April 07, 2025
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IVCC to host MIMIC Fair on April 16

Fair showcases student imagination, innovation

By Maribeth M. Wilson
Designers can play too, and what better way to test out a product you are marketing? Olivia Lund’s move (left) topples a block-puzzle game as Maclane Rinearson and Eli Keighin watch. Games, puzzles and other gardening and gaming products designed by IVCC CAD students will be displayed and sold at the annual MIMIC Fair April 16.

Designers can play too, and what better way to test out a product you are marketing? Olivia Lund’s move (left) topples a block-puzzle game as Maclane Rinearson and Eli Keighin watch. Games, puzzles and other gardening and gaming products designed by IVCC CAD students will be displayed and sold at the annual MIMIC Fair on Wednesday, April 16. (Photo provided by Peggy Schneider)

Illinois Valley Community College will host its annual Making Industry Meaningful In College (MIMIC) Fair on Wednesday, April 16, which is celebrating 30 years of showcasing products engineered and designed by computer-aided design students.

The one-day fair will be set up from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the college cafeteria. It is open to the public and products are available for purchase.

The spring activity actually begins months earlier as students imagine products they can perfect, manufacture and sell. Over the years, the array of products has ranged from home decor and gadgets to leisure items or space – and time-savers. Products this year reflect the gardening and gaming theme.

IVCC Student Olivia Lund has been working out kinks in one of the gardening projects: a tall sunflower-shaped lamp with a secret compartment to hold a door key. She had to decide how to fashion a flexible flower stem so it could still support a light, then finesse the screw-on lid of the secret compartment so it was sturdy but easy to tighten.

 “They see the process. How does anything get made? You keep trying until it works,” Program Coordinator Dorene Data said in a news release. “A lot of the designs are mechanical, and I remind them they also have to appeal to the public, to be esthetically pleasing or ergonomic.”

In addition to the indoor lamp-key safe and an outdoor key safe developed by Lund, the 2025 lineup of products includes a seed display rack and a seed starter tray designed by Maclane Rinearson, and a clamp to connect and extend bamboo plant stakes developed by Eli Keighin.

From the gaming side of things comes an IVCC-themed dice game developed by Mitch Wall, Rinearson’s 3-D puzzle cube that comes complete with a puzzle-solver aid, and a building-block game with a twist developed by Tyler Graves and designed to challenge the most dexterous player. True to the fair’s alliterative theme, the students call it Genga.

Like students before him, Rinearson designed something that he would use.

“I am an outdoorsy person, and I like gardening. I have a whole lot of seeds at home in a Ziploc bag, and I wanted a stand where I could see them all,” he said in a news release.

In partnering on projects, Rinearson and Keighin volleyed ideas back and forth.

“I have the initial idea of how it should look, and Eli makes changes I didn’t know how to do. He knows how to go about improving a design,” Rinearson said in a news release.

Keighin says one of his skills is bringing ideas to paper so that they make sense to everyone.

The final products are starting to appear, and Data propels students toward the next key step: actively selling the product.

For information, contact Data at dorene_data@ivcc.edu.

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