Yves Behar: Designing objects that tell stories

Through watching this video, it became very clear to me that the main idea that Yves Behar was trying to create was a sense of value within every aspect of our lives. Albeit in the initial stages of design development, to the workplace, or even in our everyday use of objects. There is always a pigment of value in different forms. What Yves was trying to convey in this video, in my opinion was that he wanted to merge all of these values, or as much values as he could, in every aspect of design, in order to create one single greater value which ties everything together, which in essence could eventually change the world.

I learnt that from watching this video, there were so many technological advances within the design world that it still amazes me that we as humans are even capable of designing such wonderful products. The jaw bone bluetooth earpiece was particularly one of my favourites, as I particularly liked the idea of the device detecting the users jaw bone movement, and which in turn will automatically perceive this action as a user talking on the headset, and so the device automatically blocks out all external noises to help in providing clear conversations.

Industrial designers could particularly benefit from watching this video as it shows designers to not only thing about the ‘skin’ or the outside appearance of the object, but however think about the merging of technology, along with the values attached to using this product, and trying to link it to a single, larger value which ties all similar objects and values together, in order to provide a more exciting and promising lifestyle in the future to come.

Don Norman: Emtional Design

In this video, Don Norman speaks to his audience about design where emotions have been used to alter, modify, or improve certain aspects of designs, to give designs, in an essence, a sense of artificial intelligence which imitates the human mind. He believes that designs based on emotions is leading us to the wrong path in the design world, as it makes simple tasks, like changing the volume on a car stereo, a lot more difficult than what it actually is, as given by the Mercedez Benz example depicted in the video.

The thought I found interesting about this video was that designers actually intend to make useless designs or designs which stand out, purely just on a social context. I still believe it to be quite a large waste of resources, time and money to manufacture and produce designs which are aesthetically stunning, however are functionally useless, like the gold plated version of Phillipe Starcks' Juicy Salif, which was not even made to be used, but rather to be talked about.

It was interesting to find that emotions have become a main factor when designing products, usually in the context on fuctionality, as a mimic to human emotions, or to suppress the unwanted human emotions, such as fear when driving at high speeds.

Emotional design can be seen in many aspects of the design world today, it may not necessarily be the most functional, or environmentally friendly, such as the Hummer car, or $13,000 watches, but they are designs which depict a certain status to the owner. Designs become conventions which the social community labels a user of particular designs to be in certain market or focus groups.

Industrial designers could find this video useful as it says a lot about the direction to which design is heading towards, and the constant failures resulting from it. It could possibly be a hint to other designers to either stay away from emotional designs, or to be an inspired by it, so that other designers can successfully implement emotional driven designs and rid humans of the constant negative emotions which we all do not wish for in our lives.

Task 2: Good Design - ALLONGÉ GSB

At first thought, creating a poster for an already successful design seemed easy, as all of it's main features and functions were already highlighted in the description of the award winning design. However, as time progressed, it became quite clear that this task was actually a lot more difficult than I first thought. The task of heavily summarising the description in just a few sentences, whilst also reflecting on the visual design elements, it became quite clear that the challenge was not only to make the poster neat, and aesthetically pleasing, but also to consider the use of positive and negative space in order to enhance the visual appeal of the poster.

The idea of the rear view of the car coming out of the page was actually accidently, but I considered its positioning and I found it to be actually quite pleasing, so I stuck with it as I believed it gave direction to future decisions in the design of my poster. In saying that, the shadows of the interior picture was actually a result of the decision to make the car come 'out of the page', as the shadows seemed to give the poster a little more depth and third dimensional element to it.

The main challenges which I came across in this task was initially the issue of proportion and scaling when enlarging a photo from another source. Then the next challenge which I came to believe to be quite frustrating was the task of creating borders. It didn't seem to work for me after a good hour of playing around in photoshop so I decided the manual way was best, which was to draw four straight lines in order to make the border.

The last problem I seemed to have encountered in the final stages of my poster project was the hard copy. The print was warped and shifted along the page and so the print was not in aligned with the proper paper measurements, and hence the poster does not look anywhere near as pleasing as the online submission. I did not re-print the hardcopy poster as each print set me down $3.80 so I figured that the online submission would be the first source of visual assessment rather than the hardcopy.

All in all, I think that my final poster (minus the hard copy) looks aesthetically pleasing and almost resembles an advertisement in a magazine for the award winning Allonge GSB hearse.

David Kelley: Human Centred Design

David Kelley brings the viewers towards another dimension of product design. He introduces a broader definition of design, one that is influenced by human behavior in order to give rise to new areas of focus and research for innovative design solutions. As a result, designers have become more amalgamated into businesses, giving designers a greater role in the market trade.

From watching the video, it became clear that design has evolved dramatically from the first products ever to be designed. Designs have not only just become objects and tools, but have also become a part of every day living, as they help to further improve the needs and wants of the varying consumers markets of today.

A strong example of this was shown in the presentation of the Prada store in New York, where designers have put together a system of technological innovation which helps to better improve a customers experience whilst in store.

The most intriguing design in the store which I found to have most interest in, was the virtual fitting display monitors. Whereby, customers and store staff make use of the multiple RF scanners around the store to pick and choose which item of clothing which fascinates them, and the virtual fitting program allows a customer to see what the actual item looks like on them without the need of actually putting them off. I found this as a remarkable discovery and of which could eventually even eliminate the need for dressing rooms in stores as the virtual fitting guide is a lot quicker, and less tedious than trying on items of clothing.

Design focus and direction changes as time progresses, and not always will the same methodology and approach to design bring about success. That is why it is almost imperative for designers to be constantly up to date with new discoveries and opportunities within the design industry, with the designs in David Kelley’s presentation being a adequate source of guidance towards what the focus is in the world of design to this present day.