Vastly altering my path
- Drew Spathaky
- Feb 19, 2018
- 2 min read
When a design becomes too convoluted and complicated it's important to go back to basics in two very basic ways.
1. re-read your brief, and realign your priorities with those you started with.
2. re-draw basic shapes and reduce your product to it's bare function.
A few thoughts based on this:
1. I've strayed from the affordability which I'd originally intended with this project, to try to counteract this I've decided to run a second project in tandem which produces a free how to on hacking some existing products to provide a similar function to the design I'm producing but at a fraction of the cost.
The sustainability of the product could be called into question as the light might replace another before it's end of life meaning it is producing negative material effects from it's outset. To reduce this I've decided to apply a guerrilla anti marketing technique, shunning the consumer which buys the product as a replacement and criticises the unsustainable use of the product in an aggressive fashion similar to the angry vegan movement (https://www.thugkitchen.com , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5QAjcbvbDg).
2. I've been asked by a lot of people to think of names for products and things recently and have come up with a tasty theory about sustainable product names. I believe that if we name products after people we personify them. In a way similar to Alessi and Starck's playful objects I believe people are more likely to look after something they connect with, also if there is a story attached to the name either by the user or the designer there is a great potential for emotional durability (Chapman & Norman). (I will elaborate later.)
I haven't read enough of Dieter Rams literature to be sure about this but I'm sure he has a thing for compartmentalising life. And I love it. Objects should use up as much of the space as you'll allow them to have, which is why the cube is such a sexy shape to work with.
Recent designs such as the Alexa and Mac Pro utilise a cylinder (my favourite shape) and although this is beautiful, the wasted space around the edges leaves me to believe these will age badly. Our houses and rooms are square, and unless Apple and Amazon plan to bring Frank Gehry to the masses I don't see this changing.
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