/or designers that helped the influence the design of your work?

KZ : I was mainly inspired by the captured positions of contemporary dancers.

DI: Who is the target customer for his design?

KZ : In my view, the target customer is a woman that would like to express herself by adding interesting accents to her simple look, aged 30-45, working in creative industries.

DI: What sets this design apart from other similar or resembling concepts?

KZ : I think it's the shape and structure which is very sophisticated and a light weight as it's 3D printed in nylon.

DI: How did you come up with the name for this design? What does it mean?

KZ : As I studied dancing and the processes ocurring in the human body, namely the tention in different muscles, I called it Dance Anatomy.

DI: Which design tools did you use when you were working on this project?

KZ : Research, sketching, 3D modeling using Rhino and Tsplines.

DI: What is the most unique aspect of your design?

KZ : As I studied the dancers and my references were the exact dancing positions, I would say that the shape of each piece is unique.

DI: Who did you collaborate with for this design? Did you work with people with technical / specialized skills?

KZ : I collaborated with the company that prints objects in nylon from 3D models.

DI: What is the role of technology in this particular design?

KZ : The role of technology is crucial here as without knowledge of 3D modeling programs it would be difficult to create the needed shape and further to implement it in material using 3D printing technology as it is hard to create these pieces in metal and they would be fragile. Nylon allows flexibility and the pieces are less fragile and more light and some of them can be worn both as pendants and earrings.

DI: Is your design influenced by data or analytical research in any way? What kind of research did you conduct for making this design?

KZ : I took pictures of dancers in captured dance positions and analyzed muscle tension and stretching in different parts of their bodies. In order to detect the state of muscles I consulted the anatomy book and a former dancer. I used a solid color for those muscles that were keeping balance and were the most tense, the waved lines - for muscles being more relaxed and straight lines - in order to show the stretched parts.

DI: What are some of the challenges you faced during the design/realization of your concept?

KZ : The hardest part of the research lied in the detection of the right principle that would allow transferring a dancer position into graphic language. I studied different aspects of dancing: the geometry of different dance positions, the cinesphere of a dancing person but these principles didn’t lead to a necessary esthetic result. In the end the research of the muscles behavior allowed to achieve the right result. Secondly, it was hard to create the 3D models of the objects as they consist of many lines that couldn’t intersect.

DI: How did you decide to submit your design to an international design competition?

KZ : I already took part in Adesign Award competition with my other collection Transforma that won a Silver Award. I decided to submit this project too as it is my graduation work and is sort of a quintessence of my knowledge and effort.

DI: What did you learn or how did you improve yourself during the designing of this work?

KZ : First of all I learned a lot about dancing and the aspects that constitute the theory of dance. Secondly I studied the Tsplines plugin in order to create the needed shape. And finally, it was the first time I worked with nylon.