After Effects? Why not

Day 2 of learning after effects

3D phone interface

Last project before I broke up for Christmas. We had a week to design 3D phone interface here is what I came up with 

AutoCAD: MGM drawing of a building

Creating my first building in AutoCAD at college

Why I Design

Growing up I would visit my grandma almost every Sunday. I remember she would create pieces of art that she would frame and hang on her living room walls, sometimes I would be lucky to see her produce and interest me more, where these pieces of 3D art that would be created by cutting certain parts of a 2D image and layering them on top of the main image to give it a 3D effect. This would influence me hugely into being creative, wanting to produce my own pieces of art from anything I could use, mostly I would draw nature and landscapes, as nothing in nature is the same there is always something new and interesting to find and look at. Each Christmas I would receive art tools and materials to help me be creative in this way, that I still have and use to this day. Wanting to create something that someone would want to own was why I produced the pieces of art and for it to be admired by who saw it. The feeling of when someone actually likes a piece of work you have done compared to a piece of, for example written work just isn’t the same I feel, you get more emotion from the person and more likely to talk to you about that work. Her husband would produce furniture such as side boards that would be used in the house also just from wood and the tools in their garage. Me being a young boy I was adventures and wanted to find out the tools and methods he used to make them. This encouraged me to want to know how a lot of things are put together and with a screw driver in hand I would take apart products to find out what I could find inside.  Finding interesting parts, functions to products interested me feeling like it was a challenge to find out as much as I could about the inside of the product.

Being able to express myself creatively has always been something I have chosen to do from primary school to this day. Art and design has always been my favorite subject growing up during school, I would actually enjoy doing the homework compared to other subjects. When it came to picking options for my GCSEs I had choose graphics, resistant materials and a BTEC in art and design. These where the subjects I felt I could express myself in a way that I enjoyed and freely, something I felt restricted to in the other subjects there wasn’t a text book to follow from there was more of a freedom. My first experience of designing and making furniture was at secondary school for my resistant materials final project at GCSE level. The project was to design and make a bedside table from old exam tables that had be weathered outside. Putting a lot of hours into producing my final design that I was happy with was a task I enjoyed, sharing the same view as William Morris “What he saw as the joy of labour was the key to creating meaningful everyday possessions” (Sudjic, 2008, p. 23).Not only did I like my final piece, but so do the class and teachers at the school, having offers to buy it from me just from students meant a lot to me, creating something that people wanted. After that project I was motivated into pushing this subject choosing to do design at college continuing to enjoy the subject, learning seeing new interesting designs and technologies and now onto this furniture and product design course.

Attraction is what makes us like or dislike design. In today’s world of advertisement and competition in everything, it seems design needs to be attractive to the public having form over function from their first look at the design. From Daniel Berlyne’s research he found that “Before an object is judged attractive, it is often said to be interesting. If it is interesting enough, it will hold the observer’s attention for long enough for the object to become familiar and hence attractive.” (Baxter, 1995, p. 43).It only takes seconds for us humans to judge if what they are looking at is attractive, if so they are more intrigued into what they are looking at.  In emotional design by Donald A. Norman he says that "attractive things do work better, their attractiveness produces positive emotions, causing mental processes to be more creative more tolerant of minor difficulties." (Norman, 2004, p. 9).If a design is to produce these positive emotions then the product would more likely to be a desirable design that people will want to own. An example of attractiveness and how people perceive looks can be seen from Universal Principles of Design showing the first presidential debate between Richard Nixon and Robert Kennedy. “People who listened to the debate by radio believed Nixon to be the winner. However, people who watched the debate on TV came to a very different conclusion.” (Lidwell, Holden, & Butler, 2003, p. 27).  Even with something as important as presidential debate, attractiveness proves to be vital in what people choose to like. This effect of attractiveness is the same for design people can walk into a shop and choose objects without reading the specifications and just buy the product just on how it looked when they first saw it. Or an advertisement on a billboard the viewer only has a few seconds to see it before they drive past, making the design and attractiveness important.

Colour has been used so cleverly in design be it branding, logos, products everything to do with design. In the Universal Principles of Design it says “colour is used in design to attract attention, group elements, indicate meaning and enhance aesthetics” (Lidwell, Holden, & Butler, 2003, p. 38). Not only is colour important to how people react to objects it is shown and proven in nature also. The tail feathers of a male peacock for example are used to attract the females to mate, flowers that are bright yellows to attract bees to take their nectar. This use of colour to attract people is very important with all areas of design. When choosing to buy a new Mac Deyan Sudjic in the language of things he describes how the black laptop stands out compared to the white one saying “black has been used over the years by many other design conscious manufacturers to suggest seriousness” (Sudjic, 2008, p. 27). Even though the laptop was more expensive to the white laptop he chooses the black on due to the colour of its outer shell. This symbolism of colour is more personal and can mean different things to different people. He goes onto say “ while the machine is black the cables are white, There is nothing about this lack of colour coordination that makes the computer work less fluently, and yet I feel my sense of disappointment rising as I unwrapped my purchase” (Sudjic, 2008, p. 28)This disappointment from just the cables being a different colour shows that it is personal taste as apple are well known for their white cables shown in there iPod adverts where the product is the only white thing.

The throwaway society Rob walker quotes “We tend to want the new things, they can do something that has a different look, a fresher look, a newer look, a new now.” (Walker, R. “Objectified” [Film] 2009). Design should be something people want to keep, a need for objects rather than a want. This constant wanting new design creates so much waste as the new things that are designed seem to do the same function but a newer look. This could be why sustainability seems to be a must in designing for the future as most of the new designs are there to replace old ones, there needs to be more thought into design, what the designs going to do, how long its life would be during use. Dieter Rams follows this view strongly saying “That’s what particularly bothers me today, the arbitrariness and thoughtlessness with which many things are produced and brought to market." (Rams,D. “Objectified” [Film] 2009).   Victor Papanek shows the extremes of why function is vital in design and the problems that designers face by saying “Industrial design has put murder on a mass production basis. By designing criminally unsafe auto-mobiles that kill or maim nearly one million people around the world” (Papanek, 1972, p. 21).No matter what we design there is always the health and safety of the object to need to be considered. Facts of this today are that “1.3 million people are killed and 50 million injured on the world's roads” (Rodgers, 2011). This is a huge amount of problems that are caused from design and the dangers that come from it. Papanek then goes on to say”designers have become a dangerous breed.” (Papanek, 1972, p. 21). This backs up Dieter Rams with the thoughtlessness of design that designers can create. From this design in the future should be “innovative, highly creative, cross-disciplinary tool responsive to the true needs of men. It must be more research-oriented, and we must stop defiling the earth itself with poorly-designed objects and structures.” (Papanek, 1972, p. 22). A lot more care needs to be taken into design. More research needs to be conducted and realism into the design needs to be taken into consideration to see the outcome of their designs to flatten out the negatives.

The reasons as to why I design are that I personally enjoy designing products that people would love to own or have in their homes. Producing them also finding out what will and won’t work, and showing a growth from a sketch to 3D object so I can actually touch and look at the object 

I have designed. The freedom of designing having new challengers is something I like to do, I am a problem solver and there will always be something to design or someone to design for and there will always be a challenge to design for what people would want. In emotional design Donal A.Norman says “designers will never lack for things to do, for new approaches to explore” (Norman, 2004, p. 9). I find this true as there are always going to be wants and needs in the world. Design is everywhere. I feel that design should have function and form. The form to attract people to want to look at the design and feel an attraction to my design and for the function to do as it is meant to. Wanting to design sustainable products that wouldn’t harm the world we live in and people would benefit from having in their lives. Design shouldn’t be something that people would want to just throw away, people should want to keep the things they own and not end up in a landfill. I feel similar to Jonathan Ive when he talks about “A big definition of who you are as a designer it’s the way you look at the world. I guess it’s one of the sort of curses of what you do is that you’re constantly looking at something thinking why is it like that and not like this.” (Ive,J. “Objectified” [Film] 2009) I find myself doing this with any kind of design, be it graphic, architectural, product even in nature questioning the shapes and jobs they do and why.

TLR 3D logo project

Asked to produce a 3D logo for the start of videos for The Last Resort

Made using SolidWorks 2011, and /windows movie maker

insperation

interesting piece in a furniture in nottingham