Bad Design

Project 3 peer comments

Phil Pulido

Hyo-Ju Cho

Jill Darbey

Chris Hui

Greg Shar

Upcycling. project 3

I tried to make a lamp shade out of the bottom of cans. Originally it was meant to be a more spherical shape but in the end I couldn't get the tensions to work right. The project was actually a little intimidating because I had a lot of trouble visualising how it would work. In the end it turned out okay.

The choice of material was primarily based on the ubiquitous nature of cans and the clean shiny surface you can get from them. I concentrated on limiting how much of the label surface was visible to the user so that also dictated the form.

Designing Dream Machines

This film gives an in depth look into the entire design process from start to finish. Though surely exhausting, the design process appears to be full of variety. From market research, concept sketching, client meetings, modelling. These designers probably don't get bored too often.

The film shows how it is important to be a team player. One of the key concepts regarding this is communication. Being a collaborative process, the designer needs to not only come up with solutions but also convey them. Strong communication skills are needed not just within a design team but also when addressing clientele, target market, investers, manufacturers... etc. Each discussion requires a different vernacular, a different tone and what not. I find this aspect of design very interesting because it necessitates that you know how to play the game , talk the talk and other kind of Jedi-mindtrick type stuff. Any designer hoping to lead a team would have to be competent in such sociopathic skills, and yet level headed enough to keep a team under them.

Annie Leonard - The Story of Stuff

Someone showed this video to me ages ago. I have mixed feelings about it. The film has as its core argument that our consumerist lifestyle, fuelled by a linear system of production, is not environmentally sustainable nor ethically justified. This is a world view which, I am lead to believe, is not inaccurate. So of course I would advocate change just like Annie.

However, I wonder about her methods. She uses, it seems, some skewed facts and figures designed to appeal to viewers emotionally, which is possibly justified as long as they are correct. The breast-milk toxicity is one of those statements. There are claims out there that some of her facts a plain lies but in this heavily politicised debate who can you believe. So I suspend judgement, I suppose.

Either way, designers should try to be world savvy, just like the rest of us should, and I am certain that watching videos like this does not achieve that. It does raise the question about how much the designer should be clued up regarding society and science though. More than the average person?

How much clout does a designer have anyway? In the film, Annie says that it was ID'ers that gave us product obselescence, but surely at the behest of manufacturers, right? So, are ID'ers gonna be able to make the changes or is it more likely to come from the manufacturers who employ us. Just like that video before, where Lovegrove whinged about Sony, implies . Maybe those ID'ers that make all the art stuff have some clout, being artists.

This issue of consumerism is pretty closely linked to ID. If we curb consumerism, does that mean that ID shrinks? Less consumer goods means less peeps needed to design them right? Or maybe we keep consumerism and just make it completely sustainable? Is that possible?

The Story of Stuff