Industry Scavanger Hunt

Yesterday we went on an Industry Scavenger Hunt in Farringdon. The point of this hunt was to get us thinking about other ways of finding design studios around London rather than just googling them. So we were given a task to find three design studios, then take an interview from a designer, get a business card from another one and take photos of one of the studios. We were put into groups of threes.

The IDEO Studio

In the beginning of the hunt, we found the IDEO studio, and asked at the reception if we could meet one of their designers and have a chat for five minutes, luckily they weren't busy at that time, so we met their Industrial Designer, I forgot to note his name down. We talked to him about what he studied and how he got into IDEO and how he finds working there. He was very nice and friendly and gave us answers to all our questions. What we found out from him was that he graduated in Industrial design from Central Saint Martins and straight after his degree he got and internship at IDEO in July 2007, and then was kept on permanent and has been working there since then. He told us that at IDEO they like to have T shape designers, it means that they like people who are good at two things at a time, one their own specialization and an extra thing on top of that, like he is an industrial designer there which is the stem of T and the top (extra thing) is the graphic designer. Here are a few photos we took at the IDEO studio.

This is our group looking at the small exhibition corner in the studio.

This is the phone designed by IDEO.

The first laptop design by IDEO and also I was quite surprised to see these white kitchen accessories were designed by them too as I bought all of them a few days ago as I loved their distinctive style, the ones I bought were in bright colours.

Pictures of some more stuff designed by them.

Visit to the GREY Studio

So for our second task, we found this really nice studio in Farringdon. I quite liked the interior of the whole studio, it was very well designed and had a contemporary feel and look to it. So it was a rather good hunt for our second task which was to take photos of a design studio.

This is the picture of their reception area.

The display wall for different stuff designed by them.

The 3rd Task

The third task which was to get a business card from a designer, sounded like the easiest one, but came out to be the most difficult one, as by the time we had finished the first two tasks, it was about lunchtime and we couldn't find any more designers. So we kind of cheated a bit and took a business card from a printers shop.

So it was quite a fun day and a really good experience on the whole.

If You Could Exhibition

On Friday, we went to see the If You Could Collaborate exhibition, which is the fourth annual If You Could exhibition. The aim of the exhibition is to provide a platform for the finest creatives from all over the world to question their conventional working methods and outcomes. The contributors had been challenged to produce something a little unexpected, by working with a partner of their choosing from any discipline, profession or background. There was no brief to answer, or format to honour – the only limit was the enterprise and imagination of the artists involved, and a liberal 12 month deadline. There was some really nice stuff at the exhibition, I particularly liked these numbers designed by George Hardie, Leonardo Sonnoli & Sara Fanelli. Working with well known children’s illustrator Sara Fanelli and highly regarded graphic designer Leonardo Sonnoli, the trio have used their time to play a game of consequences with numerals.
Visit the website to see other interesting stuff http://www.ifyoucould.co.uk/collaborate.

Maharaja Exhibition

I went to the see the Maharaja exhibition at the V&A. The exhibition explored the extraordinarily rich culture of the Maharajas (great kings). I really liked the exhibition but it's a shame that taking photos wasn't allowed within the exhibition, so I couldn't take any photos. I did buy a booklet of postcards, here are the scans of a few of them.

Ankus (detail)

Elephant goad

Gold with colourless saphires and enamel

Jaipur, around 1870

Golden Thorne of Ranjit Singh

Hafiz Muhammed Multani

Wood and resin with embossed gold

Lahor, about 1820

Canopy (detail)

Pearls, rubies, emeralds and diamonds

on deerskin and silk

Baroda, 1865

Comissioned by Maharaja Khanderao Gaekwad

of Baroda

Private Collection

Rolls-Royce Phantom 1 with 'Hunting' coachwork

Made by Hooper

England, 1927

Specified and ordered by His Highness

the Maharana of Udaipur, shipped to India in 1927

Reproduced by kind permission of Christopher van Essen

For more information about the exhibition visit http://www.vam.ac.uk/microsites/maharaja/

Networking Project

Today we were given the project brief for the first half of the term. The title of the project is Networking, which is an ideas based self promotion project. The main purpose of this project is to get us thinking as professionals, considering our peers and the design industry. For the project, the whole Networking group was divided into sub-groups of 4s. In our group, it's me, of course, then its Anna Maria, Matt Bolton and Konrad Bednarski. So we introduced ourselves to each other today, and tried to come up with unique ideas to promote ourselves, what we came up with today was to do something related to charity for Haiti and send some 10 clients broken bricks with our blog name spray painted on it. Now I am going to do some research into current collaborative groups and events and try to come up with some more ideas for our group meeting on Thursday.

Decode, Tree 2005

Above are the photos of another interactive installation by Simon Heijdens who often explores the themes of nature and technology in his work, which he displays in urban environments. The branches of the tree blew in response to the wind outside the museum. As you approached the tree, its leaves shed and gathered on floor. They moved as visitors walked among them.
Check the website out at http://www.simonheijdens.com/, there is some really interesting stuff in there.

Decode, Light Rain 2007

Above is the video of an exhibit called Light Rain by a Japanese group named Wow. This was one of my favourite exhibits in the exhibition and I quite enjoyed kind of interacting with it. In Light Rain as you can see in the video activated as someone moved in front of the projection, the responsive graphics triggered by shadows cast on the projection surface. These shadows were detected and movements were integrated into the animations.

Check their website out at http://www.wowlab.net/

Decode, Swarm Draw 2009

Above is the video of an animation by Joshua Davis called Swarm Draw. Davis was one of the first web designers to work with open-source Flash programming. Adobe Flash is a programme that allows designers to create interactive and animated web-pages. Davis has created Swarm Draw within the Hype framework, a network that supports non-specialists programming in Flash.

Check some more of his work out at http://www.joshuadavis.com

Decode, Exquisite Clock 2009

Above are the photos of the Exquisite Clock, which is my favourite piece in the whole exhibition. I was really fascinated by this interesting clock, and I spent most time in the exhibition watching it. I really like the idea behind it which I think is very unique. The clock designed by a group called Fabrica is fed by a live database of images constantly updated by visitors to the website http://www.exquisiteclock.org. These images form an ever-changing series of numbers making up a digital clock face. The numbers are made up of everyday objects photographed by the public and uploaded to create a clock made by a series of networked participants.

Visit Fabrica's website at http://www.fabrica.it

Decode continued.....

"Aggregate layers of abstraction remove every trace of systemic complexity, revealing a living surface. Structured form emerges from the results of thousands of local interactions between autonomous elements." http://www.reas.com/iperimage.php?section=works&work=ti_s&id=0

Decode, Everyone Forever 2006 by Matt Pyke

Above is the video of a digital sculpture, 'Everyone Forever' by Matt Pyke. To create this Pyke has used advanced software to created a dynamic structure from which graphics evolve and merge. The central structure within the image spins, creating a constantly morphing collage of his signature brightly coloured graphics.

Check the website out at http://www.universaleverything.com

Decode entrance

Above is the photo of the exbibition entrance, these sticks moved & lightened up as you walked past them and made sqeaking sounds. You can see that in the video below.

Visit to the Decode Exhibition

On the 11th of January, I went to see the Decode exhibition at V&A. The main reason for going to the exhibition was getting some stuff to put on my blog, and I thought that it might be a boring but to be honest I really enjoyed the exhibition and now I have decided that I will visit at least one exhibition every week and put the photos on my blog. Alright, so there was some really nice stuff there. I made some videos and took a lot of photos over there and now I can't wait to put them all on the blog and share them with everyone else.
For more information about the exhibition visit http://www.vam.ac.uk/decode

Kinetic Typography

Kinetic Typography is a technical name for 'moving text', it is an animation technique using motion and text.

Above is the example of a piece of kinetic typography that I made on photoshop.

Improved Final Poster

Above is my final final poster, I am not going to do anything to it now. I hope that the teachers like it, and I get good grades for my whole project. I emailed the poster to Mr Andy Denner as well and he said that it looks fantastic now, I hope he actually meant it. Now I am not going to make any posts for this project, I might make one for my final grade, but not more than that. So I bid good bye to this project and look forward to my next project, which is Networking, I hope it's good and enjoyable and I do well in that.

So it's Wednesday today and it's snowing heavily and all the schools are closed, i don't think that they will be open tomorrow either, anyways as the schools were closed today I couldn't go to show my poster to year 5 students. Hopefully I will try to go there next Wednesday, if it doesn't snow again.

Poster Feedback from Woking Council's Marketing Officer

Today I received a reply from Andy Denner, the marketing officer of Woking Council. The feedback he has given in the email is very helpful and I have got to know about some new things with that. I know it seems really silly to put a screen shot of the e-mail, but I thought that it's better to put it there rather than have no image with the post as I think that it makes it very boring. So now I am going to improve my poster following his feedback, as afterall the poster is for Woking council and it has to be according to their requirements.

So, after Christmas and new year, I thought that I should get serious now and took my poster first to the local primary school and showed it to the head teacher who really liked the poster, I don't know if she actually liked it or just said it, anyways, I asked her if i could put the poster by the reception area and see how children like it, and photograph it, but due to the security reasons and data protection I couldn't do that. The head teacher was actually quite helpful and she asked me if I could come on Wednesday the 6th to show it to a group of year 5 and talk to them about it. So now I have bought two large packs of kit kats to give out to children when I go there and am really excited and a bit scared too to go and show the poster to them on Wednesday.
I also went to the council's office and asked at the reception if I could see someone from their creative team, the receptionist talked to the Marketing Communications Officer and he came down to have a look at my poster, which he liked as well, I told him everything about the project and the poster that I made and asked if he could give me some feedback on my poster and tell me what i could improve on, he has given me his e-mail address and I have emailed him the poster now am waiting for his reply.
Now at the end of the day, I am really happy as it has been a really good day for me and I feel very luck that I have got such nice people around me who are always happy to help, I really feel thankful to the Head teacher of the Broadmere school and the Marketing officer of the Woking council, their help means a lot to me.

GDF Assessment Feedback

I had a formative assessment on the 11th of December, and the feedback that I received wasn't as bad as I had expected; actually it was pretty good and I was very pleased with it. I had made the PDF the night before the submission date, so it wasn't that good but still it did show all the process throughout the project so really I came home in a very good mood, which was because of both the holidays and good feedback.

In the assessment feedback I received, I got Merit for technical competence, because my PDF wasn't up to the mark, Merit+ for research, analysis and communication and presentation, and Distinction for experimentation. When I was coming back from uni that day, I thought that I will do a lot of uni work in this one month, make all the possible efforts I can to take all the merits up to the distinction. I have done nothing much till now, but hopefully hopefully, I am going to improve my project and my new years resolution is going to be 'not just to plan, but to try hard to accomplish those plans.'