Journal 09

Let me start off by saying that the Coleman was an incredibly fun project which I enjoyed incredibly.  When I sat down to examine my personal process and examine what my role in the group was, I found that we were really a collaborative group that worked incredibly well together.  Many times during projects I take the lead and try to control of the group, become the leader...even when I'm not trying.  I think it's in my nature to try to control things but I tried really hard during this project to not try to force my opinions or to lead to much because I wanted to try to listen and hear everyone's ideas...and make them feel like we were all contributing equally.  When it came time to start brainstorming about where we wanted to go for the project it was mostly coming up with ideas about what we thought Coleman was and what the company stood for.  We finally decided on doing a tabletop with a cook-top somehow incorporated.  Sarah Howard provided the idea partly inspired by campfires and partially inspired by Japnese steakhouses.  After we reached this pivotal point to project proceeded nicely and above are the sketches for the main ideas that I provided for the project.  Most of the visual work was done by Mike B, who is absolutely incredible with Photoshop, and the kiosk ideas were provided by Ricardo.  Sarah and I were the ones who organized the presentation and created the Power-point presentation.  When we were working on the presentation we wanted to incorporate the idea of Coleman into the very theme of the presentation itself and considered this more of a pitch to the company than a presentation to the class.  Overall, I felt that we did very well and thanks to the hard work of everyone in the group, we succeeded!

Course Reflection 05

I thought that all of the presentations went really well.  Naturally, there were some that I liked more than others...and some that I didn't like at all.  I think that perhaps my favorite group out of all of them was the group that created the Curtains with solar panels on the back in order to wirelessly charge a portable outlet so that we can save small bits of energy at a time.  It was a fantastic idea and I think that it was even better that they based it on actual technology, that currently exists.  Now, there were a couple of ideas that I saw and was shocked by because they were already existing products and it seems that they simply slapped on a "Coleman for the home" label.  For example, the collapse-able bowls and the lightbulb changer.  They did make some changes but it didn't seem to me like much thought or inspiration from Coleman was put into those two particular items.  Finally, I thought it was interesting that so many of the presentations didn't mimic the Coleman brand...either the existing Coleman brand or the Coleman brand they created.  I know that simplicity is key when giving a presentation so as to get your point across and to not confuse your audience, but that does not mean that black and white is necessary.  A logo or color scheme that mimics Coleman I think really helps to brand the product when one is giving a presentation. 

Journal 10

It seems like just yesterday that I was writing my first journal for this class.  I clearly remember having a sense of not knowing what it was I was looking for from the class and not knowing at all what to expect.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that design was at the same time exactly what I thought it was but also exactly what I thought it wasn't.  I had always thought of designers as people who live to make things pretty and beautiful.  While that does encompass some part of the truth, that part is incredibly small compared the myraid of other things that designers do or can do with the skills they learn.  I think that the most important thing that I learned from this class is that you can make anything from you life, you can choose what skills to use in life and apply them anywhere no matter what source you learned them from.  There are some objectives that I had in mind at the start of this class for myself that I didn't accomplish but I feel a bit more put together that I was at the start of the quarter.