Master Cylinder

My initial design for the pencil box called for drawers made up of concentric circles. After some brief experimentation I realized that this was not the most effective idea. There was no center of gravity and the cylindrical box tended to roll away.


This problem was solved by moving the center drawer down to the bottom of the larger drawer. A center of gravity was established and the cylinder was stable. Each drawer was decorated in a different patterned paper to suggest that each drawer was different. The large drawer was for storing markers and was therefore colorful, the inner drawer was designed for pencils and was therefore smaller and decorated in black and white. When I started getting feedback from other students I discovered that many had the impulse to turn the cylinder on its end to make a smaller footprint. My intention was for markers to be stored in the outer drawer, so keeping the cylinder horizontal was important to me.

April saved the day and suggested that the drawers should come out of opposite ends. By restricting access to one of the drawers if stood on end the container became less user friendly and people generally wanted to use the cylinder as it was intended. To reinforce the suggestion that the cylinder ought to remain horizontal, I made the drawer pulls over-sized so that the container could not be set on its end thereby ruining the markers.