Homework #4

       In the article "Everyone is Altered," by Josh Dickey, it talks about how no one is what they look like on TV due to the power of photo retouching. The process of making people digitally beautiful is a tedious task that takes hours upon hours to perfect the final product. I find it admirable that a lot of people go through this tedious work on an everyday basis for actors, models, etc., even though the procedure, in general, is vain.

THE POGO SHOE//BAD IDEA

GIFT BOMB APP//GOOD IDEA

HOMEWORK 3

         In the New York Times article, "Nike's chief of Design Doodles all Day," I really enjoyed the story aspect of the article and how it painted a picture for me of the design process of the nike shoes. It also gave me the inside scoop of how the chief of design, John Hoke, came to be able to create them. I think John Hoke is a very eccentric human being for his inventive thinking processes on how to make shoes better. For example, when he thought about making the shoes feel as if you were running on grass. John  Hoke said, "Our creative community decided to print out three-dimensional prints of grass, and then they duct-taped them to their feet and ran on the street. So we just said, “What if you actually married real grass or fake grass to the bottom of your shoe?” It’s not a real shoe, but it’s a sort of wonder experiment about where we can take cushioning, and how we can give that unique underfoot feel and sensation of running on grass, even in the concrete canyon." I thought the creative process to get to the conclusion they were seeking was interesting and just a fun and inventive way to do it. I also really enjoyed the one quote he said in the article, because I believe it to be the most true statement about making a creation whether it be art, photography, building, etc. He said, "The job of the designer tomorrow is to take that head-start, take that information and then imbue on top of that their intellect, their imagination, their heart and their hand." I just find this quote to be really motivating as a young artist and gives me a lot of inspiration. It also helps me see a positive view on the outlook of your creations.

Alien UFO

Homework #2

        In the TED talk video, "RE-thinking the way we sit down," Neil Diffrient discusses all the factors it takes to have a good model of something so it is usable for what it is made for, and how he got into making designs instead of becoming a jet pilot. Neil in the beginning of the video discussed about how when he was younger he was interested in plains, but he soon realized he was more interested in the way the plains worked and why things were designed that way. He then went to school for Aeronautical Engineering. Finding out early on in the class that they weren't asking him to show designs or his drawings of airplanes he figured out that he wanted to be a designer. This all led him to making designs for chairs, and how to make a design that would comfortably adjust to all different shapes and sizes of people for the chairs. He showed an example to the audience he was talking to of his design for an office chair. Neil made the chairs functions easy and user friendly. He made it so you could adjust the height of the chair depending on how tall someone was, a changeable height head-rest, a changeable height arm-rest, and designed the chair so that you could lounge back in it to allow you to breathe better. Neil said the focus of the chairs design was the importance on how it fit the human body, and what the body needs in a chair. In the same regards to how an airplane needs to be able to be designed correctly for wind. I think that a lot of what someone should focus on when designing a product is hit right on the head when Neil explains all the key points in how he went about his design of the office chair.

Day 01 #2

Day 01

Homework #1

"Bad design comes in many forms," which is true in some regards. I do agree with the article that some designs can be made poorly and seen as distasteful. I do know that the design of something is very key when looking at the audience it needs to be presented to, because that can change the whole feel, concept and look of something. The functionality of something as well is very key in design, because if the design is not played out right visually it may not give the proper response that it was intended to give. For example, in the article it talked about street signs and how the new design of them in London, by Kinnier and Calvert, were based upon logic and legibility. In the article they focused on the diverted cyclist sign that had a bold font "D" on the sign that was very distracting in contrast with the rest of the letters. The whole design upon that one mistake was ruined due to this. A design like that, a street sign, should have a flow throughout it and not a bold faced "D" that could distract the drivers from having there eyes go straight to all of the wording instead of just pulling the eyes attention to one letter. So, taking notice to small details in a design could make it or break it.