I’m in a growing discord group started by my friend Michael that has incredible and inspiring designers and friends in it. This was the first design challenge I participated in and the prompt was “Weight.” We could interpret the prompt however we wanted and with whatever medium. I had worked with clay in the past and thought that it would be cool and appropriate to make something that had physical weight to it. As I was planning, I was talking to Michael and he had started his project with the dictionary definition and that’s where I ended up.

“Weight: a body’s relative mass or the quantity of matter contained by it, giving rise to a downward force; the heaviness of a person or thing.” – Oxford Languages 

So your weight is essentially the matter of you, or you matter. I thought this was a clever and attractive double meaning and perfect to build from.

For my project I created a desk weight that symbolizes your inherent value and impact on the world by merely existing. It is meant to be a gentle reminder of the joy of life and that by having weight on this earth, U Matter.