The aim of this course was to take inspiration from a word, understand what that word meant to a certain group of customers and to translate the understanding into a surface that had meaningful colour, material and finish. (CMF) 

My inspiration was confidence and my target group was the youth, between 16 and 25 yrs of age. After conducting interviews and analysing it, I had to define confidence according to what it meant to my target group. 

I chose the equilateral triangle to be my formal inspiration as it has a strong apex, an upward, achieving direction and a stable, self assured base. The surface had to have bold lines and should not be flashy, but still stand out. The strong material had to have a raw and textured matt finish. The colours too were strong and bold and exuded confidence. 

I looked at structures and architecture for inspiration. Pyramidal structures with strong frame works worked best for me. I also looked at structures in glass and acrylic. 

I finally came up with 2 explorations that were laser etched on translucent red acrylic. Both of them were based on the same concept of triangles. One of them is based on triangulation and the other on tesselation. In both cases there is a unification and growth of smaller triangles to form one strong solid triangles. This signifies the journey and the growth of the youth to achieve their goal and become confident. 

The developed surface was then to be applied to a product as well. Since my target group was the youth, I thought of applying the surface to various products like a wristwatch dial, a helmet, a backpack, headphones, a waterbottle or even an inkpen.