my DESiGN for now

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Design is knowing which ones to keep." -- Scott Adams

I realize I limit my creativity of fear to make mistakes. I think, imagine, brainstorm, and calculate the newly formed ideas in my head, before I decide to execute them through physical practice. I’m not a sculptor who can produce forms from simple explorations. I don’t connect with specific materials nor enjoy experimenting their limits not knowing where it would become applicable to my work. But through this semester, allowing myself to learn and evaluate the past to present design work, more so the design intentions, I found myself accumulated with different aspects to understand what designing really means, for me.

Creating timelines for evolution of music technology, lighting, and chairs, I familiarized myself with the histories of specific industrial design fields. They all seemed inarguable and fixed lessons, dealing with the values derived from the past. However from the week of Saving the World Soul by Soul talk with Dr. Bruce Beck, I started to see a new side of industrial design that I had missed before. The responsibilities and the power that came along as being an industrial designer were far limitless and serious. Our interests and efforts, as well as our skills, had the power to impact and change the world, bigger than I as a small individual could have intended to. The following week’s focus on Cradle to Cradle as well the discussions inspired by the A Better World by Design conference enhanced my perspective of design to higher potentials ever so more. The environment I used to find myself in interest for typical needs for convenience for American user groups seemed now as a luxury and secondary concern compared to the primary life-threatening needs of the surrounding world outside. I felt many designers including myself had knowingly and unknowingly kept themselves ignorant towards solving the real, small problems happening nearby.

Besides the consideration of green, nature friendly materials, I started to lose importance for investing on the outer shell of products. The outside pattern and form studies seemed overly unnecessary and wasteful as mere decoration purpose. However, I was struck again once more, through the final week’s discussion on Art & Design. Influenced by the class topic as through researching industrial designs derived from inspirational art, I realize a presence of a simple object, if designed with strong emotional connection and comfort, can too impact the user and satisfy their needs just as effectively. Exemplifying design groups such as FORM US WITH LOVE currently practices design work with considerations not just of beautiful aesthetics, but sharing their knowledge and inspirations from outside of the usual design themes. If ergonomics was the first, then the aesthetics the second component of design, incorporating other subjects such as nature or medicine that many users can easily relate with the design objects adds a third function of design.

I assume there will be even more opportunities and lessons that will shape and alter to my next meaning of design. But as far as I’ve come as of now, I am happy to be settled on a vague, but applicable definition of design, for industrial design.

Form Us With Love

The past few weeks class discussions and exercises of writing the corresponding blog entries delve me down deep into the realm of purpose and application of design in our world. I realized the responsibilities and the potential of especially industrial design is far greater than just “making stuff” to fill our overcrowding environment. Through this week’s class spent on discussion of Art & Design, I was reminded of yet another aspect of design. Although function does play a dominant part in designing, art and its principle are yet another unforgettable major component in design that also greatly impacts the users.

Art and design are separate worlds that endorse different values, however art in design mean a whole significant other. Unbound to the “form follows function” aesthetic principles, art in design allows forms and meanings to find inspiration from nature and others that we subconsciously recognize as pleasantly attractive and resolved.

FORM US WITH LOVE is a young design studio of three designers in Stockholm, Sweden with a mission of “innovative, sustainable design with the segments of product, environment and identity.” Designers Petrus Palmer, John Lofgren, and Jonas Petterson have a design philosophy of Innovation, Interaction, & Love. They share “FUWL religion” as being all about Innovation, journeying outside the box and not doing “what everybody else does”. Then they refer Interaction as their “holy book”, since it is interaction between man and artifact where they find inspiration for ideas and answers in solving problems. There are additional stepping stones of research and analysis for the design process, but they argue “process is always just the process.” Their third component, Love, a spark of passion is what completes the big picture of their design.

I find their nature-inspired furniture designs such as the Prosthes hanger and the Group of Trees, very elegant while equally functional, and also as they would like to think, “innovative”.

Through their research, FUWL learned prosthesis is an artificial extension that replaces a missing body part in medicine. With this new knowledge and inspiration, they were able to apply this to Prosthes Hanger, allowing the user to “prosthesis” with what they might have at their homes – a spare hockey stick, a broom, or even a spare branch. Away from just its creative and playful interactive appearance, we are able to learn there is more to the purposeful unique form they have settled with.

With another problem to design a new type of room divider, FUWL studied the old traditional designs for it. They realized the traditional box-like screens lacked the ability to stimulate creativity in public places. They knew their design would have to fulfill its function as well as introducing something poetic that can improve the user experience with the object. The Group of Trees are not only sound absorbing well-built barricades, but also “creates a sensation of a small group of trees in the middle of the woods”. Their presence in public spaces stirs up a peaceful and quiet mood to study, work, or relax. Its repeating patterns of assembled molded wings can lock into one another with altering directions and the material choice of polyester felt (PET) adds a third function to absorb sound.

Nanotechnology in the Third World

This week’s Cradle to Cradle and A Better World by Design talk I thought was well transitioned from last week’s Dr. Beck Bruce’s Saving the World Soul by Soul presentation. I’m beginning to learn where industrial design’s purpose and need fall into place in our world as well as in my life.

While surfing the Afrigadget blog, I found Sheila Kennedy’s Portable Light Project especially intriguing which relates back to my lighting timeline few weeks back. She shares the incredible creation of a completely customizable solar powered portable light device. The Portable Light Project represents how the developing technology use around the world can be applied to not only the wealthy countries, but to even the most unthinkable, undeveloped places.

The Portable Light Project is a continuing non-profit research, design and engineering initiative by KVA MATx. They strive to create new ways to deliver de-centralized renewable power and light to the developing world. The Portable light is a cordless and versatile textile with flexible photovoltaic and solid state lighting that all cultures can easily adapt to. With help from ArtVenture, the Portable Light team enabled a project in Las Guayabas to weave energy harvesting bags with their traditional back strap loom, really integrating the new foreign technology into their familiar culture. Women who are usually the most vulnerable in these cultures to adapt to new technology, now by involving themselves in sewing together the solar panels into their traditional Huichol bag called a K+tsuri, can become more familiarized with its function. This access to simple lighting, families are able to complete their simple tasks at night, such as doing homework for a child while the mother finishes up sewing. Though there is investment in the material that utilizes lightweight nanotechnology, it eliminates the worries of sustaining and replacing power, since it is solar powered abundant and accessible from anywhere around the world.

"The Portable Light Project demonstrates how nano-technology can benefit not only the “third” world—where more than 2 billion people currently do not have access to electricity--but also the “first” world, where energy-efficient design is increasingly important."

ID in the World - finding the right balance

I often find myself intrigued and fascinated at looking through images of the new “ID” creations of famous designers in magazines and websites. Their choice of materials, colors, carefully thought out forms, and “guess what, it can do this!” kind of exciting facts pleases my eyes. My ambitious and selfish ego tells me, ‘I want it’ or ‘I wish I could make something like that’. The new nifty iPhones, Frank Gehry’s wiggle chair, or even the bowling pin lamp inspire me to design my own valuable products. I feel purchasing and having those kinds of products will make me happy and more confident as a contemporary “designer”.

Then through the screen of the sleek Apple computer screen, I witness an image of a young boy in Sudan drinking water out of a dirty puddle remaining on the ground. Suddenly I realize there is a clash in my fantasy being an industrial designer and it brings me back to trace how industrial design originated. What is now known for more for its luxurious and fancy products, industrial design really started from experimenting new ways to provide for the needy and their often encountered problems.

The Industrial Revolution was caused by the need to increase manufacturing while eliminating labor-intensive work. With increase of population and the slowly advancing technology, it called for more efficient food production and resources. Astonishing inventions such as the steam engine revolutionized the power of technology and designers began to see a potential for replacing other labor-intensive work with a touch of a button. Yes, it allowed convenience and operating machines to be valued for their easy and successful result to produce mass productions; however, I feel the convenience we seek from industrial designers today is far more unnecessary luxury compared to the convenience provided then that existed for the sake of fulfilling our basic needs.

Dr. Bruce Beck’s lecture covered the refugee’s fundamental needs for survival – water, sanitation, food & cooking, and shelter. It is essentially what Europe and America had gone through previously causing the Industrial Revolution. The western and the more developed countries managed to come this far, while the less unfortunate countries still remain in the same condition with same tragic problems. While we seek inspiration from computer graphics and multi touch screens, the rest of the world is seeking to find clean water for their family and themselves. The gap between the two worlds has widened and will continue to increase as long as the “industrial designers” continue to only invest and value the advancing technology of their familiar world and ignore the other half (now homeless refugees) and their unfulfilled needs.

The cause of their suffering is something that can easily happen to anyone of us; through natural disasters, financial crisis, wars, we too can become helpless wanderers lacking the most basic necessities to live. As designers, having learned and witnessed their hardships, I consider it is our duty to participate at least a small portion to reach out to them with our granted knowledge and talents. Focusing their profiles as our user groups and creating more “stuff” to save a life, I believe, will allow other forms of assistant – doctors, volunteers, educators…etc – to involve themselves more actively in Saving the World Soul by Soul.

Unisex Fashion & Changing Gender Roles

We learn to create and present aesthetically resolved design, but the role of the function is the underlying evaluation for the users to judge it as a good or a bad design. Industrial designer is not a doctor, a consultant, a mom, an engineer, or a problem solver, but all of their qualities in one. Although we didn’t go to medical school for ten years or have the experience of raising a child, we have to learn to know as much as we can about what they know when facing the problems they face. We constantly exchange problems and solutions with the world. And sometimes with a solution we offer them, the users are able to connect its functional qualities on their own to use it as a solution to another problem they face. This might also lead to yet another problem for us to solve. So, the role of a designer is to simply offer a design with a new solution eliminating as much alternative problems, however, the users ultimately determine their behavior with the design and rate its value by society.

Traditional gender roles have confined designers to freely recognize and solve problems. The male-dominant society was ignorant towards the quiet unheard voices of women’s needs. Thus its consequences led many women to medical diagnosis of female hysteria during the Victorian era. However, the perception of gender roles is changing and we are able to refer to a male-dominant society more and more as being traditional. The masculine gender role is becoming more malleable. New terms such as “sensitive new age guy” and metro sexual refers to men in today’s society as someone with traditional “female” emotions and grooming habits. According to sociology research, women’s gender roles have become less relevant to the traditional values since the start of industrialization. Although many Western cultures still assume women’s role is to stay home and maintain the “motherly figure”, the media also portrays a successful woman as being someone who follows a career and has independence.

The changing female role allowed women to start taking on many roles of what used to be reserved only for men. For example, men’s fashions have become more restrictive since the past eras, while women’s fashions have broadened. Lee Wright shares that high heels were once established fashion for elite men in 1700’s. However, as we know, by the 1950’s high heel has become a symbol of high fashion for women that "emphasizes the female form”. Women’s fashion now accepts and acquires various looks whether girly in flowery dress, tomboy in cargo pants, or dressed up in button-down shirt. While women are overtaking men’s fashion, men are pressured to look masculine to the extreme to distinguish themselves from women. Men, who still choose to dress in the now feminized male fashion, are no longer looked as a masculine, but considered androgyny or even homosexual.

American Apparel is a fashion representation of the changing gender roles in today’s society. Different from having separate men and women’s sections in normal apparel stores, all of their clothing and accessories are unisex. The fine line between men and women as well as their sexuality is tapering and our society is turning gender-blind. This greatly affects designers to define user groups for both male and female. It also adds a new role as designers to decide whether to follow the ways of the changing society or to introduce and redirect them to accepting new values.