Reflective Essay

by | Apr 18, 2019 | Essay

Reflection essay

Lloyd Groff Copeman

Mr Lloyd was an American inventor. He invented many products that we still use today they include toaster, refrigerators and electric stove etc. electricity is really what he specialised in, most of his inventions are electricity related. But, one of the most successful products he had ever made was the flexible ice tray, it had earned him millions of dollars.

He inspires me. This is because the products that he has created, despite all the electrical work that had gone into some of the products, they are not the most complicated ideas, but none the less, they are proven to be popular and successful. This to me goes to show that complication is not always the way to go. Therefore, he has inspired me to make something easy for the user to use, something simple while fulfils it’s designed functionality.

 

Marc Newson

Marc Newson is a design that inspired me not so much in my design style. More so to do with what kind of designer I want to be. He fully embraces and uses to his advantage of modern technology. But the thing that I most aspire to be is to have a wide variety of design area. Marc Newson has designed I fashion, aircraft, motorsports and many more. And that’s one of the greatest things of being a product designer, you get to do a lot more than just one area of designing.

What went well?

At the beginning of the project, I found that research really helped me drive the rest of the project. As I was doing research, ideas are popping into my head and I make a note of them as I went along. This made the initial ideas stage seems easy. When it came to modelling, it was a slow start, but when I eventually go into the swing of making quick models, it was just the case of finding the right material for what I want to make. I wanted to experiment with different materials to see how well they can form into the shapes I wanted, and through this project I found that thing cardboard and foam board was the best for bending, and thin cardboard is also great for making the structures of the model.

One of the areas that I feel that I defiantly have improved on is 3D drawing, especially 3D drawing with curves. At the start of the project, I try to avoid drawing them, but throughout the project I learned how to draw them using framing technique, where I will draw out the basic frame or a “box” that my product drawing is going to sit in, then out line one plain of the product, then just practice the curves. This method really helped me to gain perspective on how to draw 3D shapes in proportion and accurately.

What didn’t go as planned?

At the very beginning of the project, I was a bit lost to what to research. Subsequently, I started to look at current environmental problems and try to come up with a way to solve them. I struggled to come up with ideas, and then I realised that the brief state to make a product that “reconnect” people with nature. That’s when I realised that I have been trying to “save” the planet. Then I started to research in relevant area and design ideas became easy after that.

During the brief, it was said that we are encouraged to use found objects when modelling, or even in out final prototype. I manage to find an old car radio and took that apart. I was able to use some knobs from the radio, but I couldn’t find or use any more found parts. So, I thought that next time, by having a larger collection of found object may help me when it comes to modelling.

One of the most disappointing things during all my modelling for the radio is that I wasn’t able to get the channel knob to work with the slider. This was due to my design flaw for the mechanism, it didn’t work in my developed models. I was then again trying to make a functionable slider in my final prototype, but the knob I was using, I could not find a solution to how to incorporate the functionable slider. So next time when I need to design a mechanism, I will invest more time and maybe a wilder source of materials to help me, this way I can make an even better final model that truly express and show how the product should work.

Over all, I have learned a lot during this project, there has been times where it was very frustrating when something don’t work as you expected, but through this experience I was able to over come some of the issues I had, and with more practice I will become better at it.

Lloyd Groff Copeman

Marc Newson

Article

by | Dec 1, 2018 | Design

Artical

We are to make a double page spread of facing pages of a magazine on a chosen topic with the first 200 to 400 words and as well as a web version of it in the size of an iPad screen.

The topic I chose

I chose the topic “Are videogames the final frontier of design?”. I chose this topic as it’s very close to me, this is because I both play video games and I am also a designer. It’s an article written about how the design in gaming have changed in the modern age. How people start to use “Narrative architecture” to give the gamers a sense of achievement through landscape rather than levelling up.

Research

For research, I investigated different version of gaming magazines and how they are laid out. This way I can look into the different methods of how the gaming magazines make the pages look more interesting for the readers.

There are some double-page spreads that had one whole image covering both pages, and there are some that had everything tilted to one side. Some looked calmer than others.

I went ahead and marked out different lines on the page to show how the pages are laid out, this inclues how many colums they have, what are the margins and the gutter. Every page has their own unique grid, how the texts are laid out, how many columns there are, How the image of laid out. To see all the text and image line up, help me to understand how the will page spread magazine produced.

So subsequently I started designing my own double-page spreads. I first started by just drawing them out on my sketch book, the different variations of lay out I can have, and how to line everything line up.

During this process, I have realised that using “leading line” is a very effective way to grab readers attention. <provide one example> “Leading line” is a method used where you are using elements on the page to point where you want the reader to look, therefore naturally getting the reader to read all the double page spread.

In this case, your eyes naturally look from the top left-hand corner, so you read the left-hand side page, then you look at what the character in the centre is looking at. Both of his eyes and his guns are pointing at the nest page across making you look. 

To make further progress I looked for some images that I can use in my magazine page. For this task I found difficult, this was due to the “creative common” (CC) legislation. This means I can only use a selective section of images online to put in to my magazine pages. But with the help of a few website, I manage to find some images I could use.

I then drawn out a few more page layout that I could use on my sketch book. I was putting myself in the positions of the readers as I did the sketching, this way I can see how the lay out is working or is it not working.

Final Design 

Th e image I got inspired me to have the title on the right-hand side. My basic page layout is the “Pac-man” is “Eating” the dots and leading reader’s eyes from the top left to the right-hand side of the page where they will find the title of the article. Then directly underneath they will find a pulled quote. This way the ready then gain interest on the main text,  to help that affect the image of the person in VR headset is looking at the main text. Therefore that should lead the reader to the body of text at the end.

PDFDouble page spread

PDFiPad page

Sign

by | Dec 1, 2018 | Design

Pictures Symbol and Icon

Sign

Brief

Form a team of three.

Research and create a signage intervention in DJCAD.

Make and install physical signage and /or objects that will affect the behaviour of people in a chosen space.

install it in DJCAD on Tuesday 20th November. It should be in place for 1-2 hours and must leave no trace of when you remove it.

Discreetly observe and document people’s reactions, interactions and behaviour around the signage.

Document your design process and observations in a blog entry.

Colour

Above is what I have found out about the common colours used in signage. each colour have their own corresponding meaning to it, therefore it would be easy for people to identify what do mean in the least period amount of time.

Here are some examples of signage with these colour.

Initial thoughts

The first idea is that we could have a simple sign on the wall, that says look down, or to have red and blue flashing lights to symbolize police, this way it may catch peoples attention more. Also, there is a “Dead body” in the pit to give the people the sense that they are looking at a crime scene. Another option was elevated from a wall in DJCAD. It’s just a simple sign saying “look down”. We didn’t do any fancy font or a nice frame, this was because we can see what people’s reaction would be purely based on how and where the sign is positioned. 

So we made a cardboard stand and just glued on two pieces of paper on each side so that people walking from both directions can see them.

The idea is built on the fact the people are not used to having things out a place, especially down something like a liner corridor. Therefore, the slightest change would catch people’s attention. Just like if you are walking down a street and you see a pub sign sticking out from the wall.

The second idea is build up on the first. We thought that by introducing a line on the floor that would get people to follow the line naturally then we can have one end that split off over the ledge, therefore making people look over.

This was inspired by a image of the london victoria station where the line on the floor allow people to follow.

 

 

 

The third and Final idea was to have a simple command like a road sign “STOP”.

So we thought that maybe a simple command could get someone’s attention and get them to carry out the command. this way we can see how and witch command is most effective.

We collected the data by sitting at a distance away and record the amount of people walk pass the sign and also record how many people reacted to the sign. We recorded the data by using a tally chart, this way we can calculate the percentage of people that have reacted to the sign, therefore, we don’t have to worry about the population of people walking pass a specific spot. Here are the results:

For improvement, we decided to add in stick men and concentrated on making a sign into a road sign with a specific font. The font we decided is Margret Calvert. That is the common font that is used in all road signs across the world. The letters and the border on the road signs are in white and the rest are in blue. The point of doing so is that we are trying to catch peoples attention, and road sign has proven to be very effective.

We also wanted to add in stick men so that the signs have a bit of character and hopefully that can be passed on to the people that are walking past. Furthermore, we added a stick man under the original sign to say lookup, One is to make the people who reacted to look down to look up, two is to make people who are walking underneath look up.

The making of the sign 

To make the sign was fairly easy. We used scrap wood that had a slot already cut. this way we could just cut the wood in length and make the frame. We then found a scrap poll, so we sanded the side down and attached the frame to the poll. The method we used to attach the parts together was to used wood screws and metal L-shaped brackets.

For the sign itself, we used paper and masking tape. we worked out the proportions of the font that we are using and drawn out the letters, we then put masking table over the text so that when we spray paint the background the text remains white. We did that for both sides. In the end, all we needed to do was to slot in the Sign that we made.

We also made the stickmen that will hang off the sign as well as the stick man that’s going to hold up the sign at the bottom. We cut them out of cardboard and hot glued the stick on to the bottom and the

Final observation and results

For our Final testing and data collecting, our main aim is to see if the improvement we have made to the sign has an overall effect on the percentage of people reacting to the sign. We then stationed our selves close to the sign so we can observe peoples behaviour, we also had one member of our group stationed downstairs with another sign saying look up. We then sat and collected data for 1 and half hour to gain reliable data.

The result shows an increase in people reacting to the signs. People walk past and look down then looks up expecting to find something.

Vinyl Cover

by | Nov 23, 2018 | Design

Pictures Symble & Icon

Recreating a vinyl album cover

In this module we need to pich a song and recreat the album cover it had.

What song did I chose?

We had a selection of music that we can choose from, all the way from reggae to ambient.

I chose a jazz song by Miles Davis: So What. The choice was made by the fact I like jazz, I am familiar with the song and I know that the music by him has no word, therefore it’s the purest form of music.

Research

First, I started by looking at the varieties of different covers that Miles Davis had and specifically focused on the covers that had the song “So What?” in them.

The first thing I realised was that all of them have one thing in common, and that is they all have Miles Davis playing the trumpet.

This was because Miles Davis was such an iconic character back then, everyone knew him, who he looked like and the music he produced. Furthermore, every single of them Miles had his eyes closed while playing, that just goes to show how passionate he is about playing the trumpet.

Then I looked at some of the different styles of albums cover. Then I came across “Big Fun” and ” Bitches Brew”, they are done in very different styles.

“Big fun” was designed in a way that instantly you get the “fun” part of the album. the characters at the back of the album dancing protrade that the music in the album is fun to listen to.

“Bitvhes Brew” cover was designed by the artist called Mati Klarwein. He was specialised in Mischtechnik, it’s a techniquewhere the artists would layer different colour onto the painting. furthermore, Mati Klarwein used Egg Tempura to paint his painting where egg yolk is used as a binder and colour pigments are added to make the colour then painted on. the effect of doing so is that the painting would appear to be quite flat, and each line is distinctive.

My Design

My starting point was to focus on the music itself. How do I feel about it? What does the music make me think of? And what idea is the artist trying to get across.

What dose the music make me feel?

So What

by Miles Davis

Feeling the Bass

The song has a very strong bass from the beginning. The bass it self isn’t loud, you can just hear it. But you can feel the bass in your chest.

Joyful

The music started off with the sound’s pitch going up and down, I can sense that the musician (Miles Davis) is enjoying playing the piece.

Repetitive?

For the first part of the intro, it’s very repetitive, and the same part is also played at the end of the piece. However, you don’t get bored, the notes may be the same but the dynamic of the music is different each time.

Dynamic 

The dynamic of the song swings from loud to quiet all the time, and with that, you can feel the emotion of the music.

Pitch

The pitch of the music starts off low with the bass the at one point suddenly grow to a very high pitch. that adds excitement to the music it self.

With Pause

The music is played in sections, in between each section, you can clearly hear that the trumpet stops and there are the bass and the gentle tapping of the snare drum.

Soft

Although there are parts of the song there is sudden high pitch sound, but it was played at such a way that it doesn’t come across as offensive. much softer than you’d expect.

Free

As soon as the trumpet starts to play, you can hear that the trumpet player is almost playing whatever he wants, the notes glide though out the piece. It is true freedom.

Model Jazz

Model Jazz is a sub-genre of Jazz where the piece is consist of only two or three cords, and the cord change is very slow so the artiest can have a longer period of time to improvise so that the audience don’t get borad.

Mood board 

I created a mood board for some inspirations, this would help me to come up with some initial ideas. I found images that relate and may inspire me to an idea.

Initial Ideas

__

I first started to think how I can express the music through the album cover. Because of Model Jazz, the artist is free to express and improvise what they want to play, therefore I want to show the freedom in jazz through its album cover.

Jackson Pollock was my first choice. the artwork that he produces has no definitive structure. Different colours mixed in with different emotions and freely spread across the canvas.

Then I thought from my research, every album cover had a trumpet on it. So I thought of maybe incorporate all of the instrument that was used in the song, this way when you look at the album cover, you instantly know what kind of music you are going to be listing to. Furthermore, I thought by using the rule of thirds, I can create a simple but effective album cover, by having the trumpet body in the lower third of the page and the keys in the middle, you can clearly tell that it’s a trumpet, and knowing it’s a Miles Davis album, you know what to expect.

I also explored the title of the song. The title is sassy and it gives a sense of “I don’t care” vibe. So I went with on idea where the font of the title is messy, where normally you’d expect the font to be nice and professional looking.

Components of My Design

First I wanted to incorporate Jackson Pollock’s painting, but I didn’t want to cover the entire album cover in it. so I thought of using the rule of thirds, where I’ll only use the one-third of the available space for the Jackson Pollock painting. I decided the bottom third as that will give me the album cover more weight.

I chose three colour in the Jackson Pollock painting. First was blue, that’s because blue is the style of the music and the famous album for the song “So What” to be in was called all kind of blue. Second colour I used was yellow, this was because the trumpet is a yellow brass colour, and so is most of the instrument used for the song. And finally, the last colour was white, I put white on is because white mean purity, where it’s not been affected by any elements, and to me, that’s the spirit of the song, where the artist can explore the uncharted water of jazz, paint on the white canvas.

The second element I have is the trumpet in the middle of the page. This was done to more follow the tradition with other Miles Davis’s albums, where is a trumpet on the album cover. I image of the trumpet was of a trumpet bell if you were to look at it head on, also it represents the record itself as it’s in a circle.

Finally, it was the name. I thought I’d name the album cover so that it’s distinguished as the “So What” album.i thought that the font I could use could be something rough and messy. This way it would express as “Free”. But under further thought, I decided that the writing would look better if it was written in gold, as gold matches the colour skem of the rest of my album, and it makes the golden age of jazz.

Ways of Seeing

by | Nov 5, 2018 | Design

Ways of Seeing

In this project, we discover different ways of seeing things from a different perspective.
For the first week, we practised on how to draw portrait without looking at the paper. This task was challenging as it required us to have a very good hand and eye coordination. We were put into groups of twos so that we could draw each other; then we moved around to other tables to draw other people. We also drew the same person three times, each time using a different colour pen, this shows us if our drawing got better from our first drawing to our last. At first, it was challenging to find where I was on the paper, so I tend to lose track of where I was drawing. Therefore the drawings were out of proportion and sometimes even at out of the page. However, as I did more, I found that drawing in a continues line really helps with the location of the drawing as I am constantly keeping in track with where I was drawing. We started off with drawing on an A4 size page, then we moved onto A3 where is a bigger area to work with. You’d think that would be easier, but it made it harder for me. This was due to the fact I didn’t use to drawing on A3 so there were no concepts of how big the drawing needs to be and where the paper is. But subsequently, after doing three people’s portrait three times, I was able to understand the overall facial feature a lot better.
Later during the week, we went on to drawing a portrait while the other person asks you questions, this way, by drawing a portrait we would get to know how the person looks like through drawing and therefore be more familiar to that person, and by asking questions about the person we get to know that person’s personality. For this task we were allowed to look at the paper as we drew, therefore the drawing was a lot better. At the end of the week, we were tasked to draw a portrait and use the conductive ink to integrate a LED into the drawing. The conductive ink was really cool, as it allows electricity to flow through the ink and light up an LED. However, in reality, the ink had a very high resistance, so by the time the current got to the LED, the light was so dim, you can’t tell it was turned on. So, in the end, I resolved to use just wires.
For my second week we were on the reading week, and our task was to draw a map of what I had done that day along with a drawing of the most memorable thing you did or an object to remind you of the day.
For Monday I mostly just stayed in my room playing games. It was difficult to make a map as I didn’t go anywhere. Then I thought that even though I as a person didn’t go anywhere, I went to a lot of places online. So, I came up with the idea of drawing pipes to show where I “went” that day. I started with getting out of my bed in the morning, I went on to YOUTUBE watched a couple of videos, then I played a bit of Battlefield 4, after that I had lunch. In the afternoon I played more Battlefield 4 and, in the evening, I played Player Unknow Battle ground with friends, then I went to bed. The most memorable drawing of Monday was inspired by the YouTube video “ASDF Movies”. This expresses the things you can do on the internet and for me that day was playing games online.
  On Tuesday I went to DJCAD to get some art equipment and went by the enquiry centre and the cash office to double check my balance for university fee. I then went to nether Inn for lunch and Oshibori for dinner. For the map, I did a map the area I lived in Dundee, and I marked it out with a red pen where I went. The most memorable thing was Skint in the union that day. The drawing was of my friend passed out drunk on a trolley being carried home after had Vodka, Sourz and Jager Bomb.
    For Wednesday, I did a London tube map for the map of my day. This was inspired by the logo for Oshibori. The logo for Oshibori looks awfully similar to the London tube logo. So that day I went to DJCAD, cash office, Oshibori, Enquiry centre, Nether Inn and played on Battlefield 4 and PUBG. I made each of the things I did and went to a station. The memorable drawing, I did for that day was my job interview in Oshibori. In the evening I went for my trial shift.
    For Thursday, I stayed at home for most of the day but I went to Oshibori for my first shift in the evening. I did the map in a topographic map style, as I did a lot of hiking through CCF, D of E and ten Tors. So, for each of the peek it was a point where I stopped on the way to work. The most memorable thing that day was the Ramen that was served in the restaurant. It looked amazing, I was trying not to just steal the food.
    Friday, I went and played pool and got pizza so for my drawing I did a drawing of a slice of pizza, it was inspired by the light refracting off a glass prism, so it would express the favours that I taste in my mouth. And my map for the day was the track of the balls on the pool table. I went to Tesco and head to Tesco to play pool.
  On Saturday, I went to the Dundee science centre to help with the AroDundee. The map was inspired by Harry Potter, in the movie, there is a map where you can see everyone’s footstep. And the drawing I drew was the jet that I spent a whole day flying on the simulator, as I was in the Dundee science centre teaching kids how to play it.
During that week, we were also tasked with drawing a portfolio of another person, and we should be able to see the personality of the person through our portrait.
I drew Mariana, one of my friend. I did an interview of her and found out that she likes Jazz and frank Sinatra was her favourite artist. She plays the flute and the ukulele and her favourite food is fish. She is from Portugal and she works in a Chinese buffet as well as Dominos. She likes the environment and that was why she came to Dundee.
So, I did a pop art style portrait of her face in the middle with the globe around her that has greenery and classic Portuguese building and Chinese writing of Chinese restaurant and paper cut out collage of her favourite thing.
For the third week, we had to draw a visual CV, it would need to show our life up until the present, and also, we needed to show what we wanted to do in the future.
      My initial thought was to just have a simple timeline and having split off a path that how my life could end up like. I also had the idea of having the great wall of China, where I will have the far distance wall as my past and the closer part as my present. Another idea of mine is the yellow rive in China where I can put the source of the river as my past and the opening part to sea as my present and the sea as my future. And the last idea was the spiral path, where the spiral off in the distance will be my past and it will spiral off into the distance to show my past.
      I decided to test my spiral idea. However, I ran into couple of issues. The segments for each ear can’t be evening split down and I ended up running out of space. And there was a lot of wasted space on the outside.
    Therefore, in the end I went with the Great Wall of China idea. I did the drawing in Chinese ink and brush. Then at certain areas I went over with green colouring pencil, it shows the greenery of the mountains. And at each checkpoint on the drawing, I have an important point in life where a decision was made that ultimately guided me to the present day.
Fourth week. We needed to make a paper-engineered Adriano character. The idea is so that we can write the code for the RGB LEDs and make a pop-up character as the casing for the RGB LEDs with a story board to go along side.
      My ideas consist of Firefly, police man and a light bulb. For the Firefly I can make the light just light up and go dim again. And the police men I was planing to have a red and blue light to be flashing alternatively. And the light bulb is when I press a button then I would light up. I chose the firefly idea as the making of the paper model will be easier. And my idea was to have the paper firefly in the middle and you fold it in two pieces of paper.
        I spray painted the background in matt black, and used white paint and bush to flick some spot on to the paper to make it look like night sky. I then cut out all of my fireflies’ part then put them together. I also did two origami firefly to correspond to the back story. 
Codeing for the firefly

const int rPin = 11; const int gPin = 10; const int bPin = 9; const int bgHigh = 200; const int bgLow = 0; int bgNow; int rising; void setup() ( // put your setup code here, to run once: bgNow = bgLow; rising = 1; pinMode(gPin, OUTPUT); pinMode(bPin, OUTPUT); ) void loop() ( //put your main code here, to run repeatedly: if (bgNow == bgHigh) (rising = 0;) if (bgNow == bhLow) (rising = 1;) if (rising == 1) (bgNow = bgNow + 1;) if (rising == 0) (bgNow = bgNow – 1;) analogeWrite(bPin, bgNow); analogeWrite(gPin, bgNow); delay (10) )

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