DD3016 History oF Design – Lecture 2 Reflection

The Pen ts’ao( 本草綱目)is a Chinese herbology volume written by Li Shizhen during the Ming dynasty;This book illustrated all the plants, animals, minerals, and other items that were believed to have medicinal properties. The text consists of 1,892 entries, each entry with its own name called a gang. The mu in the title refers to the synonyms of each name. The book has been translated into many different languages, and remains as the premier reference work for herbal medicine.

WOODBLOCK PRINTING

The Pen ts’aois is one of the first few books aprinted with woodblock. I was interested to find that the Chinese Woodblock printing technique. The woodblock print was created by carving away any parts of the woodblock that were not part of the text or image. The raised surface was inked and pressed firmly and evenly onto paper.

The advantage of using woodblock printing is that its great at mass production(at that point of time) and cost efficient, with the invention of paper was a lot cheaper than vellum and also wood is cheaper than metal. However the disadvantages are firstly its time consuming, it can take a long time to carve, hours or even days, secondly, it is Difficult to carve small details.

Overall, it was very interesting to see the revolution of printing press, and little did I know that the first printing press was invented was originated in China during the first millennium A.D. The worldwide spread of the printing press meant greater distribution of informations and knowledges.

After some research, I found out that Jay chou produced a song call 本草綱目 Chinese Herbal Manual.

Enjoy~

References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compendium_of_Materia_Medica
https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/printing-press

Form and Visualisation Final Assignment

Assignment 2: Form Making – Kettle

Continuing from assignment 1, we were tasked to Build a scale model of the chosen object design from Vis 2 using blue foam. The scale of the object will be decided based on the original size of the object. The longest dimension of the object should be no shorter than 15 cm and no longer than 30 cm.

From my ideation sketches, I chose this design where I was inspired by pregnant penguin. It has an interesting form, organic shapes, which make this kettle different from the others.

VS

My orthographic drawings of the model:

This is my final model

Reflection

I felt that the hardest part was really getting the shape right. I cut them from as one whole piece, initially, I thought that will be easier as compared to cutting different pieces, I was wrong. Cutting in one whole piece is much harder than cutting different pieces. As you can see from my process, at one point in time, I really feel like giving up!!!!! Why is it so harddddd 🙁

Another challenge that I face is to get the smooth and even surface since I was sanding everything by hand and model has this organic shape, it was really challenging. and my biggest challenge is puttying, I added in a total of five layers of putty and sanded it down, and then repeated that process again. For the first few layer, I put a really thick layer of putty, as I wanna cover the holes and uneven surfaces on my model, however it takes really long to dry. So for a week, my daily routine was before I go to sleep, I will put one layer of putty, then when I wake up I will start sanding… and the worst part is when I was sanding, some of the thicker layers are still wet!!!!!

This assignment was a new experience for me, first time working with blue foam, wire cutter and putty. It was a really tedious and time-consuming process, however, I am pretty satisfied with my final product, it’s not perfect, but definitely, it was the best I can do with the short amount of time what was given. I am grateful for this opportunity that I have an opportunity to work with materials that I have never work before, and through this assignment, I have a better understanding of dimensions and scale (from normal size kettle to a portable traveling kettle) hahaha.

The Pill Bag

Project Concept

For our final project, we chose to create a provocative object to address the ethical issues in contraceptive justice. The invention of the birth control pill was a significant milestone in the women’s rights movement. Since then, other long-acting, reversible contraceptives have been developed for women, and women now have a total of 11 methods. In contrast, men only have 2 options, thus the public ceding major responsibility for contraception to women. Moreover, Women currently bear most of the financial and health-related burdens of contraception, dedicating time and energy to contraception care, feeling stress and anxiety about taking the pills, the possibility of unintended pregnancy.

Women bear the majority of contraception responsibility and the burdens it entails while men have limited reproductive autonomy. We decided to design a pill bag resembling the birth control pills calls the attention to reconceptualize the responsibility for contraception as shared between men and women. Continue reading “The Pill Bag”

INE LOCALE – FINAL OUTCOME

Final Outcome

Comments

Reflection
When I first received the project, I thought that create a four spread zine is not a difficult task, and we were given the freedom to do whatever you want. I was clearly wrong. I was stuck at all the development stages. Initially, I approached this project in a very commercial and informative way, which is the idea of an educational zine, however, I don’t feel like it, I do it because I need to do it, then I visit the site a few more times then developed my own thoughts and opinions of the area, thus i deceided t to add my a personal touch to this self-published zine. I honestly feel that I learned a lot about InDesign from this project, in terms of layout and composition and that will definitely benefit me when i am doing graphics work in the further.

I am gonna miss ya 🙁

ZINE LOCALE – PROCESS

My initial idea is to create an educati0nal Zine, Malay 101. Use food as an example to learn basic Malay for Tourist who is not familiar with Malay might have difficulties to order food.

After exploring this idea, I felt that this is not something what I really wanna do, so I decide to do something that has a more personal. personal journey when I visit Geylang Serai with keen eyes. The title of my zine is Geylang Serai, the endangered place. Continue reading “ZINE LOCALE – PROCESS”

Project Development – Drawings

For our final project, we chose to create a provocative object to address the ethical issues in contraceptive justice.

IDEATION

The invention of the birth control pill was a significant milestone in the women’s rights movement. Since then, other long-acting, reversible contraceptives have been developed for women, and women now have a total of 11 methods to choose from, including barrier methods, hormonal methods, and reversible contraceptives. In contrast, men only have 2 options—male condom and vasectomy—and neither are hormonal methods or reversible contraceptives. The disparity between the number and types of female and male reversible contraceptives is problematic for at least two reasons: first, because it forces women to assume most of the financial, health-related, and other burdens of contraception, and, second, because men’s reproductive autonomy is diminished by ceding major responsibility for contraception to women.

Women currently bear most of the financial and health-related burdens of contraception. On the whole, female methods tend to be more expensive than male methods and female methods have more severe side effects than male methods, as well, in part because various contraceptive methods for women involve hormones, while no methods for men do. Beyond the health-related and financial considerations, there are also nontrivial inconveniences and burdens associated with contraceptive use: dedicating time and energy to contraception care, feeling stress and anxiety about the taking the pills, the possibility of unintended pregnancy, and facing the social repercussions of contraceptive decisions and the possible moral reproach for contraceptive failures.

Women bear the majority of contraception responsibility and the burdens it entails while men have limited reproductive autonomy. We decided to design a pill bag resembling the birth control pills blister packs calls the attention to reconceptualise the responsibility for contraception as shared between men and women.

IDEATION DURING BRAINSTORMING

We developed 9 provocative object ideas address the ethical issues in contraceptive justice.

Pill bag (Reminder bag for our users)
Fortune Wheel (contemplating between between safe sex and raw sex)
Fortune cookie
Phone case of organ-like shape losing blood to show time is running out
A piece of furniture that uses speed-control limit to remind people about the consequences of having sex
Piggy Bank (Cost of contraception)
Dual reality
Interactive book (Religion vs. Contraceptive)
Interactive artwork involving paint (Participants have to select which whether male or female should be responsible for taking contraceptive)

CHOSEN CONCEPT: PILL BAG (FIRST DEVELOPMENT)

How it works?

Ring at 7am
Alarm will be activated and LED light surrounding the pill on the embellishment will light up
Alarm will stop once the pill pack is removed and placed back into the compartment. (Using photo cell)
People who comes near the bag will trigger a beeping sound to show the sensitivity of our user taking the birth control pills (DECIDED TO OPT THIS FUNCTION OUT)

CHOSEN CONCEPT: PILL BAG (SECOND DEVELOPMENT)

How it works?

The pill compartment will be placed at the back of the bag with LED lights surrounding it.
At a certain timing, the compartment containing the pill will light up and sound off a beeping alarm. (Easier for the user to approach)
Once, pill is placed back in the compartment, sound and light sensors will be off.
The bag strap will be embellished with a hashtag highlight our issue
The front of the bag will be embellished will pill containing babies.

After body storming, we feel that the pill bag shares the same problem as the 79% clock, where the audience, the guys, the provocative objects do not affect them.

Thus we decided to incorporate a “barcode” feature in the bag. When the audience scans it, it will lead to a landing page on where talks about the pro and cons of birth control pills, facts about birth control, it serves as an educational purpose regarding on women’s struggles on the financial and health-related burdens of contraception.

We did more research and found out that many women will set the alarm on their phone that will vibrate, but not make a sound, so nobody knows you’re about to take your birth control pill. Because women feel embarrassed about taking their birth control pill. We think that there is no need for women to be ashamed when they are on the pills, women deserve to be in control of managing their sex lives in the same way they deserve to be in control of managing their health. So we decided to make the bag “transparent” by using clear plastic, to address that there is no need for embarrassed instead this bag should inspire you to feel less embarrassed when you take I, because you can inspire other women to explore less ashamed of their sexuality and their decision to delay motherhood, too.

Intention of this interaction:

Hence, the interaction is not only for the users to be reminded to take her pills but it’s also an interactive commentary that the public gets to participate and be informed about this issue after interacting with our object. The data we collected can be used to see how many people we reached out to and convey the message highlighting about our issue.

CHOSEN CONCEPT: PILL BAG (THIRD DEVELOPMENT)

We’ve decided to add a second layer of interaction for the public to be involved in our movement.

Features:

The pill compartment will be placed at the back of the bag with LED lights surrounding it.
At a certain timing, the compartment containing the pill will light up and sound off a beeping alarm. (Easier for the user to approach)
Once, pill is placed back in the compartment, sound and light sensors will be off.
The bag strap will be embellished with a hashtag highlight our issue
The front of the bag will be embellished will pill containing babies.
*There will be a barcode at the front with a tagline which prompts the public to scan it. (Why barcode? → Price of contraceptive is a problem too)
Second layer of interaction: Leads them to a page about our movement (information, questionnaire, maybe donation for people who don’t have access to conceptive)
Data collected can be used to raise awareness and inform the public about how many people we managed to reach out using our object.

ZINE LOCALE – PART 1 RESEARCH

IMAGE MAKING THROUGH TYPE – FINAL OUTCOME

PRESENTATION DAY GALLERY

INDIVIDUAL WORKS

OVERALL FEEDBACK & REFLECTION

Some of the feedback from my peers included that they liked the Astrologer and Hypnotist composition, the interesting composition and interactive approach (Hypnotist) of my work, however Mimi mentioned that the major problem of my work is legibility. My initially idea is to take one step further by using destruction method, to rearranging the letters in a way that the audience need to find it and I use portrait instead of landscape orientation, again, its part of my planning, the reason why I use portrait for some of my works is because I feel portrait can better represent my ideas(eg, model, model audition form is in portrait orientation). Moreover, the printing did not turn out so well which affected my final work.

Overall, to be honest I was quite disheartened with my final product for this project. I really thought it could’ve been better if I have consult Mimi about my ideas about legibility and orientation issue before hand. I feel that my work was not at my best because of the my busy schedule (HOCC and hall committee issues). 🙁 Just a lesson learnt on this day to be kept aside for another, no more assumption, and learn to have a better time management.

Thanks for Reading 🙂

IMAGE MAKING THROUGH TYPE – IN-CLASS ASSIGNMENT

Pareidolia

A psychological phenomenon that causes people to see patterns in a random stimulus. This often leads to people assigning human characteristics to objects.

Objective
Create a series of photographs of objects or scenery that looks like the 26 letters in the alphabets around ADM.

IN – CLASS EXERCISE

Using Illustrator, trace 3 letters from #ispotalphabets to produce a composition. Using Cubism as the basis of understanding the context of this exercise, the goal is to achieve a graphical style through the flattening of 3D forms into a 2D composition, much like how Picasso and other cubist artist applied in their paintings. Use Colour or black and White.

CUBISM

The Cubist Movement challenged age-old artistic styles and rejected conventional ideas theses artist wanted to revitalised arts so that it would be more in line with a modern age, they would go on to create the first abstract style in morgen arms. The Cubist movement reacted its creative peak between 1907 to 1914 and it continues to influence artists to this days.

Characteristic of Cubism

Simplified Forms
Subject matter is broken up, analysed and reassembled in an abstracted form
Limited colour palette
The key concept underlaying cubism is that the essence of an object can only be captured by showing it form multiple points of view simultaneously.

SELECTED LETTERS -K,X,A

Colour Palette