What the Punk?
What the punk is Paper Punk?
Ultimately, Paper Punk is the love-child - the “Best of both worlds” between origami and Lego. Using the urban definition of “punk” which means “trick”, Paper Punk literally means to play a trick on paper. While paper is ever-present in our everyday lives, with Paper Punk this commonplace material is reimagined and transformed into a tool for creativity and education. A sheet of paper literally becomes a paper building block for your imagination with a few simple folds.
It all started in a creativity course I teach at Stanford’s d.school where four years ago students were assigned a simple dimensional thinking exercise. It took us about 1.5 years to prototype the patented interface and another year to get to market in a meaningful way.
The most distinguishing aspect of Paper Punk is the super smart fold-to-build play pattern and eye-candy outcome. While other contemporary construction paper-based craft kits create a sense of volume through slotting flat pieces into each other, nothing fully encloses space into modular building blocks like Paper Punk does.
One of the most rewarding aspects since starting Paper Punk has been knowing that I am helping people. Through my research project, I know empirically that building a Paper Punk can help to rewire your brain and increase your creative capacity, and that especially makes me very happy.
I am Grace Hawthorne. Mother, artist, author, educator and creator of Paper Punk. #MakeSomething
