Chair Powerpoint

I picked the Arne Jacobsen Egg chair. I just like how it looks. But I made a pretty little powerpoint all about it.

What I have so far.

Sooo, I've been drawing like mad, and here's what I have so far:
The top layer of the book pages
The bottom layer of the pages, with an example of an animal on it
An example of the middle layer.
18 animals for the 2nd layer, and more on the way.

So here's the top, middle and bottom layers, along with a few examples of the animals by themselves. :)

To outline or not to outline...

THAT IS THE QUESTION!

(I can't decide, which do you like better?)

More about the carousel

Yet another construction dilemma... Well, not really dilemma, just another option. Since I want the book to fold in a circular sculpture shape, I need a way to fasten the 2 covers to each other. I'm thinking magnets or ribbon. But that also leaves me with the question of binding. I'm thinking a cloth spine...

Carousel

For my carousel book, I've come up with an interesting way to make it spin. And light up, for that matter. All I need now is the calliope music to go along with it. As far as construction goes, I'm using bristol. For the gold accents of the carousel, I'm considering gold leafing it. But I'm not sure if that would detract from the animals, which I want to be the main focus of the book.

I've added a few kids to the animals, and it does look much better that way. Still brainstorming. :)

Posters...?

Okay, so here's five poster ideas I've come up with. Keep in mind I've never made a poster in Think and Make before, so feel free to tell me if I'm doing it all wrong.

Models Are Evil

Okay, so we were supposed to build a model treehouse, along with a tree to stick it on. All perfectly realistic and helpful assignments... When you have a square house. But mine is 3 cylinders, and proved SO hard to make, even out of paper. I tried paper, balsa, plastic containers, then paper again. On my 5th try, I got something that looked similar to my concept sketches, but I still think I'm going to do more computer drawing to get the look just right.

Narrowing Down Ideas

After photographing our trees, doing 40 sketches, 5 collages and a moodboard, I've narrowed my treehouse designs down to two similar, but different designs. The thing I'm having issues with is picking my persona.

I have two ideas that would be good for this project; one is a family of three who wants an ecologically friendly home. Two is a novelty hotel chain who wants to have the most interesting hotel experience.

If I do the family, I would have to alter the design a bit, to encompass a kitchen, living room, dining area, bedrooms, etc.

A Hotel would only need the bedroom and bathroom, with maybe a lounge area thrown in.

Guess I have some thinking to do.

Treehouse Resources

BRAINSTOMRING:
I thought the page on brainstorming was a repeat of stuff I had learned previously, with a few little extras thrown in. We've already gone over mind-mapping extensively, so that's old news. However, I did like the idea of cubing. It makes you focus in on one related topic, where mindmapping feels a little unorganized. With cubing, you can finish one topic, them do another, and another, and another. You can do that with mind-mapping, but I always seem to end up going in circles, writing the same thing down in every branch. Heuristics uses questions to flesh out ideas. Who, what, when, where, and why. This could be useful, but I feel like it would be redundant.

PERSONAS:
Thinking of our treehouse personas as a singluar entity to express an entire group simplified the problem for me. Although, I did feel the part that said personas are "developed through traditional research processes" does not apply as much to this project. Though we are required to create a persona to use our treehouse, the house itself will never be built, and the persona will never exist, therefore, there is no research to be done to create the persona. In general though, this article gave me a little nudge in the right direction for creating my treehouse's persona.

MOODBOARD:
I found the idea of a moodboard the most interesting out of all three resources posted on Blackboard. A physical representation of the mood of the project, the treehouse, is a great way for me, personally to get my creative juices flowing. Looking through magazines and piecing ideas together was how I decided on my design's mood. Unlike the mindmap, the moodboard got me more involved in the actual project, not just the idea of the project.

Wayfinding Presentations

The Wayfinding Presentations today were very interesting. I enjoyed seeing all the different solutions the groups came up with to solve their problems. As for my group, I thought our idea was well formed, but could have been presented more smoothly. In general, I think we did pretty good though.

I think my favorite one was probably the Union-Spencer Underground Tunnel. I've used it before, but only figured it out by luck, so I know what they were talking about. I thought the arrows and dotted lines were a great idea.

As far as our project, if we had to redo it, I would have actually made the QR code work, and print off some laminated signs, instead of just photoshopping everything together. Though, with the time frame we had, and the group's busy schedules, I'm happy with what we got down.

About Design

Last semester, I was in a different design class than I am this semester. Think and Make is a lot more challenging, but I think it's going to be much more helpful in the long run. Our wayfinding project is a little confusing at first, but I think we've gotten it smoothed out now. Our project is this: a new Art History student is assigned a research project on a specific piece of work in the Spencer Museum of Art. He must find his way from the lecture auditorium to the boook of information in the 20th century gallery, so he can do his research.

So far, this project seems pretty easy... but I guess we'll see.

The First Day

Today is the first day of Spring Semester classes for me. I had Life Drawing this morning, but no one brought their supplies, so we didn't draw. I guess this blog is supposed to be there to let us post our inspirations and trains of thought... Sunflowers. I have a bunch of dried ones on my desk. They're beautiful, even dried. Always sunny and bright, and I guess that's a good way to describe what inspires me. Stuff that lasts, and is beautiful throughout it's entire existence. Also the elements; I know it's an overdone topic, but there's just something about the basics of life that I find interesting.

College is a means to an end. My end (hopefully) is working at an animation studio, preferably Disney-Pixar. I always have this goal in the back of my mind when I create something, and my projects usually have some aspect that can be transfered to the computer, to further inspire me. It's like Scrabble; just keep adding letters to previous words to create new ones.

And that's all for the first day of school!