Nathan McWilliams

Follow my attempts to be a Product designer.

The Nature Disconnect – Final Project: Week 3

At the beginning of week three I started working towards a final model. Had a strong idea about form, materials and construction. I decided on using concrete and using to cone shapes with one inverted on the top. This was a strong un-natural form and would allow the flower to rest against it and let the flower decay naturally with little interference. The base would be made from scrap wood and painted black. The shape would be reminiscent of a footprint as a subtle reference to carbon footprint, but this shape would take second place to working with the rest of the product. After this I went to the workshop and began grinding down an old piece of concrete that I found, the concrete was easier to work with and managed to get the shape out quicker than expected. I glued the pieces together and covered it with some copper wire I found at Tentsmuir to cover the seams. However, this is where things went awry, after a chat with the Lecturer they made the suggestion of creating a design that had a greater contrast between the Pollution and the nature. I felt like this needed to be explored so had a quick personal brainstorming solution to come up with some quick concepts and to see if I felt like I could get it done in time.

Initial Model –

First Concrete Model  –

I came up with two ideas, first one was to take rubbish from the local area and suspend it in a clean casting resin. I really liked this idea as I could have good control over the final form and would be a good way to showcase the rubbish. I researched and try to do this idea, however to achieve it in time and in a good standard it was going to much more money than I had. So I had to explore my second idea. This was to create ‘cage ‘out of old chicken wire I had found this then could be opened and closed to put rubbish from the local area in. I immediately decided to continue with this idea as it would fit in with my current idea of the exhibition concept that I had been working on.

I decided that to make the exhibition idea more inclusive it would be shared using social media. It would make use of different social media platforms to post photos of it decaying, this would allow its message to reach a larger audience and hopefully make it have a greater effect. When I came up with the cage idea it immediately played into this, it also helped to inspire the idea of making the exhibition tour. It would be posted on social media and use their analytics to wok out where its popular. It would then go to that location and put rubbish from that area in the cage and use local flowers to make the message more relevant to the audience. Also, it would be displayed in community centres as this also helps to increase its audience.

After working out my new-final idea I quickly got to making this. I went to the workshop got some scrap wood and cut out the base. Spray painted it, then made and attached the cage to it later that night. Whilst waiting on the paint to dry I came up with an idea for the logo and branding and began to work out what content was going to be on the instruction booklet.

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