Fold with Trust
- Jul 16
- 3 min read
Written by: William
If you were a sports bar regular in Seattle from February to April of this year, you may have seen six or seven individuals taking up a large table with beers, hotdogs, work bags, an excessive portfolio, and copious amounts of creased paper. This was a VTI three-part after-work origami project called “Fold with Trust” - a play on one of the company’s core values: Fly with Trust.
Fold with Trust wasn’t supposed to be a three-session activity; when I had suggested the idea to Cullen, I thought that it could be done in a day. But as is the case with many engineering tasks, an initial estimate is often a grossly optimistic one if you’re not careful.
I decided that we make paper airliners for the incredibly nuanced reason that VTI is an aviation company. Ironically though, these planes are not designed to fly well, a fact exemplified months later when one of them was swept out of our office window by the wind, and only managed to cross a measly third of the narrow road we overlook (mind you, this was from one of the higher floors of our building).
Just because these planes don’t fly well doesn’t mean they are easy to make. Scattered throughout the pattern are various technical hurdles including “squash folds”; a “petal fold”; and the notorious “open sink,” a difficult fold that extended Fold with Trust into multiple sessions (diagrams of these folds can be found here).
There are also harsh realities of origami that came to light when folding this pattern. For example:
Paper is not an infinitely thin square. As you add folds onto your project, the fact that your sheet has width becomes more relevant. Flaps refuse to lay flat or don’t take exactly the shape you were expecting. In an ideal world, every fold would be mathematically perfect, but much like engineering, perfection is an impossible standard. Learning how to work with and around the natural challenges of the real world is essential.
Paper is not uniform. Irregularities in the internal structure of the paper bias it towards certain folds that may be nearly but not exactly the fold you want to make. Letting the paper choose your folds can make future folds more difficult; just as making too many fast but unsound decisions in engineering can make building on top of previous work more difficult.
The model did not lie flat for some sections. When the model is three-dimensional, you have to dedicate one of your hands to preserving the model’s shape while the other does the folding. Just like when building multiple systems in software development, you need a holistic understanding of the product and coordination between the different parts.
So, how did our VTI engineers overcome this daunting armada of paper-based obstacles? Via a pack mentality.
Throughout the sessions, our team got to translate their virtual teamwork skills to something more hands on. As we progressed through the sessions, information relaying chains naturally formed. A noisy bar doesn’t lend well to sharing specific details to everyone at the same time. When someone successfully made a difficult fold, they were able to show their neighbors how to do it. The team also brought levity to the table via their intermittent wisecracks, including joking about who they would sell their airplane to. Embracing a pack mentality eased some frustration when the folding got tough.
Overall, Fold with Trust was a success. Not only was it a great team bonding opportunity, but it was a chance to give something that would otherwise seem trivial a deeper meaning. Every day they walk into the office, our Seattle engineers can proudly gaze upon the planes that adorn their windowsills knowing that they overcame adversity with the help of coworkers (and a few pints of beer).
If you are curious to make the plane for yourself, instructions can be found here (or by looking up “origami airliner instructions” in your favorite search engine).
