Updates

Hey Guys,
I thought you might like to see how a few of my projects turned out last quarter. The first is my final Tea Kettle design

The second is the simplicity spinal tap, which won best senior design and this poster won third place in a regional medical conference poster contest. GO TEAM!

Good things come to thoes who wait

Hey all,
Long time no post. But here we go, a juicy post to reward your patience. at right is my chair prototype. It is rough but the themes are rounded joints, smooth transitions from surface to surface, interesting negative space and movement (literal reason for runners). I welcome you thoughts. I got good feedback from class today and feel good about the direction I'm working in.


Also, here is my most updated portfolio. The first page of which is my teaser. Again any feedback you might have would be welcome.

And finally here is the process book from my groups work designing housewares (big ups to Aaron and Mike, my teammates). Enjoy.

Handwriting fonts

Hey guys,

From time to time one of the blogs I follow (instantshift) post something on free fonts. Today is one of those times. The only thing is, if you want the fonts you have to individually select all the links. Well, I did that and now I have all of the handwriting fonts from todays post. I made the folder into a ziped file and you guys can grab the whole collection here. 

I did this last week as well and here is a link to 104 other fonts.

some of theses will only work on windows as that is the download link I always choose, since I have a pc, but others will work on anything. 

Enjoy. 

My Personal Bubble

 I guess I should start by saying I like my job at Hasbro And have been excited to work on a few interesting projects. There now that that is out of the way....

Look how small my desk is!

Measurements: 1 foot, Cintique, 1 foot

I am not in a small cube, I am at the end of the hall between two cubes. 

And the kicker is the office next to me is for a guy who works from home, he has been here like 3 times in my 5 weeks. 

I challenge you to show me a smaller working space.

On the plus side, yes those two nerf swords are mine.

Design Challenges

Hey Guys,

I just found some interesting design challenges through Unicef. check them out.

Thank God Uconn lost

I must preface this by saying I love the Bearcats and the Badgers and through them, love the Big East and the Big Ten. But I hate Hasheem Thabeet. He is a tall, Annoying wimp.
In his article this week Rick Reilly, A man who I consider to be the best, most funny, most interesting sportswriter on the face of the planet, sings the praises of Thabeet. check it
All he can seem to come up with is that Thabeet returns phone calls, smiles alot, and has at many times in his life has run from trouble, while being overly emotional. Shame on you rick, you are better than that, I expect more.

Anyway, thank you MSU. No moreUconn, No more Thabeet. Now lets finish the job and bring the national title to the Big Ten. Represent

Niagara Falls

So the drive from Detroit to Providence is 734 miles but One of the most awesome natural monument is on the way, Niagara Falls. Look

Reflections on the quarter

So here we are at the end of another quarter of school. It never feels like ten weeks at the end, and it always feels like eternity at the beginning.
First let me get the orders of business out of the way:
My final storyboards can be found here
my final tea kettle can be found here
and my process book can be found here

I have enjoyed this quarter very much and I feel like I have improved, which is the point, I think.
As for my goals none were archived totally but all were at least started. As far as design process I feel I have found some quick techniques for expressing my designs and I understand better what I want to know at the onset of my work.
I purchased but have not started to go through the tutorials on solid works.
I have sketched but not nearly enough, no excuses, I must be more vigilant.

Hopefully over my next co-op quarter I can continue to work on these things and improve. I will keep on posting periodically to keep you up to date.

Innovation

Innovation is a catchword like ergonomic or sustainable. Everyone wants to be associated with innovation; and everyone has a different definition for it.
I believe that the technical definition goes something like this: the incremental improvement of a product, idea, or process such that it becomes more valuable.
Often I think people allow invention and innovation to be interchangeable, but they are not. The Wright brothers invented the airplane. It did not exist before they created it. Ford invented the assembly line, but he innovated manual labor processes. The car existed before ford built the model T, but it was made affordable by mass production and the assembly line.
I am reminded of the advertising campaign of BASF; we dont make (product x), we make it (faster, stronger, smaller). that is innovation. And it really is what the design process is all about. We research so we know what exists already and then we create new things often based on the creations of the past. We innovate.

Leaves water and heat

Hey Guys,
This is my second evolution of my tea kettle design. I added the metal accent on bottom to make it a better heating surface and the one on the handle is to stop the handle from getting too hot. There is a rubber grip on the underside of the handle but it is a bit hard to see because it is tone on tone. I wanted to do as little as possible to take away from the form.
What do you think? any suggestions for improvements?

story board

these are my storyboards for the procedure involved with my spinal tap device.

the first is here second one is here.

usb.

Hi Guys,

So I forgot to post this file on Thursday but here is my usb project.

and a sweet Daniel Simonnet rendering

Human Factors Vs. Usibility:
terms we use without understanding them

I am in an alternative human factors class this quarter and it is taught by Mary beth Privitera in the BME department. She writes human factors regulations for the FDA so...
Any way she has been assigning some rather interesting readings. In them I have learned some useful strategies for developing a product.

A good anthropometric target is to design to fit (the hand sizes) between the 5% woman and the 95% man.

The most work can be done from the nutral position.

no more than 30% of maximum force should be exerted for more than 2 min.

In the power grip the wider the diameter of the handle is, the more force can be exerted...up to the point where the hand can no longer grasp.

power grip handles should taper due to the natural tapering of finger size.

you need at least 12 results to start compiling quantitative statistics.


All this to say that I think facts like these could be helpful in the design process .

Sometimes I check my own blog to see if there is a new post

Hi guys,
So... We just finished our first "real" des com assignment and I must say I enjoyed it. This is the first time I have done a des com project that I totally understood the motivations behind. It wasent a load of superfluous fluff, it was "this is what you will be expected to do at a real job...do it".

That said I did struggle with it a little... Let me explain in a roundabout sort of way.

When I learned how to 3d model I basically went through a pdf tutorial for about 200-300 hours. It took me a whole semester at Wisconsin, but at the end I felt quite proficient and now feel that I am at a level where I can make just about anything I want. Doing that tutorial taught me 2 valuable things about 3d modeling. 1: it got me to think about objects in the right frame of mind to model them, i.e. where are the contour lines? is the object symmetrical? should I sweep this surface or loft it? 2: it taught me all the tools that I needed to know to operate the program.
with that knowledge I now can use the program to explore concepts and not get boged down in the details of how to create my idea.
To put it simply I learned how to use the tool and then got creative with it.

With illustrator and photoshop things are much more open ended...I often ask a person "how should I do this?" and they will just say "play around with it"... and then I feel like Im lost in the tall reeds without a clue what I am doing.

Sometimes I wish we just had a pdf to follow. step by step, and the at the end you can tell whether you did things correctly because there is something your are trying to copy. In that way we could just focus on learning the tools, before we start using them to design.

All that to say I enjoyed the first project but was a little overwhelend trying to navigate illustrator and create a pleasing design.

Doo-da-loo-doo, Doo-da-loo-doo, Doo-da-loo-Do-Do (nokia phone ring)

Nokia: USB Drive
For whatever reason, I have always been a fan of the designs that those crazy Fins at Nokia produce. They are usually rather quirky but lovable. Their mostly regular geometric forms with a slight curve added to the top or bottom edge has created a simple, recognizable aesthetic.
For my USB drive I will try to integrate this design aesthetic into a tiny lovable package.

Check out the final portfolio.
and the teaser.

who ya' gona call

Hey Guys,
I have a draft of my portfolio that I would love some feedback on. Check it out here.

Ever notice how there is a divide between what people think and what is really true, or perhaps how people gloss over the the middle steps and just think about the beginning and end of a process. Take for example the production of paper. The common thought is that trees become paper but there is so much more to the process. Not to say that I know all the steps, but my point is that there are so many things that happen and that those things have widespread effects. Where does the wood come from? What are the environmental impacts? Does the company pay their workers well, and create a safe working environment?

It can be very hard to know all the facts about everything but it is important to think about all the possible impacts of the things you buy as a consumer, and create as a designer.

The chicken sport

This is the work of a student in France, I think his work is awesome. You can tell that he has fun with his work. The baby chicks are super fun, love the one pulling the shoelace. And how appropriate is the brand of that shoe. The chickens are pulling on the chicken shoe.
Also look how playful the lines he has sweeping through his Rossignol composition are.
It really brings into focus how proficient you need to be to be a professional in this field, but also how much you have to love what you do.

In other news

Hello,
As a brief introduction here are some facts:
I am 23 years old
I hate chocolate ice cream
I think I am the most avid sports fan in DAAP
I collect trivia: like John Quincy Adams was the first president born in America
I have 10/20 vision (without contacts)
I built my own Bike
I have experienced no greater joy than having something I built, work.

I think this brail watch is awesome, the form is nice, but the idea is what really makes me love it.

My goals for the quarter are:

1) Get better at sketching.

I have made modest improvement during my 2 years at daap but I can not yet produce professional level work. That bothers and frustrates me. I feel that there are 2 main things I need to do to improve. Firstly, I think I need to invest at least an hour a day to just sketching. Secondly I need to both observe and get criticism from people who can sketch well, so that I can learn what they do and how they do it.

2) Learn to create illustrator/potoshop/painter renderings

I am hoping to pick this up in class and then develop my skills further, espically with my new tablet.

3)Learn solidworks/hypershot

In my co-op experience these 2 programs have come up as things that it would be helpful to be proficient at to that end I will have to buy a new student licence for solid works and then invest the time to do the tutorials.

4) I want to develop a good design process

Currently the design process seems a bit ethereal to me, designing is a cloud of; research, sketching concepts, creating models, testing and refining. It feels like there is no clear stating or ending point for each step and the confusion just builds as I move from one to the other. I usually arrive at a good solution, but I think that if my process was better my products would be as well.

5) I want to build my design vocabulary and my concept of beauty

To create beautiful objects I feel I need to get a firmer grip on what makes an object beautiful, how to manipulate proportion and relationships so that forms are expressive. to this end I will be building a file of cool stuff and researching famous designer's work.
To sell my products I need to be able to talk about then in a sophisticated manor. So I need to build my design vocabulary, I have a few books that I want to read on the subject (starting with "universal principals of design") and I will try to pick up other information from my peers and professors.




I am a designer who likes to put function before form. My main concern with things is that they work and work well, I feel that if something works well it will naturally be enjoyable. I will also admit that I may highlight this part of design because I feel that it is my strength. I am working on developing my sense of form (as per goal 5) and as I improve perhaps I will feature form more prominently.

More later...
-Steve