The card which would not close

Text C: an original fiction extract.

Sana's first pop-up card looked magnificent on the workshop table. A paper city rose from its centre, with towers, bridges and a tiny red bus. She had been invited to spend a day with a paper engineer, Ivo, who designed cards for a small publisher. Sana expected him to admire the number of buildings she had fitted onto one sheet. He asked her to close it.

The first tower struck the bridge. The bus folded against a roof, and a narrow paper support bent in the wrong direction. Sana stopped pressing before anything tore. Ivo said a card had at least two important shapes: the one it showed when open and the one it needed while travelling. Sana had spent all her time designing the first. Her beautiful city had no convincing way of becoming flat.

They made a plain trial version without printed windows. Sana disliked it immediately. The buildings looked like dull white blocks, and the bus was only a rectangle. However, she could now see which pieces moved together. Ivo asked her to open it slowly, pausing whenever two parts approached each other. A bridge which seemed generous from above occupied too much space during the middle of its journey. They shortened it and changed the angle of a fold.

The publisher's editor, Bea, visited after lunch. She held the revised card by one edge and opened it with the other hand. Sana wanted to tell her that the city looked better when held level. Bea explained that customers would not all arrange themselves around the card like its designer. Some would open it quickly, some cautiously, and some would prefer a simpler movement. She asked whether the bus had to rise separately from the road. Sana had no answer except that the separate movement was impressive.

Ivo did not remove it for her. He asked her to make two versions and compare them. In the simpler one, the bus travelled with the road instead of lifting above it. It lost a small dramatic effect but stopped catching the roof. Sana discovered that removing a mechanism could leave more attention available for the city rather than merely make the card less ambitious.

The last test used an envelope. The card fitted, but a projecting corner caught when it was taken out. Sana trimmed the corner and then had to adjust the printed border. One change kept reaching into another. Ivo showed her the notes from an earlier design, where a tiny alteration near the fold had required several drawings to be revised. The finished version had looked so simple that Sana would never have imagined the work behind it.

Before leaving, she opened her first city again. Its extra tower still pleased her. She asked whether she could keep it beside the revised version rather than throw it away. Ivo said it might remind her what she had wanted and what she had discovered. Bea asked for photographs of the final design and the plain trial, with notes explaining the changes. Neither offered to put the card into production that afternoon.

On the train, Sana kept the two cities flat on her knees. One could not travel inside an envelope; the other could. She opened the working one only slightly and watched the bridge begin its movement. For the first time, the unfinished part of opening seemed as interesting as the view which appeared at the end.

You are Sana. A student magazine interviewer asks about your workshop visit. Write your answers to these questions: “What did you expect, and what surprised you?” “How did testing change the design?” “What will you take from the experience?”

In your response:

• explain your initial ambition and the problems it concealed
• analyse how the trial versions and different users affected your decisions
• explain what you learned about design work and your future approach

Base your response on Text C, developing its ideas in your own words. Write about 250 to 300 words. Up to 10 marks are available for reading and up to 10 marks for writing.