After a sketching meander that included a date gone wrong because I couldn’t stop looking at the squirrels and reflections on the structural forces that enabled ubiquitous Enid Blyton books within my Zimbabwean elementary school – I landed on the idea of a mouth bottle opener. 

Contemporary world events have also had me thinking of indigeneity and I wanted to pay homage to the intelligence of indigenous design. This led me to draw inspiration from West African scarification traditions, Native American totem poles and the Easter Island statues. 

Armed with this thematic grounding, I began the engineering design process.