From Ideation to Manufacture

For Katlego Tshuma, winning the 2020 Nando’s Hot Young Designer talent search is just the beginning of his journey towards understanding what it takes to bring an innovative idea to life. Here he shares some of the lessons he has learnt along the way

TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPH MALIBONGWE TYILO

Katlego Tshuma and Adriaan Hugo sit on the final version of the bench they collaborated to manufacture

"here’s what we imagine, there’s what we understand — and then there’s what we execute,” says Katlego Tshuma, the 2020 winner of the Nando’s Hot Young Designer (HYD) talent search competition. His T Sangu bench concept that won him the top spot was inspired by the ubiquity of the grass mat in traditional African cultures, where it is used as a screen as well as to sit and sleep on. Since winning the competition, Katlego has expanded on his initial Sangu concept to design several pieces that make up the collection. He says, “The Nando’s Hot Young Designer talent search is a design competition, it’s not necessarily a manufacturing competition. “So, for me, what was important was to develop an idea that could be executed in various ways, while maintaining the integrity of the overall concept.” Through a collaboration initiated by Clout/SA, the first of the pieces from Katlego’s Sangu collection was brought to life by drawing on the manufacturing expertise of Adriaan Hugo, the designer and co-founder of the award-winning design studio Dokter and Misses. More than a straightforward collaboration, the process has also been a learning curve for Katlego, whose background is in the advertising industry, with absolutely no furniture manufacturing experience.

The original Sangu bench design that won Nando's HYD 2020 talent search competition

‘There’s a difference between rendering a design and actually manufacturing it. This process has taught me a lot. One of the main lessons being that it’s nice to have great design, but it’s useless if you can’t manufacture it’

Katlego says that initially, when he submitted his drawings to Adriaan, the industrial designer couldn’t work with them.

Adriaan explains: “There was a divide between the rendered design and what it could be. That gap had to be bridged; some development had to happen to make the design manufacturable. So I thought it might be good to get Katlego involved in the manufacturing in the factory.”

Over a few weeks, the pair reworked some elements of the design, which is made up of about 43 pieces, resulting in the Sangu bench.

It was Adriaan’s first time collaborating with a first-time furniture designer.

“Each collaboration is different. And it works when both parties bring their best, when they are invested in the project and want to see it succeed. This worked very well because there’s that idea that everyone brought something to the table.” O