Fort Pulaski

The National Park Service celebrated their 99th birthday yesterday with free admission to all the parks.  I took advantage of this by visiting the lighthouse trail at Fort Pulaski to find examples of design in nature.

Pattern

I visited the SCAD Museum of Art yesterday and was struck by two exhibits by artists who use pattern and repetition to transform hard, dangerous forms into beautiful, organic pieces.  

The first was sculptor John Bisbee whose exhibit Floresco is displayed in the four jewel boxes outside of the museum as well as in the lobby.  The pieces I was drawn to were the four pieces in the jewel boxes.  These are created out of 12" bight common spikes, the largest nail commercially available, that he forges and welds together.  Individually these nails seem hard, slightly dangerous and utilitarian.  Bisbee manipulates the form of the nail and then structures these new forms into different repetitive patterns to complete the transformation of the original material into pieces that appear soft, delicate and natural.

Artist Li Hongbo takes a similar approach in his colorful exhibit, Irons for the Ages, Flowers for the Day.  Like Bisbee, Li manipulates the original, dangerous forms he is referencing and then uses patterns to further the transformation into a beautiful, organic piece.  However he takes the original form manipulation further by changing not only the form but also the material and traditional colors of his reference forms.

Without these samples showing the process behind these sculptures I would not have know these shapes were all referencing guns and bullets.  

They are made out of layers of brightly colored paper glued together so that when they are cut and fanned out they create beautiful honeycombed patterns.  The resulting shapes are then arranged and stacked by shape and color to transform them into a beautiful and delicate rainbow display.

This exhibit was created for this space and purportedly took two years to execute from planning to completion.  Once you understand the reference the exhibit becomes a little more threatening as you realize you are standing in a hail of bullets looking down the barrels of multiple guns.  Fortunately it is only paper.

Misbehaving

On a podcast this morning (Gastropod) I heard that a recent study shows people spend 10% more when there is classical music playing in restaurants.  Rational economists would say this makes no sense as the value of the food should not be affected by whether the restaurant is playing classical music or jazz.  However behavioral economists like Richard Thaler are more concerned with what people actually do rather than what they should do according to purely rational models.  Perhaps people associate classical music with more upscale things and therefore expect the food will be more upscale as well.  In this book Thaler discusses the history and concepts of behavioral economics including transaction utility and how our expectations of what we should pay, reference prices, influence how much we are willing to pay for pasta at a restaurant with classical music vs. one playing easy listening music.  

I first came across Richard Thaler's work when I was doing research for Motiv and read his paper written with Schlomo Benartzi on the Save More Tomorrow program.  This is a program that uses inertia to increase retirement savings through automatic increases in retirement account contributions.  Then I recently heard him discussing the difference between 'Econs,' people who always act perfectly rationally, and 'Humans' on an amusing episode of Freakonomics.  That prompted a visit to the local library which had recently acquired this book.  (Nudge is currently checked out, but I will be looking for it next.)

In Misbehaving Thaler covers his whole career starting in the 70's, how he become interested in behavioral economics, the resistance he met to it and his hopes for its continued development as a field.  As a designer I was intrigued by his interest in Don Norman and his book The Design of Everyday Things which was originally published in 1988.  As he says in Misbehaving, "Designing good public policies has a lot in common with designing any consumer product."  I believe the interest and growing acceptance of behavioral economics mirrors the interest and acceptance of the need for 'user-centered' research in product development.  These fields are becoming entwined in the increasingly valued fields of service design and user experience design.  

It is interesting as we become more reliant on technology we are beginning to acknowledge that humans are not computers and social norms and emotions have a much larger part to play in how we act than we were previously willing to admit.  Interestingly, early economists were aware of this but then in the early and mid 20th century I suspect people had a heightened desire to make sense of the world by creating hyper rational systems to explain how things worked and why their systems (particularly free market systems) were best.  Emotions are also often viewed as unpredictable and that is somewhat scary.  However, as Thaler demonstrates in this book and Dan Ariely described in Predictably Unpredictable, humans do react to many things in predictable, if somewhat irrational ways.  Knowing this can be extremely beneficial to practitioners of macro and micro economics, business and design.  It also helps us to appreciate and empathize with our fellow human beings, understand human history a little better and forgive ourselves for our lapses in logic.  We are all just Humans.

El Anatsui

I recently visited the High Museum in Atlanta and saw this piece by artist El Anatsui who was born in Ghana but is living and working primarily in Nigeria.  Because of my interest in metal and the African art tradition, this is the artist I had chosen for my Contemporary Art History class presentation last summer.  However I had not had an opportunity to view his work in person.  The High Museum's African collection was largely traditional works from the 19th and 20th centuries so I was very pleased to see this contemporary example of African art.  

There is some room for debate as to why this piece was placed in the traditional African art section and not with the rest of the contemporary art two floors up.  While I do think it was useful to see the context and tradition from which El is working, the same could be said of other contemporary artists who were not shown with their influences.  Cubist sculptors and American folk artists who drew directly from African traditional art were also shown with their contemporaries and not their African influences.  I feel placing El Anatsui's piece with the historical African art instead of his contemporary art peers reinforces the notion that contemporary African art is a continuation of craft and somehow separate from legitimate contemporary 'Art'.  The distinction between art and craft is a discussion for another time.

Tango, 2006, Aluminum and Copper Wire

This piece, like much of his work, feels very light and dynamic although it is made out of joined discarded metal labels from liquor bottle necks and is in reality very stiff and heavy.  Seeing it in person help me appreciate this contradiction as well as the scale of the work.

This is the Keynote of my presentation from last summer if you are interested in more of El Anatsui's life and work.  I would like to see some of the larger, building size pieces at some point. However, he himself said that grand scale does not always make work better and some of the other contemporary pieces I viewed in the High Museum bear this out.

Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta

One of the most interesting cemeteries I've been to recently.  It was a nice mixture of botanical garden, sculpture garden, historical markers, personal mementoes and of course the fun reminder of your own mortality.  More mausoleums than I think I've ever seen anywhere else.  Also, it was free, had plentiful parking, a nice visitors center, nearby restaurants and allowed dogs.

World of Coke

Visited this while in Atlanta last week with a couple of friends.  The experience is one big advertisement but is very well designed.  The size of the spaces, the visuals, the interactions, and especially the sound design were very well done.  The design made what could have been boring or overwhelming a very enjoyable experience.

Some things they leave out.  No mention of the Cola wars or their most famous competitor.  Also no mention of cocaine in the original formula even in the myths and legends section.  That section could have been a lot larger actually.  I've heard things about Coke and Mentos, cleaning car batteries, pop rocks, dissolving pennies-don't recall seeing any of that in here.

SHiFT

I spent the last week at SHiFT design camp in northwest Alabama.  This is a unique experience founded by two professors from SCAD.  There were a hundred attendees from all over the world. Some were students and some were recent graduates.  This is the third year they have held this camp and there were many repeat attendees.  Some of the colleges represented were Columbus College of Art and Design, Ohio State, Kendall College, University of Wisconsin-Stout, University of Louisiana as well as Savannah College of Art and Design.  The official website for the camp is shiftdesign.us if you want to learn more.

The theme of the week was music and we took a field trip to Muscle Shoals to visit Fame Recording Studios as well as the Alabama Music Hall of Fame.  We heard from legendary bassist Bob Wray on how studio musicians work and then had an impromptu jam session that was amazing.

There was also a presentation by sound designer Valerie George and a sketching lesson from Jeff Smith.  Other industry professionals and professors held discussions around the campfire and shared their experience through mini talks.  We even participated as the live audience for a podcast created by fellow SCAD students, Benchroom, which you can listen to here.  

We split into nine teams of eleven and participated in challenges throughout the week.  These included creating a better community space by improving access and seating around our campfire, planting a tree and telling the story of that experience, creating musical instruments from scraps and putting on a performance and building mechanisms to fill a water bucket on top of a 8' pole after running the water through an obstacle course.  

Overall an extremely valuable experience though I am happy to be back in my soft bed.  A camper I am not.  I met a lot of really cool and talented people, learned a lot and came away with a different perspective.  Thanks to all the staff who work hard to organize this and the companies that support it.  Shift will be continuing and expanding to new locations and I would heartily recommend it to anyone who enjoys a challenge whether they are 'designers' or not.

Prototypes

Prototype mock ups for my current studio project.  Almost done!

FDM test piece sawed in half 

This is what the rubber prototypes look like straight off the printer before the support material is removed.

Wine Samples

Intertesting marketing campaign in the grocery store's alcohol aisle to let you 'try before you buy' since they can't exactly give out free samples.  These are in little take-one dispensers right above or below the wine they are advertising.  

These can not contain any alcohol and I would say the little strips taste more like fruit candy than wine.  It doesn't make me think I'm getting a very accurate feel for how the wine tastes.  Or if I am, then these wines are way too sweet.  I have never actually bought any of these, and these samples did not change that, but it got me to notice them and try the samples at least.

IKEA Kitchen Table Concept

I like how this recognizes what you're doing and tries to anticipate your needs instead of just being a dumb object reacting to input.  If this could be connected to my pantry/fridge so it already knew what I had on hand and how old it was it would be even better.  I'm sure there could by variations to make this work from two sides for multiple cooks and families as well as lots of other functions we haven't thought of yet.  A good concept starter.

Credit: IKEA Temporary / Concept Kitchen 2025

A Table for Living

Two things I really like about this concept: 

I already weigh things out so an integrated, table sized scale would be great.

The recipe suggestions based on what is in my pantry might help me get out of my ruts.  Although it is usually the same stuff in the pantry so that might not make much difference long term unless I actually varied my shopping habits.

Two things I don't love as much: 

In the video it looks like you have to move the pots to different locations for different temperatures which could get crowded and isn't very precise.

Those tiny cutting boards. It would be better if the top could act as a cutting board itself like real butcher block tops, maybe some self-healing material, seems doable.

Process Books

I read through both of these books to see if either or both of them would be good to add to my library of reference books.  Both have upsides and downsides (see below) but for someone who is already pretty familiar with quite a few production processes and just needs a reference book I think Chris Lefteri's Making It is the better buy.

Making It: Manufacturing Techniques for Product Design

By Chris Lefteri (2012)

This author has a series of similar books on materials.

Pros:

Covers a wide range of processes from small production to high volume production and finishing.

Writing style was easy to follow and understand.

Includes many cutting edge processes as well as traditional methods.

Cons:

Briefer descriptions are not as complete.

More hand drawn illustrations then pictures of processes. 

 

Prototyping and Low-Volume Production 

By Rob Thompson (2011)

This author has written other books on manufacturing, graphics and packaging production.

Pros:

Provides more detailed explanations of various forming, joining and finishing processes via short case studies.

Provides more color photographs of the processes vs. drawings.

Cons: 

As the name suggests it only covers low-volume processes and therefore covers far fewer types of operations.

Writing style is harder to follow easily.

Primarily concerned with traditional processes.