McDonough Introduction

First off, I want to comment on the fact that the book is actually made out of something other than paper, something that really helps make the point of "remaking the way we make things." The fact that the book is  heavier and the pages feel more like plastic and are thicker than normal paper pages, came to my attention the first time I held, and flipped through the book.  I think it really gets the point across that we need to drastically rethink so many products that are on the market today because of how unsafe they are for us and the environment.  When McDonough explained so many products that have unsafe chemicals and how bad they are for us, it really made me stop and think about all the things we normally think of as simple and safe.  Even a simple wood chair that we normally assume wouldn't have any harsh chemicals in it, may contain different toxins in the paint, sealer, or even glue that helps hold it together.  I never realized that most of the "recycled" products that are being sold these days, really aren't even that much better for the environment.  Making carpet from recycled plastic bottles doesn't remove the plastic from the landfill completely, it just prolongs the time in which it will make the journey there.  The last couple sentences in the section is worded so simply, but it so true: "Nature doesn't have a design problem. People do." It's crazy to think that all the problems in the world and environment have been created by the human race.  Nature is pure and unharmful, yet we continue to pollute it every day.

Found Faces

The bottom half of my stapler.

This is the small piece of my macbook charger that connects into the large square.

Here's one of my computer speakers that looks like a cyclops.

One of my neighbor's speakers turned sideways.

This is the sink in one of my friends bathrooms. 

Scavenger Hunt!

This is a close-up shot of the library for clue #4, but I tried to add it after the other pictures, and couldn't get it to be by the other shot of the library.

The Barcelona Chair was designed by Mies van der Rohe.    One interesting fact about the chair is that over the years of production, bovine leather replaced the ivory-colored pigskin that was used on the original chair.

The Arktek company and Alvar Aalto designed this chair, called the Paimio Armchair.  The chair was actually designed for tuberculosis patients so they could sit comfortably for long hours each day.  I am reading Modernism Magazine, the issue about Augusto Romano: Inventing the Adaptable Home.

During the design of the Wexner Center, Eisenman noticed that the street grids of the OSU campus and Columbus city  grids varied by 12.25 degrees, and different parts of the building follow each of the grids, which makes the building more unique and interesting.  The building was also the first major public building that was designed by Eisenman, who later went on to design many other buildings, including the Greater Columbus Convention Center.

I really liked how Johnson used many different arch sizes in the design of the Mathematics Tower and Science Library.   Some of the arches are really tall and skinny, and others are short and fat, with all sizes in between.  Especially in this picture, I like the way he used the different sized arches and filled the space between them with tile instead of brick, which really sets that entrance apart from the rest.

The Thompson Library has been expanded or renovated three times since it's original date of construction in 1913, and the latest renovation cost $108 million.   The library currently boasts 1,800 study seats for students to use throughout the 11 floors of the library

Heskett Ch. 7-8

The chapter about corporate identity really brings out the importance of things like company's logos and the way they're viewed by the public.  It's crazy to think that companies have to spend so much time researching even a new logo before they make it their official logo just to make sure that it's simple enough for people to remember and recognize, and it gets across the message that they want to convey.  It's almost hard for me to believe that even such things as companies like British Airways changing their logo and how they paint their planes, to create so much controversy.  I don't understand how people can get so mad or even offended just by a companies logo or paint job.
It's crazy to think about how changes in production and development have saved companies so much time and money.  As companies have gone to made-to-order lines of production and modular systems, it makes production faster, and more efficient.  I really like to think about the changes over the past few decades that have made everything quicker, more simple, and cheaper.

Week 4

This week's classes were really cool.  I liked monday's class when we talked about accessibility and how there is such a huge market out there for new designs to improve existing things, like entrances to buildings, and design new products, like "super" wheelchairs that make life so much easier for people.  I never really even thought about it, but there are so many markets out there that could use so much help with new products and designs. One thing I like about design is there's always room for improvement.  A certain product could be redesigned multiple times, but there could still be changes that could be made to make it better.  There's never a point in which something is as good as it could ever get.
The scavenger hunt today was a great change of pace and ended up being fun.  It was so nice to have a class that was doing something other than sitting inside and listening to a prof speak while taking notes.  Getting to spend class outside, even though it was cold, was really cool.  I liked having to figure out the answers to the clues instead of just finding things around campus and taking pictures of them.  Today's class was definitely a win!

Survey

Questions:
1) Black or White?
2) Spicy or Sweet?
3) Chocolate or Vanilla?
4) Hot or Cold?
5) Urban or Country?
6) Coke or Pepsi?
7) Apple or PC?
8) College or NFL?
9) Dogs or Cats
10) Beef or Chicken?

I sent the questions to a random 50 guys and 50 girls on my Facebook, and recorded the results as guys in blue and girls in pink.

Ross Lovegrove

Ross Lovegrove is an industrial designer possibly best known for his work on the Sony Walkman.  He studied at Manchester Polytechnic, graduating with a First Class BA in industrial design in 1980, and then went to the Royal College of Art, London in 1983 where he completed his master of design.  Most of the inspiration Lovegrove uses in his work comes from organic forms and structures.  During the 80's, Ross worked as a designer for frog design in west Germany on products like walkmans for Sony, and computers for Apple Computers.  He later moved to Paris as a consultant to Knoll International, becoming author of the highly successful Alessandri office system.  Lovegrove has won numerous awards, and has been greatly published and exhibited internationally including places like the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Guggenheim Museum, the Axis Centre, Japan, the Pompidou Centre, Paris, and the Design Museum in London where he curated the first permanent collection.  He was awarded the World Technology Award by Time Magazine in November 2005.  The same year, he was awarded the very prestigious Red Dot Design Award for his products created for Vitra.


"Ross Lovegrove - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia."Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Jan. 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ro


"ross lovegrove." designboom. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Jan. 2011. <http://www.designboom.com/e

Light fixture

DNA staircase

Watch

Muon Speakers

Tom Dixon

Tom Dixon is a British designer that specializes in furniture.  He fell upon his ability in design completely by accident after being injured in a motorcycle accident with extra time on his hands while he recovered.    He started designing furniture more as a hobby that anything, and never expected it to get him as far as it has.  Before becoming famous as a designer, Dixon played the bass guitar in a band called Funkapolitan, and worked as a nightclub promoter and warehouse party organizer.  He opened his own store to sell his products in order to try to improve business because he wasn't making enough money on his own.  The "S-Chair" is one of his most recognizable products, and he considers it to be one of the most important developments as a designer.  Dixon has his own company called Tom Dixon Ltd. so now his products are sold under the brand, rather than just his name.  In the future Tom plans to design things he's never tried before, including "buildings, motorcycles, books, gardens, foods, discotheques, and water purification systems."  One of his most interesting pieces is the "Eco Ware" tableware made entirely from biodegradable bamboo fiber.  He was appointed head of design UK by the Habitat retail chain in 1998, and later appointed creative director or Artek, a Finnish furniture manufacturer.  Tom also teaches at many design-focused speaking events and charity events around the globe and has taught at the Royal College of Art, Kingston Polytechnic, and Plymouth University.

"Tom Dixon / Designing Modern Britain - Design Museum Exhibition : - Design/Designer Information." Design Museum London. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Jan. 2011. <http://designmuseum.org/design/tom-dixon>.


"Tom Dixon (industrial designer) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Jan. 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom

Star Light

S-Chair

Pylon Chair

Eero Saarinen

Eero Saarinen was an industrial designer throughout the 20th century known for his "simple, sweeping, arching structural curves or machine-like realism, that showed a remarkable range of design which depended on color, form, and materials."

Saarinen immigrated to the US at thirteen, and grew up in Bloomfield, Michigan.  His father was a teacher at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where Eero took classes in sculpture and furniture design.  Starting in September 1929, he studied sculpture at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris, France.  He then moved on to study at the Yale School of Architecture, graduating in 1934.  Saarinen eventually joined the military in the Office of Strategic Services.  He was assigned to draw illustrations for bomb disassembly manuals and to provide designs for the Situation Room in the White House.  After his father's death in 1950, Saarinen founded his own architectural company called Eero Saarinen and Associates.

Saarinen first received recognition, while working for his father, for a chair designed with Charles Eames for the Organic Design in Home Furnishings competition in 1940, in which they got first place. The chair was put into production by the Knoll furniture company, who later produced many of his other works.  While with Knoll, he designed pieces like the Grasshopper lounge chair and ottoman, the Womb chair and ottoman, the Womb settee, side and arm chairs, and his most famous Tulip or Pedestal group that included side and arm chairs, dining, coffee and side tables, and a stool.

Within his first few decades of design he produced many designs for places like the General Motors Technical Center, John Deere Headquarters, IBM Headquarters, and CBS Headquarters.  The interiors of these buildings usually contained "dramatic sweeping staircases," as well as many different types of furniture designed by Saarinen.  Eero's company designed many of it's most important works in the few years before his death in 1961.  Some of these include: the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (Gateway Arch) in St. Louis Missouri, the TWA Flight Center at John F. Kennedy National Airport, and the main terminal of Dulles International Airport near Washington DC.

Eero Saarinen was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1952.  He is also a winner of the AIA Gold Medal, given "in recognition of a significant body of work of lasting influence on the theory of practice of architecture."

He was criticized during his own time as "having no identifiable style," yet now he is looked back on as "one of the masters of American 20th Century architecture."

I've always enjoyed the works of Saarinen, since I first saw the St. Louis Arch in 2000.  I love the simplicity of the monument, yet how complex the interior and base is.  My family went to the top of the Arch, and I was fascinated throughout the whole trip to the top and back down.  I later realized that he designed John Deere Headquarters, which my family has also visited.  With the headquarters, I really like how he chose to not have the building painted, but left it natural steel so that when it rusted, it gave it that orange-ish, rustic look.  The interior of the building is very simple, yet very functional and beautiful.  I love the view of the building from the entrance road that shows the side view with a pond and rolling hills in front of it.  All the different things he designed seem to have such beauty, yet be very functional at the same time, which not all designers are able to accomplish.

Eero Saarinen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Jan. 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eero_Saarinen

"Eero Saarinen - Great Buildings Online." Architecture Design Architectural Images History Models and More - ArchitectureWeek Great Buildings . N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Jan. 2011. <http://www.greatbuildings.com

Interior of MIT Chapel

John Deere Headquarters

Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (St. Louis Arch or GatewayArch)

Tulip Chairs

Heskett Ch. 4-6

I wonder why some designers put so much more emphasis on how a product looks rather than the job it does.  I realize that some things look so much cooler if the use of the product is as important, but I feel like they should be more interested in selling a useable product rather than one that just sits there and collects dust.  "The Juicy Salif" is one example.  It does look awesome, but consumers are going to have to purchase two squeezers- one to use, and one to look at.  And another part of the problem is that the one that  actually gets used normally costs so much less than the one that's made just for looks.

One section that I liked particularly well was when Heskett talked about alternative uses for products.  It never really occurred to me that there alot of products that are used the majority of the time for something other than what they were designed to do.  The one thing that comes to mind for me is firearms.  They were originally developed for hunting and survival, but now when you think of guns, you almost predominately think of murder weapons more than anything else.

I also found it very interesting when Heskett was talking about how different building set-ups and designs. It was really interesting to hear about how some companies design their buildings and offices in order to get a desired effect in their products, and even their employees.  I also like hearing about how some companies have used new technology to change the workplace.  One of the examples I liked the best was the Japanese company that used supercomputers to regulate lighting and temperature throughout the building according to employees' work.



Heskett, John. Design: a very short introduction. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2005. Print.

The Design Process

I really liked learning the whole process a product goes through before it reaches consumers or the marketplace.  (Even though is wasn't the most in-depth description)  I've been thinking about majoring in industrial design, and today's class helped that thought to become even more solid in my mind.  I really enjoyed the movie showing the team actually going through the process of making a product that we use all the time without thinking about, better.  I grew up on a farm, and my dad and I had to go through this process quite often in order to make certain things work better for us, and I feel like I'd be pretty good at doing it as a job.  The one thing that I think will a big drawback for me in the major is my drawing ability.  I'm fairly worried that because I can't draw very well, I won't be able to make it in the design program.  I'll just have to wait it out and see I guess.

Patterns

Here is a picture of one of the chairs in the common-room of my dorm taken on sunday, 1/16.  I liked that the pattern is more than just circles of each color, but actually has the look of waves that connect the purple circles together.

I found this on a table in the Thompson Library on saturday, 1/15.  I've always been attracted to wood grain because I like it's "rustic" look. We have alot of open wood grain furniture in our house.

This one is a picture of one of the walls in Thompson Library on saturday, 1/15.  Even this one may not seem much like a pattern, I really liked the great contrast between the width of the stripes in the middle section. I makes a view of the whole wall really cool.

These bricks are outside oval and I also found them on saturday, 1/15.  Even though the bricks aren't supposed to be this color, I really like the way the road salt has melted and dried to make the outside of each brick white.  This accentuates the black space between the brick, and makes it so much more interesting.

This is a picture of the outside of the Psychology building on saturday, 1/15.  I liked the way the pattern varies with the taller pieces on top, and on bottom of the thin sections.  The way the window fits into the section gives it that certain element and makes it unique.

This is a picture of the fence surrounding the construction area and Cunz Hall taken on saturday, 1/15.  I liked the fact that we could only see one side of the chain length fence.  The diagonal shiny steel looks sweet against the strips of green plastic.

These bricks make up the pathway from the Thompson Library to the RPAC.  the picture was taken on saturday, 1/15.  I liked the way each row of the bricks changes, and is different than the normal brick pattern where all the bricks face the same way.  It's simple, but I like it alot better than the traditional style.

This is a picture of the fence surrounding the tennis courts by the RPAC taken on saturday, 1/15.  I liked how you could see both diagonals of green coated metal of the fence, and how the black tarp behind it had stripes of it's own.

This is another picture of a chair in the common-room of my dorm taken on sunday, 1/16.  It's kind of hard to see in this  picture, but i like the way the fabric itself adds texture to each stripe instead of them being solely solid color.  Without touching it you can tell that it has a raised texture just from the way the stripes look.

This one is my favorite pattern.  I found it on sunday, 1/16 and it's a picture of the chairs in Morril Tower Fresh Express.  I liked how they threw one circle of a different color to help break up the pattern.  Depending on what you concentrate on, you can see many different things within this pattern.

Heskett Ch. 1-3

"Design is one of the basic characteristics of what it is to be human, and an essential determinant of the quality of human life" (pg 2)  This quote really got to me.  I had never really thought that design went this deep into human life and how our lives run, but it really got me thinking about how much we analyze and criticize the things around us and how the way things are designed changes our daily lives.  On page 4 Heskett talks about how very little of the earth has been left natural in this day and age.  Even plants may be positioned or genetically altered  to fit our wants and needs.  I think it's crazy that most of the first cases of design were the simplest tools that improved what the human hand can do, and now we've evolved into designing things like space ships and skyscrapers.  I really enjoyed the part about the design of Japanese toothpicks. I was never aware as to why there was a design on one end of toothpicks.  I always thought it was merely for decoration, but apparently it was actually for making a stand in order to properly lay the toothpick on the table after use.  It was really cool to look at the changes in design and the philosophy behind it in these couple chapters. I'm looking forward to see what the rest of the book had to offer.




Heskett, John. Design: a very short introduction. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2005. Print.

I really enjoyed today's class.  I like the fact that Gabe actually came out and told us what we would do with a degree in each type of design offered at the university.  I started out in school as a mechanical engineering major and i felt so intimidated by the class load, the requirements, pretty much everything. But so far I've felt pretty good about everything design has to offer.  I feel like it fits me better, and I think i could be pretty happy with a degree in some kind of design.  I'm not sure what specialization I would pick, but right now I'm leaning towards industrial.  My only worry is that I'm definitely not so great at drawing.  I feel like it could be a pretty big setback, especially on the entrance exam, but I hope I can work through it.  I guess I'll just have to see what the rest of this quarter brings, and I how I feel about everything once I actually go to pick my major.

Adidas adizero 5-Star

http://www.designophy.com/newslog/design-article-1000002514-adidas-changes-game-with-lightest-football-cleat-ever.htm

Adidas came out with the lightest football cleat ever made, yesterday.  The cleat weighs just 6.9 ounces, which is 3 ounces lighter than the nearest competitor.  High school football players will try out the new cleat for the U.S. Army All-American Bowl at the Alamodome in San Antonio.  A few professional football players have already tried out the cleat, and they claim that even that slight reduction in weight, helps them gain speed on the field.
The adizero 5-Star has a revolutionary single-layer synthetic upper called SPRINTSKIN and a sprint frame base, which greatly reduces the weight of the shoe, but doesn't sacrifice foot support.

I found this article very interesting because I've always enjoyed playing, and watching football, and new technology like this can give the players that use it an edge that may make the difference of winning or losing a game.  I think it does have an impact on design because the materials and actual design of the cleat made the difference when it came down to the final weight of the cleat.

Why I'm taking design 200

I'm taking design 200 this quarter, because I think I may want to major in industrial design.  I've always enjoyed designing new tools and machines that my dad and I use on our family farm.  Whenever we have a  problem with something we try and figure out how to make or change something so that it works better, and I've always loved that.  I actually came into this year as a mechanical engineering student and soon found out that it wasn't for me.  I think majoring in design will be something I enjoy, and hopefully something I can make a career out of.

about me

I'm a freshman at Ohio State, and I'm in the marching band.  I play trumpet, and have for years.  My hometown is a small town in northwestern Ohio, and there are things I love about both the big city life, and small town living. I am a devout Buckeyes fan, and will be for life.