T-Minus is an intensive, one-week project that unites all of the students in the Industrial Design department at RIT in collaborative teams. The 2018-2019 challenge was to use wood from a historic tree that had fallen on campus to commemorate the 50 years of the new campus. I worked with a team of four other students and we came up with a series of glass coasters using the wood from the tree as the base. Each of the coasters includes wood from the tree, cut to create a map of the campus decade by decade. Although I was the only first-year student on my team, it was my critical design input to have each have coaster commemorate the unique campus building footprint for each decade, showing the growth and progression through time.
My T-Minus team won our category challenge as well as the overall Students Choice Award, and thus our design went into production. A limited number were sold in Shop1, the on campus gallery, and the University employed them as gifts to distinguished donors to RIT.
