Felting

Need felt which you can get pretty cheap from diaso, soecial needles a sponge and warm water! And soap! so you just take a small handful of felt and mix with another colour of felt, put some warm water put some soap and start poking!

You can also roll it into a ball and if you find that the two cannot join together perfectly, no worries you just have to keep hitting it or poking it!!

You can also do small animals with it!!

Laser Cut

For my final sample, I decided to lazer cut the shape. As lazer cutting has a maximum amount of thickness it can cut, I cut alot more quantity of it and stick it together instead. As I was familiar with rhino, I did it on rhino first before laser cutting!

Another thing I laser cut was tags to hang on my products, first I had to rasterise what I wanted to be stated onto the acrylic board then I vector the outer shape!

Also, when laser cutting you can recycle the wood you cut out and make it be used as patterns or buttons!!!

Plastic Fusing (MY FAV METHOD) & Applique

Probably my favourite technique of all time – because it is completely recyclable (cost free) and doesn’t create a huge mess!

You basically begin by collecting plastic bag, after some practice and experiment, you more or less will know which kind of plastic bag will produce which kind od results. For me, I started using trash bags as they are single coloured and thin which makes it good to layer up into something strong, along with the “fruit protector” – the white foam thing that protects your fruit, I managed to fuse plastic into a very strong material!

I went on to further to applique – I first sewed a pouch with the strong plastic and also sewed clothes of various shapes onto the strong plastic using the various sewing patterns the sewing machine had to offer.

I decided that I really like the looked of the plastic bags being fused together so I decided to make to big plastic fused bags and sew a tote bag!

 

Vacuum, Resin and Latex

This is kinda like one big happy family, first you get a solid shaped item you want to create a vacuum out of, and then use this machine (takes 30 mins to heat up though) to vacuum the air out~

Once you get a plastic out line of the various shapes that you want, you can do resin with it! Add resin into the plastic and 3 drops of hardener so that you resin would be able to harden and yet not overheat resulting it in cracking and burning!!

For latex, you gotta grab the goo and mix it with any colour that you want and remember to add hardener OR it will never ever dry!! You can add it to almost any surface you want – just remember to spray the releasing agent before it! Unless you’re sure that you want to throw away the object after using it once!

ALSO REMBER TO WEAR GLOVES AT ALL TIME. RESIN AND LATEX CAN GET VERY MESSY SO ALSO REMEMBER TO SPREAD OUT NEWSPAPERS AND TRASHBAGS AND NOT TO DO IT IN THE ROOM.

Etching & Bleaching

For etching, ou have to get the fibre remover gel  (which is costly btw) and also velvet like cloth (which is also very costly) – silkscreen the gel onto the velvet with your desired design, let it dry and then iron it! wait till it goes completely brown, scrap of the dried bits and tadah you’re done!!!

Whereas for bleaching, you can do it at home with cheap materials – ie. unwanted tees and bleach. For experimental purposes, just fold your tee shirt in any way that you want to and spray on the bleach and let it dry in the sun and boommz!!

Thermoplastic

Well, you basically get some marbles, some rubber bands – would recommend the tiny ones that girls use to tie their hairs with, and tie them together to 100% polyester cloth (for long lasting results). You then wrap it in aluminium foil and boil in for the next 45 mins. Take it out to dry and walah! You can sew it with an opaque background if you want a more defined opaque look ~ You can also fold your polyester cloth and fold it into different shapes of with the aluminium!!!

Heat Transfer


TRANSFER PRINTING USING FABRIC CRAYONS

You basically draw whatever design you would like to have on paper and later iron it on onto the silk cloth with baking paper – easy! the only set back is that it lacks colour choices:(

TRANSFER PRINTING USING FABRIC PAINT

though the dye might look dark when painting on paper in the beginning, when ironed on the silk cloth, it actually ends up being very light in colour

TRANSFER USING MAGIC TOUCH PAPER

You have to use laser to print on either 6.1 or 3.1 – one is for dark coloured materials while they other is for light coloured materials such as a cotton tee shirt! Managed to print successfully print an image onto a cotton tee shirt @400 degree fahrenheit for 30 secs using a heat press!

Design Triangle of Aesthetics

Category 1

To me, this shelf fits the closest into the centre as it is functional – it fills the spaces and it is big enough to hold things, aesthetically pleasing – it emphasises the corners of a place that usually goes by unnoticed and it also factors in human factors – you can change the height of this shelf as you please, perhaps according to an individual’s height.

Catergory 2

This shelf fits into category 2 as it plays a huge role in factoring in emotions, not designed for functionality – this shelf brings across emotions such as anger through its harsh lines and instability through the angles of the wood. However, in terms of functionality and human factor, it is not that permissible as it cannot hold much items and could only be placed on the floor.

Category 3

Category 3 is probably the easiest to recognise, it does not have anything aesthetically pleasing on based on any human factors. It is designed just to be used with full functionality – for storage purposes only.

Category 4

Lastly, in category 4, we have this set of shelves that includes heavily on human factors – it is based on what we need in order to save space. It is also lean towards the functional side as it serves two purposes – set of stairs and shelves. But it doesn’t really bring many emotions as it is just shelf like.

Field Trip to Harvey Norman

Why Harvey Norman?

Actually, by going to Harvey Norman, it is possible to see why our field trip was held there.

I managed to take note of the new trends in household product these days~

  1. Colours

The first thing that attracts people is the colour – its vibrance. It draws you to them and it helps to add life into the object. It also helps as a theme – for instance SMEG, by having the same set of colours in a series makes one want to purchase a line of their products – from toasters, to kettles to refrigerators.

2. Convenience/Shape

Some products are shaped with sleeks and curves that are really interesting – such as the cake mixer that looks like a rocket. Also, these days, designers also pays attention to the finest details of the consumer’s needs. Such as having a fridge space fit for an entire cake.

But somehow, for example, the fridge has too many features – it makes me think if the consumer will really use everything? or will these new extra features make the product too complicated and become a complete turn-off!

3. New Technology

Never in my life would I expect to have a transparent iron – or at least the part where it is to be heated transparent. It is quite cool (and expensive) to marvel at – but i find myself asking would i pay for new technology when i can get something of almost the same result for half the price?

I think new inventions and technology is cool but unless it makes a really huge difference, it won’t market as well.

But of course, new innovations is still necessary and who knows it might become a hit product in the future?

 
 

 

Yves Behar & Karim Rashid

Yves Behar

Yves is a design entrepreneur who believes that product, digital and brand design are cornerstones of any business. He is the founder of fuseproject, the San Francisco and New York based design and branding firm he established in 1999. He is also Chief Creative Officer at Jawbone, where for the last 11 years his products, brand and communications work has helped the company become a leader in wearable and audio consumer electronics. Behar is also the Creative Co-Founder of OUYA, an open sourced gaming platform, and is Co-founder of start-up August, a next generation home entry system.

(https://fuseproject.com/)

I too inspire to be a designer-entrepreneur because I believe that business and marketing is also essential to product designing. I believe that entrepreneurship helps to raise funds giving us the ability to have the resources to do even more for the designing community as well as being able to promote it well. Yves Behar’s research into constructing eco-friendly products as well as helping out in improving the lives of people from third world countries in their own way makes me look up to him – and also inspire to be like him.

 

Karim Rashid

Today poetic design is based on a plethora of complex criteria: human experience, social behaviors, global, economic and political issues, physical and mental interaction, form, vision, and a rigorous understanding and desire for contemporary culture. Manufacturing is based on another collective group of criteria: capital investment, market share, production ease, dissemination, growth, distribution, maintenance, service, performance, quality, ecological issues and sustainability. The combination of these factors shape our objects, inform our forms, our physical space, visual culture and our contemporary human experience. These quantitative constructs shape business, identity, brand and value. This is the business of beauty. Every business should be completely concerned with beauty – it is after all a collective human need….

(http://karimrashid.com/)

Not only am I attracted to Karim Rahid’s designs due to his use of strong vibrant colours – but also the way all his designs reflects his personality and signature style. The way he manages to translate his personality into his works is something that I hope to achieve in the future. Also, I resonate greatly to his manifesto as seen in the quote above. That basis of what design revolves around along with manufacturing, in other words, Entrepreneurship, as mentioned earlier, is something that I strongly believe in and hope to achieve one day.