Ohrna products are specifically designed to make your life just that little bit easier.
A tote that lets you keep your shoes or bottles separate from things you don’t want dirty or wet…A laptop sleeve with special pockets for your boarding pass, pen, paper and of course, your phone... A journal cover with an integrated penholder so you never have to worry about where that pen went…
Our designs are backed by a studied human-centered design sense and sensitivity that make our products as practical to use, as they are visually appealing.
Ohrna's objective is to combine traditional crafts and organic materials to make innovative, contemporary products of daily life.
We do this while always keeping in mind not just ease of use and beauty for the customer but also the abilities of makers who typically start out not as artisans, but as housewives or farmers, often with very limited sewing or embroidery skills. Understanding their context gives a greater appreciation of the quality of their work, and also helps us design to ensure that quality.
As all of our products are made by our rural women partners, our designs are not just easy to use – they’re easy to make and easy to teach as well! For example, all our bags are designed for manufacture as a ‘bag-in-a-bag’, to make the finishing so much easier to achieve with in-home sewing machines.
We are thus constantly seeking to balance our designs to be useful, practical, visually pleasing, marketable and yet within our makers' abilities that allows us to achieve the best possible handmade quality.
Our main design philosophy is that there is much beauty in simplicity! We’re always experimenting with different designs, patterns and colors to express our beliefs through our products...and that is what makes each one of them unique!
Considering design as a tool of Inclusion and global outreach, Ohrna presented at the Interaction Designers Association Education Summit in Lyon, France in Feb 2018 on the topic ‘Can Design with a Purpose Inspire the Underserved?’
So an Ohrna product you buy will not just make your life easier… it’ll also make someone else’s life better.
Ohrna believes in responsible design. Our focus is use of sustainable materials, employment of rural women, preservation of rich craft traditions and packaging in up cycled materials.
We train for free and often employ women with minimum skills. We design to customers' needs and also constantly adapt our designs for ease of making, for our makers. Many of our artisans are from Mann Deshi Foundation.