Founder, Aplat Inc.
Based in San Francisco, Shujan Bertrand is an advocate for sustainable local manufacturing, supporting local organic farms, and food producers, and donates 1% of profits to environmental and non-profit organizations. Shujan uses the art of origami principles for zero waste design and manufacturing. Through Aplat, she hopes to grow awareness for responsible design, creating new partnerships with sustainable companies and organizations who care about people and the planet.
Shu has worked internationally in Paris, Milan, and Seoul. She is an industrial designer with over 20 years of product design experience in soft goods design, advanced product development, design research, and strategy. She has impacted brands around the globe, translating user-centered insights into new product and business opportunities. She has led design teams and projects for studios like Astro Studios and IDEO, and for brands such as Incase, Steelcase, Nike, Samsung, LG Electronics, and Procter & Gamble. She has served on the design jury teams for IDEA and the Canne Lion Innovation Awards in France.
Known for her contributions to the advancement of women in industrial design and sustainable design, Shujan Bertrand, IDSA has used her unique skills for immense social good this year. She and her San Francisco-based design studio Aplat, which manufactures zero-waste products, quickly pivoted to producing PPE when the novel coronavirus began spreading worldwide in early 2020.
“In early March, before California’s shutdown, I was watching Europe and Asia struggle through the early stages of the pandemic,” Shujan recalls. “I paid close attention to the shortage and increasing demand for protective face masks and knew that I had to do something to help. Intuitively I began to prototype and refine over 50 designs and landed on the best mask design that fit over my family’s various face shapes and sizes, and for a sister who is a MD surgeon, wanting this design to support her needs first. With my factory across the street from the studio, in just two weeks, I was able to produce 10,000 masks to donate nationwide, to hospitals and essential healthcare workers.”
Aplat has since donated over 20,000 masks to frontline workers, and the free Aplat mask pattern has been downloaded over one million times across the world. “I’ve received letters and images from people who have made their own Aplat mask at home, connecting me to others during challenging and uncertain times,” Shujan says. The Aplat origami mask design also made the cover of INNOVATION magazine “Urgent Design” Summer 2020 issue, accompanied by Shujan’s article “Origami to the Rescue.”
Staying in business and making it through 2020 has been an accomplishment in and of itself for Shujan and her team at Aplat; although, much to their surprise, Aplat’s masks and matching culinary totes have now become the company’s best-selling products. “The intention was to manufacture masks as a temporary solution to serve the shortage and for donation only,” Shujan says, “but today we continue to provide Aplat origami masks in seven different colors. We use the same sustainability zero-waste designs and origami principles applied in the rest of our collection in our masks. All of our products are compostable and biodegradable at the end of their lifecycle.”
Shujan adds that her key motivation to get through this year has been her family and friends. “Our circle is small but strong,” she says. “Friendship is rooted in my design community, all of which are IDSA members or have served on the IDEA jury with me these past few years.” She also continues to be inspired by authenticity, zero-waste living, gardening, and nature.
Currently, she’s developing her home property into an outdoor social space with an edible garden, researching partnerships with emerging sustainable fiber companies to work into Aplat’s circular economy business model, and exploring how to continue to fold origami designs into the Aplat collection. “Every product we make scales into the family of golden ratios,” Shujan says. “In the future, we hope to publish an ‘Aplat Origami Design’ book filled with endless ideas of how to transform a single sheet into new forms.”
