The Designers Republic Evaluation

The Designers Republic Evaluation

This workshop/ brief pushed my design thinking and I think that it may have been a little too different for myself, however I did really enjoy the preliminary task and I think that it had a strong concept and I liked what I created in the day.

The second part, the task and presentation of the workshop where a little less enjoyable, I struggled with thinking of a task and then after doing the task I felt that I had not done the right kind of activity and others had done some really good tasks that had converted into an interesting presentation. I feel that I found this hard as I always try to create some meaning and connection in all of my work and I was being asked to do the opposite.

However in the presentation I did bring it back to some meaning and I think that this was not entirely appropriate for the brief as it made it un pointless in a way.

Moreover in this workshop I enjoyed the presentation and gaining some feedback from an important industry professional who was honest and not to critical meant that I felt encouraged. I had been told that my presentation was too busy there was too much on the slide and I can see that now I look back on it.

I am also slightly disappointed that for the end I didn’t really have a physical outcome which others had done and they had looked really good, but then again the task was meant to be pointless and so having something from it defeats the purpose.

The workshop was over two days and I think it really pushed the amount of work and thinking I had to do in this space of time especially when it was a brand new brief. I think that this has pushed my idea of timescales and the amount I can produce in a short space of time, however I do feel that my best work if there is a lot required isn’t when the time is so short, but this could also be due to the fact I wasn’t familiar with the context of the brief.

TDR Workshop Final Presentation

This was my final presentation for the TDR workshop, in the presentations we gave feedback to one another and Ian gave us feedback as well which I felt was really useful, and motivational to hear from someone other than peers or tutors. 

I was told that I needed to rehearse my presentation, and that I shouldn't of had so much text, and so many facts in general, this was so that I could make a very clear and precise point. 

Another thing that I picked up on was that a presentation needs to flow and tell a story, I know that mine hadn't really done this, and the ones that had where interesting to listen to and easier to follow. 

But everyone liked that I had linked the pointless task to something quite serious and that I was trying to promote a persuasive message for something good. It was a different approach, which was good to hear. 

TDR Part 3 Presentation Development

I then converted the information into numbers and started to think about how I could show the pointlessness. 

I had thought of a few things to do with pins and pinning but I was finding it hard to come up with something interesting and concrete. I then sat and spoke to Ian about the task I had done and how I could convert this into a presentation. 

He mentioned the idea of a pin punctures the surface and leaves without a mark, and this made me think about needles going through the skin and reminded me of when I gave blood, and so I started to look at this idea and converted the amount of times I pinned into numbers of donations and measured them against those facts. 

The concept was that my task was pointless because instead of sitting and pinning pins for an hour I could of donated blood which can save somebodies live, and that many people are able to this and just don't.

I made some main notes on blood donation and I used them to make facts and points within my presentation.

I made illustrations to illustrate my points in my presentation.

Pin

Needle

One person can help Three

Eight and a half lifetimes

10% of the blood supply

Puncture in the cushion

No mark left

Young and Old

TDR Part1+2 Pointless Task

Firstly we where briefed on what we had to do for the day. 

We had to think of a pointless task, do this task for an hour and then make a presentation on how pointless the task was. 

I wrote a list of pointless tasks that I could think of, 

I chose to pin pins into something, after seeing the pot of pins on the table and not wanting to waste time. 

Firstly to complete my pointless task I had to collect enough pins, I went around the studio and collected as many as possible and then I had to go and buy some more. I had a pot of pins that I could start with and instead of wasting more time I just began.

Originally I was going to pin the pins into the wall, however I tested this and I could barely get the pin into the wall and so I felt doing this repeatedly for an hour would be impossible. And so I saw the cushion chair, again I tested it to see if there would be any marks left as I didn't want to damage the chair, however there where no marks left and so I decided that this would be good to us for pining.

Start: 13:10

13:37 

I found that once I had stated it was really easy to pin quite quickly, I managed to use all the pins in the pot , it took me about 27 minutes to pin all of the pins into the cushion 

I liked the effect of all the mismatched pins and colours.

And so I had to take all the pins out and start again, which made the task even more pointless as I was having to now take them out and re-pin them.

I pinned in lines, building up the amount of pins. 

14:05

Next set completed.

14:35

Next set completed.

14:40 End

I had then managed to pin 36pins from the last point, 

in total the pot contained 515

which means I had used all the pins three times, and then 36 on the last one

in total I pinned 1,581 pins in an hour

with an average of 26.6 minutes to use all of the pins in the pot. 

Preliminary Task

Preliminary Task

The Brief:

"COMPLETE THE BRIEF BELOW AND EMAIL TO IAN BY 6PM FRIDAY 21ST OF NOVEMBER. 

From the desk of Ian Anderson Ian.anderson@thedesignersrepublic.com :

brief —give me something i'll want to keep forever.
tip — remember this is primarily a design communication design thinking workshop.

ok

researching me to make informed decisions
lateral thinking — what is it that I (ME) would / could cherish forever

if it's made / realised then all the better.
if it needs explaining, then you should find a way to explain it in the context of the piece rather than as a note attached to it as an excuse for not putting that thinking into the work"

I looked into Ian Anderson online I read articles where he'd been interviewed to see what his inspirations may be, or things that he liked, I also looked into his work. 

I found in an article on Eye Magazines website, he had said that his aesthetic was 'futuristic' and that he liked the old Sci-Fi genre. 

From this I thought about the fact that I like some Sci-Fi and I also focussed on the idea of something physical to show that I like physical products over digital. 

I thought about creating a piece of origami, as I like this art form, and it can create very futuristic geometric shapes, and so this is what I would create.

Next I thought of Fringe a sci-fi tv series, and the series has a code of glyphs that are like secret clues to a word for each episode, 

and from this i looked at what I could create, maybe spell out the word IAN, 

however I reflected on this and I felt that this maybe too abstract,

And so I created a mock of three glyph animals to see which would work best, 

A frog, a seahorse, a butterfly.

I did this by watching tutorials on line or following diagrams people had made (online)

http://www.origami-instructions.com/origami-yamaguchi-dahlia.html

http://web-japan.org/kidsweb/virtual/origami2/exploring01_06.html

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-an-Origami-Seahorse/

After this I selected the frog as this is the clearest and the frog also be pushed and it jumped, which I thought was a more interactive piece, which is more fun and therefore more cherish able.

then to tie in Ian I printed out a print of his work (Sissy) which from a talk a couple of years ago I felt that he was very fond of this character and so I used this as the paper so the frog would be in this print. 

Final Piece