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.

CR04

For the past few classes we have been working on our Final project for the class.  It has been really fun getting to work in a group and combine all of the creativity from each person and seeing a final product produced from it.  We haven't done anything else in class other than work on the project, so there's really nothing else to talk about. 

Journal 08

Design and the Environment:

            Most people – including myself – would assume they knew exactly what “design & the environment” and that would simply be designing products that are recyclable or made of “BPA” free materials.  In a way, that is correct but its only part of a greater whole.  Design and the environment is about those things described above but its more about designing all aspects of our lives to have less of an impact on our world.  A book we read in class (Cradle to Cradle) address many of the ideas about design an the environment, mainly that it’s not only about making products safer and healthier for us as humans but also creating everything in our world to use less resources, and maybe even give more back as we move into the future.  Design and the environment can refer to product design but it also refers to the design of all things that fill out world. 

Sources & Summaries:

-Minnesota Pollution and Control agency: Product Design andthe Environment

            This is a page provided by the Pollution Control Agency of Minnesota that has many different guide sheets on different aspects of product design from power supply, to chemical and materials selection.  What was most interesting about this page were the different topics they thought to address that I – personally – hadn’t thought about.  For instance the fasteners that hold products together, or extending product life (which seems like something many companies would be against).  

-US EPA, Design for the Environment:

            This page has an incredible amount of information on “green” design for consumers, manufacturers, and purchasers about a “DfE” label.  The page I linked to specifically ahs information about the DfE label, how the EPA determines what products are deserving of the DfE label, and what the DfE label means for consumers.  The idea that the EPA is creating a universally identifiable label in order for people to make more conscious decision about what they purchase is awesome.

-HP Environment:

            This is the electronic giant’s website about how they have devoted a certain portion of their resources to being green since 1922.  They talk about their “design for the environment” program which they – funnily enough – term as their DfE program (seems incredibly similar to the EPA’s efforts).  They focus on three main areas, energy efficiency, materials innovation, and design for recyclability…and go on further to discuss how they achieve these “priorities.”

-Inhabitat:

            Probably the coolest site that I found in relation to “green” design.  This is more of a website that focuses on collecting and sharing ideas on green design, or designing to save the world.  I thought this site was amazing because it organizes the ideas into specific categories like interiors, or technology…it really opened my eyes to the possibilities of designing to impact our world less.

-EDC (Ecological Design Collborative): 

            This site deals less with product design and more with architectural design…a more literal interpretation on the intersection between design and the environment.  The specific page I linked to describes what this “company” is all about, aka coming up with “ecologically and economically-sensible” buildings (among many other things). 

Peer blog reflection 03

-One thing that really struck me in Ricardo's blog was when he said, "I personally believe that people want to be as cheap as possible, but they are exchanging quality for quantity.  Products made locally and foods grown locally do not suffer from industrial machines and chemicals and are flat out better even if they cost a bit more."  This is something that I wholly agree with, especially with food.  I will admit that I am a product of great branding and advertising on the part of WholeFoods market, but their core ideas are something that we should learn to live off of, namely living local.  I've run into this in my own family where buy local or healthy is too "expensive," but as Ricardo points out when we pay less we are many times sacrificing quality...and in the end if we buy a more expensive, more durable product initially then it will most likely last longer and we will end up paying less because we are not buying replacements for broken-down products.  I like to think of things as investment that we work towards instead of the cheapest thing that we can afford right now.
-If Mike B's blog I really liked his Letter E that he found for the letterforms assignment, but I also really loved how he introduced his reflection to Cradle to Cradle, "Using nature as the blueprint, McDonough and Braungart observe how insects, animals and plants have been living together in harmony since the beginning of time. Humans on the other hand have been rapidly depleting our resources, poisoning our land and water and destroying our environment all in the name of advancement and consumerism."  I completely agree with what Mike is saying here and think that it sums up well what Cradle was trying to portray, especially when he uses the word advancement because I came to almost the same conclusion about scientific advancement or progress when I was reading the books.  It important that we also make the difference between constructive versus destructive advancement.
-Sarah H, first of all I loved the "S" you found in an incandescent light bulb, and I'm glad that someone else decided to use an open pair of scissors for "X" as well.  What I really liked about your peer reflection is reaction that you had to my comment about plagiarism, "Sometimes I think plagarism can build up a fear that keeps us from using the full potential of another persons work and building on it because we have been brought up with this fear that we are going to get in trouble."  This is an incredibly important point that I don't think that I discussed enough in my course reflection, and I completely agree that using scare tactics when it comes to plagiarism dissuades progress from building upon past ideas.

RR03

William McDonough and Michael Braungart book has been incredible to read because of the idea of harmony with nature that they promote.
Chapter 1 dealt with the roots of our carbon-foot print problem.  Our society and much of the world is based on a systems (or a series of systems) designed in the Industrial revolution.  During the industrial revolution the people leading the revolution 1. didn't design proper ways to deal with waste and 2. could have no idea how far and quickly the world would evolve, so there was no way - even if they had sought to design waste management systems - that they could have designed effective ways to deal with modern waste.  In this chapter they also begin to explain the title of their book Cradle to Cradle.  Today we live on the idea of cradle to grave that highlights the idea that we are consumers who buy product or things that are really only meant to last one generation. We then throw our old things "away" although they never really go away, they are simply put in a place where we don't have to see or deal with them...at least for now.
Chapter 2 delves further into a point brought up in chapter one, that is it talks about where the by-products of our consumption or consumerism go and the ineffectiveness of the methods we use to deal with all of it.  We as a society have a lot of waste and in the past have just thrown it all into landfills where it sits there, or we burn it putting toxic chemicals into the air or environment.  The most recent method of reuse (disposal really) is recycling, where we take products made of "reusable" materials and reuse parts of them.  But this is really something that only makes a small dent, because not everything that we recycle can be reused or reused forever and for its original purpose.  Some things once used can't be reused in what they were originally used for, instead they are weaker after one use so they are continually downcycled until they end up un-useable with all of our other "trash" in landfills.  This is one thing that really bothers me personally about our society is that we have "evolved" so far to make our lives easier and more continent but have moved so far away from understand and being able to interact with our environment efficiently. 
Chapter 3 simply showcases an example of how we can design items that can be fully eco-friendly and fully recyclable.  To do this the authors use the book itself as a prime example of how this can be done.  The books itself is made from a sturdy plastic material that can be reused as a books, the ink and the glue are both non-toxic (and the ink can be washed from the pages so they can be reused), and finally the books itself is waterproof so it is not easily ruined (causing you to go out and but a new one). 
I found chapter 4 the most interesting because they introduced the idea of biological metabolism and how we can take a clue from nature in order to better design our products.  I think that Apple (or any technology company) is a prim example for what is wrong with our consumer society in terms of recycling or the environment.  No matter what the product when a new one comes out everyone wants one, even if they have a perfectly functional one...although I am not one to lecture because I am incredibly guilty of this myself.  We live in a society that teaches that we can have whatever we want, dream big to achieve, and this kind of thinking has moved away from its original intentions (to inspire) and instead has lead to a loss of being able to distinguish between wants and needs.  The idea of metabolism is to design products so that the products or their components can be reused after their lifetime is done, but in an environment where wants and needs are confused this is not on the forefront of peoples minds. 
Chapter 5 deals with learning to live of the naturally occurring local environments.  For so long the human species has been altering nature and forcing to do things for us, to please us in some way, or to make our lives easier.  Instead of doing what our ancestors did and adapting to a local environment we alter it to fit our needs wherever we may be, but instead of calling this destruction we call this "progress" and "scientific advancements."  A bonus is that local products (like food) Can be healthier because they aren't treated with chemicals or processed to make them last longer in transit and on store shelves.
Finally, chapter 6 talks about how we can effectively implement all of the ideas introduced in this book.  He talks about the 5 steps to implement the ideas; 1. rid ourselves of known pollutants, 2. make decisions based on informed preferences (knowing about products and what goes into them and creating them), 3. identifying products that are falsely "clean,'" 4. slowly implement small positive steps so that its more of a lifestyle change, and 5. finally using this knowledge to design products that are green for our future.