Thursday, October 13, 2011

Hockey Skate


I have been wanting to get into hockey design for a while.  This is a 2.5 hour render that I attempted at skates for the first time.  I would love to land a job at a hockey company.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Chair Finished

























So this quarter was definitely the most demanding quarter. I think I really learned how to organize myself and start working smarter than longer. Overall great quarter, really glad it is over now. Learned a lot about work ethic.

Staying on Track for Development

This quarter I really tried to concentrate and stay away from getting to far off of the upward sloping graph line of production. Not that design is a perfect process, however in the past I think I have strayed from staying concentrated on continuously developing an idea, and really following a process. In the past I would choose one idea and not want to develop it any further. I would be content with where it was. I had spent so much time on the idea already that further development was unnecessary and there wouldn't be enough time left. That wasn't yielding the results I wanted so I over compensated. I would then keep changing ideas after the ideation phase until I had something that seemed revolutionary. As opposed to continuing to develop features or details of a chosen direction I would keep changing directions and would just be spinning my wheels. I think this was another thing I really learned an got better at this quarter. Following a design process and sticking out with the selected idea and continuing to develop until it was time to build or finish. I think now that I have learned this that I can start to refine my specific process that I like to follow.

Innovative vs. Well Designed

So the chair quarter is finished. I think I really struggled at the beginning of the quarter to figure out what I was going to do with the chair. All of our projects in the past have been based around creating an innovative design feature or product. That is really the goal to do something strange and different, and that is pushed on you. "You are a student do something crazy." I totally agree with this statement. However I was having trouble translating it to the chair project. The chair is something that has been around forever and had millions of variations. At first I was trying to think of something innovative. For the chair quarter I think this was the wrong approach. I didn't need to create some innovative feature. I could still do something different simply based off of the design. The innovative things were going to be in the design details, in a new or interesting shape. This really was the turning point and helped me focus in on my design. I really learned a lot this quarter about work ethic and design overall.

Dutch Furniture















For this project I tried to really create a product based off the ability Dutch design has to make the strange blend in beautifully as normal. Overall I think in the end I did a good job but after discussion at crit I could have removed the alarm clock or changed it to swivel somehow. Also all of my boards this quarter I have been happy with, however I wish I had tied them together more. Chet's boards always are obviously together and it just makes his presentations jump off the wall that much more. We determined the best way to do this was to have similarities but not exact similarities, which can end up being more distracting.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Modern Ornamental Audio

This is a project I finished for our Design Communications class. The speakers are supposed to follow a product trend I see in the market. I think the combination of modern design with classic ornamental or decorative designs is something that is becoming very popular. So with these speakers I tried to achieve that with combining design elements from a phonograph along with elements from a modern speaker.

3 hr design challenge

So today our professor came in and asked us what all of our favorite fruits were. He then told us you have three hours to design a ring based off of the fruit we had just named. It proved to be a really great experience. I think that often in the workplace this is something that can happen often. A boss may ask to have a design for a certain object in 2-3 hours and they expect something that looks nice. I enjoy doing shorter projects like this. Sometimes I feel this is when I do my best work. Often spending to long on a project I feel that is gets muddied down and some of the magic of the original idea is lost. Apple is my favorite fruit and here is the final render I had at the end of the class.


Monday, May 9, 2011

Chair Revision

Currently in the process of revising the front of the chair. After meeting with some fiberglass experts it sounds like the mold I had planned on building would create complications. Here is the direction I am leaning towards, more minor revisions to come.


Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Final Design for Eyewear

The image I think doesn't have the same chemistry between my alarm clock and it's image board. I think that is simply because of the choice of wood for the glasses. I wanted to use minimal materials like on my image board. Also I wanted to take elements of the simplicity of the designs. I think in this way I achieved following my image board. However I think it was more impactful last time when colors were similar and added cohesiveness to the two images. This is something I plan on trying to do again for the next project.



Inspiration Board for Eyewear

Monday, April 25, 2011

Alarm Clock Render

Updated version of the alarm clock. I would like to take this further. Could have minute details changed but this is close to the final idea.

First look at the Chair

Sorry for the lacking updates on chair sketches/photoshop renders. Here is the current look I have going for my chair. It consists of a fiberglass seat and wood legs. The legs may change to steel rod if engineering problems occur which seems likely.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Alarm Clock

How do I percieve getting up. I think most people who sleep in base getting up on how far they can push back their chores for the morning before they have to leave. This alarm clock takes that to a literal sense and has the alarm start at the desired time and go off every ten minutes just like a snooze button. Except every time you decide to hit the snooze button as opposed to ten minutes passing it informs you of what you won't be able to do if you decide to continue sleeping. I think it is a fun simple way of looking at the alarm clock system. This could turn into something fun to discuss at work to. "I have been getting up a Pee? like every day (see image)." The image below is a quick representation of what the product will become. I am currently in the process of developing it further and will post when ready.


Visual Resumes

Recently we have been working on visual resumes in class. I think this is going to prove to be a great tool to add to the skill set. Beyond resumes it can help bring interest to inspiration boards as well as research graphics. Here are a few examples of some of the boards I have put this new skill to use on. Included in order are my experience of being in Chicago, my inspiration for my RVCA USB's, my experience of being at UC, and my inspiration for an alarm clock project I just started.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Placement

Well it's about time I get back to blogging. Recently I have been doing a lot of thinking about where I want to go with my career. I may be just seeing this because I have been frustrated with I.D. recently but many people that are extremely successful at their profession often don't start off traditionally in that field, or studying that field. Is this because they have a different perspective then every other person educated in the field or because they have a different process. With graduation fast approaching this is something that has really been staring me in the face. Back around February I kept having thoughts of where I wanted to go in design. I slowly came to the conclusion that I should just go with the flow and wherever I end up design is going to be the best fit for me. Anyways still definitely thinking about this every day and I am still completely lost in the fog. No answers yet, 2 years left to go hopefully I will figure something out.