London Artwork

Ok so a little divergence from the Singapore Project, some artwork. Now that my exams are finished and it's getting to the end of term, I have been using my location to explore some parts of London I haven't really seen much of. On Tuesday, as it was so nice I decided to look around Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens.

While there I did this watercolour of a small shelter in Kensington Gardens. A6, took about 1 hour.

After that I went to see Russel Howard's Good News being recorded and while I waited for some friends I did this quick ink sketch just outside Hammersmith Station.

Rig Building

So its a couple of weeks old, but this is the time lapse video from the Rig Building day I recently did as part of a team for our experience project. The brief of the project, given to us by our first outside clients the charity Building Trust International, is to create accommodation for 8 migrant workers living in Singapore in a 20m2 and 4m high area. as part of answering this brief we built a full size model of one of the components for the design. This was to check the dimensions and possibility of someone sleeping in this component, or 'pod'. Below is a time lapse video I took through out the day showing both the construction and dismantling of the rig.

From the rig, we found that our dimensions were good, if anything too generous so this allowed us to slightly change our design for the better use of the available space. Here are also some pictures taken during the process.

 

Hidden Heroes and a Giant Reindeer

 Today I had a trip into London, I went for a couple of reasons as I will show below, and I had a very interesting time. Visiting London will always be a fun experience, and as I am so close I intend to take advantage of that over the next few years. First I visited the Science Museum, where I had intended to see an exhibition on the integration of Robots into daily lives. But it was fully booked and today was the last day. However....

I did find another exhibition that was interesting and more relevant to my course. The exhibition is called Hidden Heroes, and tells of the invention and development of a number of overlooked items in today's society. Some example were: Rubber bands, Ballpoint pens, Teabags, Post-it Notes, Tissues, Safety Matches,  Paper Clips, Condoms, Clothes Hangers, Drinks Cartons, Bubble Wrap, Pencils, Sticky Tape, Wall Plugs, Lego and Bar codes. Photos were prohibited, so I made sketches and notes on each object.

It was a very interesting display and showed the remarkable amount of effort that had gone into developing some of the objects. So a day redeemed. I also had a look round at the museums other exhibits, before doing some shopping at the London Graphic Centre and Magma shops.

I must say however the most surprising thing of the day was this found at Covent Garden:

It was also the most disappointing as it was fake, oh well.

Little Book of Life

For Christmas last year, one of the things I received was a small sketching Moleskine. Now for me I consider this Moleskine something to be filled with ideas and notes that can be used and referred to long after it's pages are full. As such I have delayed using it as I have been unsure of what to fill it with. Until now. (sorry)

My plan now for this is that it shall be a little compendium or encyclopedia of all the interesting things I learn while at University (and beyond) that are not directly a part of my course. This came about while watching an episode of James May's Man Lab, when I realised that all this information I was being fed would most likely be forgotten by the next day so I resolved to document it in this which I can carry with me wherever. It will be my little book of Thoughts, Theories, Facts, Folklore and Funnies(?). Below are a few spreads from it so far.

So far I have quotes from:

• Ian Flemming
• Sir George Mallory (1st to climb Everest)
• George R.R. Martin
• Dieter Rams
• Rowan Atkinson
• Leonardo Da Vinci
• Winston Churchill
• Dr Seuss
• Stephen Fry
• David Attenborough

And I hope to gain many more and record them, not to be forgotten.

Speaker Light 2 and New Printer

Today was back to Graphic Communication and after a lecture on colour theory, it was up to the computer labs to do more work in Photoshop. Still being somewhat unsure as to what I should do for my final artifact I returned to my idea of the speaker light.

 The two images above were made by manipulating the layers of the original image below, and by adding some more images in the form of the speakers. This creates more views which should better explain the function and workings of the speaker light.

The other bit of excitement today was the arrival of my new printer. By arrival I mean a small pink slip saying to go to the distribution centre and carry it back to my flat, about a ten minute walk away. But anyway, its a Canon Pixma iX6550 so I am now able to print both A4 and more importantly A3 sheets. Also it looks awesome. I honestly thought when I got it out of the box it was something from a science-fiction set.

So I'm now able to print off all the various timetables and rotas that I have been given, which is a lot. But anyway a free day tomorrow so I can get more work done.

Design Museum - Kenneth Grange

 Today I went to the London Design Museum to see an exhibition on Kenneth Grange called Making Britain Modern. It is towards the end of the exhibitions display and after a couple of failed attempts to go (closed train lines) I went today with one of my flat mates.

 

The exhibition displays a catalogue of Kenneth Grange's work, from his first designs, a poster done in primary school to his most recent. Below are some photos from the exhibition showing some of his work,

 Initial rapid visualization sketches and models of an early Kodak camera and a set of clocks and thermometers.

Sketches for the UK's first specific Parker pen (before they were only American models with small adaptations) designed for students and some other designs including a clock.

 

A nice coincidence was that he worked with developing the style of Wilkinson Sword Razors over many years, the same brand of razor that I sketched as part of my Design Process Assignment, unfortunately he has now stopped designing for them so did not design the specific razor I sketched.

 

A large range of Kenwood appliances that he designed. The model on the left is very unusual as he was given only a few days to create the model and, knowing he did not have enough time, created exactly half the model and presented it with a mirror behind it to create the other half (the ingenuity for which was appreciated by the client).

 He also designed the iconic Intercity 125 train. He was initially only commissioned to design the colouring and look of the exterior, however he realised that the shaping of the exterior could be both more aerodynamically and aesthetically designed so, after testing various models at night in the Imperial College's wind tunnel, he was able to present both a better design and the testing that proved it.

 

 Finally perhaps his most widely seen yet not wildly know design was the design of the modern London Cab. Grange perceived that to radically change the cab to bring it on par with the other cars of the 21st century, would ruin the iconic imagery of the cab, therefore he presented this design where the classic styling is mostly intact, however it is more comfortable for both diver and passenger and has better disabled access.

From the exhibition I have learnt that it is important to fully understand the idealism, image, culture and feel of each project to create designs that fit the brief and fit the product, and to think outside of the brief and analyse all the aspects of a project, not just necessarily the portion applied to me.

Elsewhere in the museum there was a very interesting display featuring many iconic designs of the last century including the chairs below, by Eames and Gehry respectively, a full size motorway sign, it's bigger than you would think, a set of interesting icons, an Xbox Kinect (not sure why really), an original anglepoise lamp, a Austin Mini, cut in half and a Dyson Air Multiplier Fan  (exactly like the one I own).

Also as part of a more temporary exhibition was this clock. Which well, see for yourself.

 

The clock goes through these preprogramed sequences when idle, but when someones gets within a specific range, it quickly shows the time. Very clever and very fun.

So a really good day out and I even bought a little mug from the museum shop with the slogan: 

Good Design=Happy World

 Thanks

HTC Wildfire S and Wilkinsons Sword Hydro 5

So my first assignment is due tomorrow and these are the pieces of work I have done for it. The brief was to create two presentation pages for two products, based on boxes and cylinders. These presentation sheets are to be mounted on foam board, and will accompany a folder with all/the best of the sheets of drawings I have done over the past month. However while this is an actual deadline, and the work will be worth 10% of the module, it won't be properly marked until April, tomorrow it will just be commented upon. But oh well, it was relatively fun doing this, even if I had to spend all of yesterday drawing in the library (the law library to be precise, don't ask why). So the images are below, I chose to do my HTC Wildfire S mobile and a Wilkinson Sword Razor I got given during freshers. The presentation sheets were put together on photoshop.

The HTC logo, the HTC quietly brilliant logo, the HTC Wildfire, the HTC Wildfire S, The With HTC Sense logo are the trademarks of HTC Corporation. © 2011 HTC Corporation and/or its suppliers, No. 23 Xing-Hua Rd., 330 Taoyuan City, Taiwan R.O.C. All rights reserved.

The Wilkinson Sword logo, Wilkinson Sword Hydro and Wilkinson Sword Hydro 5 are the trademarks of Wilkinson Sword Corporation.