Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Champagne Cooler



The product is an anniversary champagne cooler in which the user can keep track of their wedding anniversaries. For each year of an anniversary there is a symbol to go along with it, for example the 1st year is paper. I have encorporated this idea into my product buy creating 50 badge holes around the cooler. Each badge or anniversary symbol comes with the product and as each anniversary come the user can put the appropriate badge on the cooler. This builds up over the years and shows the progression of ones marriage. The product is slick in its design to allow it to fit in on formal occassions such as special dinners. The cooler is meant to be used all year round not just on anniversaries and can provide a talking point to guests who may be over for dinner viewing the cooler and how many badges are on it.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Reflection: Dream Machines

This video portrayed the importance of the design process and showed the extensive thought and reworking of a concept which in the end can produce a great product. Richard Semore and Dick Powel try to obtain a cutting edge look to their designs as the take ordinary, everyday objects and transform them into desirable machines.

By focusing more on the design process the product at the end will turn out much better. Brainstorming is a fundamental part of this process which enables the designer to have a number of concepts which can be worked on until the desirable design reveals itself. the video enphasises this thought process and the reworking of design concept with traditional and new techniques. In relation to the motobike the precision of concepts is conveyed. By putting pen to paper a designer can get a real feel for what they are designing and can then rework these drawings where appropriate to obtained the deired form.

As seen witht he kitchen appliances, such daily objects have been transformed into desired products with a non traditional colour and form. It shows that it is important to challenge traditional design or what we are used to and redefine them with different forms, materials and colours.

Another fundamental part of the design process is to always refer back to your target market or the client you are designing for. This is important as is keep the designer on track during the concept stage as many ideas may be produced however some may not entirely fit with the clients needs.

As a student of design it has enlightened me to see how important the begining processes of designing are and how an up to date client will lead to a good product also. Top designers will make mistakes however these mistakes become a lesson learned for future designs.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Bad Design


As seen in the pictures below, the drawing table has a fault in its design. as seen in the first two pictures the rulers are lying flat on the table as they are suppose to however they are not using the full extent of the drawing space. When the operator goes to use the full extent of the space the small wheel on the end of the arm, at the bottom of each picture, rolls off the table lifting the rulers off of the table and creating a loud banging noise.

BEFORE (Wheel on the table)

AFTER (Wheel rolled off the table)



To correct this design is quite simply to have a longer arm that is connected to the wheel. this way the full extent of the table can be used in a stable and safe fashion. The longer arm design is shown below.