John Heskett begins to slowly bring his introduction to design to a close in chapter 9. This chapter functions by discussing the three areas of contextual influence in design: "the professional organization of design, or how designers view themselves; the business context in which a majority of design practice is located; and, in addition, the level of government policy..." One point that I found to be interesting in this chapter was how design can be thought of as a central function of a company or, simply dispersed throughout. An examples that were given consisted of IBM and the Japanese Matsushita electrical company. Another interesting point was discussed on pg 115 about how design can play a huge role in changing the fortunes of companies such as, for example, Chrysler in the early 90's. Lastly, reading about how design was previously viewed as strictly a very "artsy" field to be involved in in previous decades was very intersting. For many years it was believed that only artists were capable of teaching any aspect of design in schools which further evolved the schools to be even more art oriented.
The last chapter of the short novel, chapter 10, worked well to efficiently wrap everything up and bring it all together with closing ideas. This chapter talks about two recurring themes in the book and what the future of design could look like as far as how it will build and grow on its past. Also considered is the question of what designers of the future will be like. For example, will they "merely be technocrats, devoting their skills to the highest commercial bidder without consideration of the ends they serve...[or] is there instead a dimension of social and environmental purpose requiring acknowledgement in the world?" This chapter leaves many things to think about and proves that there is never an end to the work that can be done in the field of design.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Journal 09: Coleman Project - Personal Documentation
The Coleman for the Home project was a great way to wrap up the quarter and apply a little bit of all of the design fields to one assignment. I really enjoyed working with my group because we were all able to use our separate strengths on different parts of the assignment and we all worked together and got along very well. As a team, we chose to create the "HoTTop" by Coleman. This product is a portable, durable, space saving cooktop that also works to incorporate other products that Coleman already manufactures such as the Thermoelectric Refrigerator. We were all able to come to the conclusion that this is the product that we wanted to create and present very quickly. We all threw our ideas together and used each of our in class work days to build up or product and finish our project to make it the best that we could. I would have to say that we were all very organized and efficient in getting our work done and sent to one another to incorporate in our separate parts.
Personal Contributions to the Project:
- Bringing everyone together and working to make sure that everything is on track to be completed
- Brainstorming ideas for all aspects
- Creating the powerpoint presentation by pulling all pieces of the project together, scanning parts into the computer, designing the presentation layout, and making sure everyone understood and agreed with the order and wording of all slides - The completed power point can be found below:
If we were asked to do this project again, I would want to better facilitate the assignment by helping with one of the computer aided designs such as the google sketch up of the HoTTop, packaging, or kiosk. Golnaz did a lot of this work herself and I would have wanted to help her out the second time around.
Overall, I think this project was a great idea to in incorporated into design 200. The presentations were very interesting to watch and I enjoyed working with my group to complete our assignment.
Journal 10: Final Thoughts
All in all, design 200 has been a great course that I believe I truly benefitted from taking. I learned a lot about all of the basics of the different fields of design and took away many important bits of information that will be beneficial for me to know as I continue on in my minor in visual communications design (I'm sorry about not being converted to interior space ;] ). One of the things I enjoyed most about the class were all of the different videos we watched. Normally, I find in class videos to be very boring and difficult to stay focused during. The videos that we watched in design 200, however, were extremely interesting and kept my attention easily. As was said in the final closing email sent out, I would have to agree that often times I do find myself getting frustrated with group work in graded courses. However, I would have to say that I had a lot of fun with my group this quarter and learned a lot from everyones different backgrounds. I would defnitely reccomend this class to anyone who is interested in any part of any design field!
Friday, May 27, 2011
Class Reflection 05
The last two Design 200 classes of the quarter were filled with all of the Coleman for the home presentations. Being in the first group to present on Monday, getting to sit back, relax, and listen to everyone else's presentations for two days was nice. The group evaluations that we were asked to complete during presentations was actually a very good idea. Completing these evaluations forced me to stay focused on the presentations and caused many people to come up with questions that they wanted to ask the groups. This created some good class discussions over everyone's ideas. Looking back, the only thing that I wish could have gone differently was not being able to have anyone else's presentation to use as a guideline before we had to present ours. If I was given the opportunity, I would have changed and added a few things after seeing what other groups had done. However, thats just the luck of the draw!
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Journal 08 - Media Reviews
I chose to do my media reviews on the topic of design and color. I chose this topic because I found the lecture on color very interesting and liked how it seemed to relate to a career that I would love to have when I'm older. First, it was interesting how color can really communicate a point through ways such as how it creates and plays off of moods and how it is associated with different things and emotions such as green = the outdoors, eco-friendly, etc or how yellow = happy. Secondly, I am planning on majoring in marketing and minoring in graphic design (as I have mentioned before) which could very easily lead me to be someone that, for example, creates advertisements. Knowing how colors relate to mood, branding, and it's pyschological effects would be very helpful in this type of career.
1.) Chromotherapy
According to this video and other articles on chromotherapy that I have read, research has shown that color truly can have a strong effect on a person's emotions. This video portrays the different effects that 5 separate colors can have on a person. One example of each color that is given follows:
Red: boosts energy
Blue: reduces physical and mental tension
Yellow: promotes feelings of happiness and security
Pink: soothes tempers
Orange: induces warm, friendly feelings
It is important for several different reasons for a designer to have a knowledge of which colors create which moods and feelings.
2.) The Blue Diet Light
This website is about how using a blue light in your refrigerator can decrease appetite and increase positive decision making. The website promotes a diet weight loss plan that involves using this blue light and a form of hypnosis in order to make your "munchies" go away. Now, I don't know how effective the hypnosis CD is that comes with the package, but I was very interested in reading the facts about using blue lights to decrease appetite. This article relates very well to our color theory lecture and how color is essential to design - in this case, the design of a weight loss product.
3.) Car Color - Are the Myths True?
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVlWwMTImfMThis video discusess different car myths and either proves them to be true or made up. One of these myths is the idea that people who drive warmer colored cars are more likely to get a speeding ticket than those who drive cooler colored or black or white cars. However, I shouldn't use the word "myth" because according to the video, some police officers have admitted that a bright red car for example, is more likely to catch his or her attention than say, a black car. If that car was speeding, it would receive a ticket. There are more ideas also researched in this video relating colors and cars...watch for yourself to find out what they are!
4.) The Effects of Color on Memory Retention
This article deals with the effects of color on memory retention. It contains a study that that was completed in which participants looked at 48 photographs that were in color, in black and white, or colored by colors that would not normally appear in that environment such as purple grass, for example. Then, later, 48 new pictures were added to the pile of the 48 older pictures and the participants were asked to identity which they had seen before and which they had not. The results of the study were that participants were much more likely to remember a colored photo that was also colored in ways that did match the environment it belonged in. Therefore, colors were seen to be a way to strenghthen memory. Knowing this can help a designer in his or her decision of what colors to choose in order for their product or advertisement (for example) to be memorable.
5.) Color Symbolism by Culture
Even though this was the last link that I discovered, I found it to be one of the most interesting. This article talks about how different colors can mean completely different things in different cultures or parts of the world. For example, in China yellow is a color that represents nourishing while in Egypt it is the color of mourning. This topic is obviously very significant to any designer because it is important to know what messages you are subliminally delivering by your color choice. Yellow might be a happy color for an advertisement in the U.S. but it would be the polar opposite to someone living in Egypt.
Course Reflection 04
The last four design 200 classes have been spent by getting into our Coleman for the home groups and working on our project. Being able to use all four of these classes to come together, talk about our ideas, and distribute roles has been very helpful for our completion of the project. As a group, we have generally almost always agreed on our ideas for the project after talking through everything. Therefore, the in-class time has been a great way to make sure that everyone is on the same page before leaving class and working on our individual parts. I am very interested to see how our presentation goes on Monday and if everyone else likes our ideas.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Reading Reflection 03
“Cradle to Cradle” by William McDonough and Michael Braungart analyzes the authors’ point of how we, as humans, need to work together with ourselves and the environment to re-create a world that can sustain itself for an infinite amount of time, instead of the slow path to an unpleasant ending that we are currently on. Chapter one begins to illustrate their point by giving a summarized history of the industrial revolution and its bullet-pointed goals to design what would create a disgusting environment to live in. The two authors give examples from many different types of inventions and industries ranging from thread spinning wheels, all the way to cars. McDonough and Braungart state that the problem with early industrialists, designers, and engineers was that they did not see their designs as part of a larger system, outside of an economic one (page 24). A quote from page 27 “Everything else is designed for you to throw away when you are finished with it. But where is ‘away’? Of course, ‘away’ does not really exist. ‘Away’ has gone away,” reminded me of the video of William McDonough speaking that we watched in class. It was very neat to see it all connect back to what he was talking about in that lecture.
Chapter two begins by talking about how today we try to fix the problems that we have created by reducing, avoiding, minimizing, sustaining, limiting, and halting (page 45). However, only minimizing and limiting is simply nowhere near enough. Recycling, or downcycling as it is sometimes referred to as, can put more harmful chemicals into the environment than anyone would have ever guessed and can even lead to more negative consequences than positive ones. A quote on page 50 says “Recycling is an aspirin, alleviating a rather large collective hangover…overconsumption.” In the end, as the title of the chapter reflects, eco-efficiency and minimization is only being “less bad” and is not a good enough goal. Page 67 states that being less bad is really only accepting things the way are as the best that humans can do. McDonough and Braungart call it a completely “failure of the imagination.”
Chapter three starts out differently from its preceding chapters by analyzing the components that are put together to from three different books and how they are or are not designed any better for the environment. The only thing that I really didn’t like about this chapter was the way that Braungart and McDonough present themselves and their book in relation to the third, completely eco-friendly book. Although this would be a great achievement, the authors seem to present themselves as very “stuck-up” and somewhat better than everyone else. However, outside of this, my favorite part about this chapter would definitely have to be the authors’ description of a community of ants’ daily activities and how they work together with their surroundings to create a completely sustainable environment. It’s sad that we, as humans, are being shown up by a bunch of ants. The community of ants exemplifies the cradle-to-cradle cycle of nature that the book was titled after.
Chapter four continues to show mankind’s faults in this subject as the authors explain how many countries and cities began by being more environmentally sustainable than they are now. Everyone is beginning to become more like the United States…and that isn’t always a good thing. Page 96 states “Humans are the only species that takes from the soil vast quantities of nutrients needed for biological processes but rarely puts them back in a usable form.” The chapter later goes on to an in depth explanation of the two discrete metabolism processes – biological and technical. These two completely differing views on sustainability were actually very interesting to read and composed a large part of the chapter. However, my favorite part of the chapter was the long quote in the very last paragraph about insanity and negligence. The last two sentences read “ Now that we know, it’s time for a change. Negligence starts tomorrow.”
Chapter five works very well to explain how necessary interdependencies are in our environment. “The vitality of ecosystems depends on relationships: what goes on between species, their uses and exchanges of materials and energy in a given place” (page 121). I also learned about how beneficial local sustainability can be beginning on page 123. “Using local materials opens the doors to profitable local enterprise. It also avoids the problem of bioinvasion” (page 125). The chapter later then goes on to talk about how ultimately, we want to be able to design “processes and products that not only return the biological and technical nutrients they use, but pay back with interest the energy they consume.” This point is illustrated effectively through the authors’ soap example a few pages later. As designers, we would want to ask the question what kind of soap would the environment want to have?
The last chapter of the book works very well to wrap everything up and bring it all back together. The chapter begins by referring to Ford and his company just as McDonough and Braungart had in the beginning chapters. It then moves into the authors’ five steps to rethinking and redesigning and process or product in order to make it eco-effective. I really like how simply all of these ideas were laid out for the reader. The authors make everything sound so simple, almost as if it’s harder to be un-efficient or un-sustainable in the environment that we live in than it is to just be sustainable. The very last paragraph of the book was obviously very well planned out and was extremely well written. The last sentences “What would it mean to become, once again, native to this place – the Earth, the home of all our relations? This is going to take us all, and it is going to take forever. But then, that’s the point,” does a perfect job of finishing off everything that was written about in “Cradle to Cradle.”
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