cardboard-and-hope

[cardboard-and-hope]

Final Project Process 2:

Finally I had pieces, which I printed in two different colors for variation:

Making the base stay together took a lot of string and a lot of time, but I got it done, and then, realizing that I couldn’t make the top string together without “the gap” (which became the thing I started muttering in my sleep) I decided to make it into an art project to celebrate all that I don’t know. 

I strung fairy lights through the symbols and attached it to the back.

and thus the fan was done!

Phew!

[cardboard-and-hope]

Final Project - Light Fan Process

I started with a sketch in Adobe illustrator, where I discovered the difficulties of creating a perfect part of a circle with wedges of wood

Then I moved on to a physical prototype to see if my idea was reasonable at all, and discovered a problem. When I was looking for inspiration, I found this image:

Which made it seem like sewing together the tops would work wonderfully... unfortunately for me, my attempts at this didn’t work... I always had a gap in the open fan caused by the amount of string I needed if I wanted to shut the fan:

So I settled on creating a central hole and built by pieces. I drew them in Illustrator and then ported the outlines to Rhino, this is one third of the final design, which ran down a strip of balsa wood, which I chose for its lightness:

I printed it and it was mostly successful:

and only occasionally caught on fire:

[cardboard-and-hope]

Final Project: Light Fan

Design Statement

This project was born of a strange inspiration and quite a bit of frustration. I wanted to create an object from the past using modern technology. I’ve always been fascinated by museum exhibits, the way that we display artifacts of previous generations as though they were made by aliens, strange implements of less advanced civilizations. Most of these “crude” implements, however, are the result of centuries, sometimes millennia of innovation and thought. Some people know how they were made, but that knowledge is specialized and often seen as less important than the future of design. Thus we keep these artifacts, or replicas of them, behind glass cases as eye candy for the erudite. But what if that wasn’t the way museums worked? What if you could pick up the replicas? Feel them? I started with wanting to create a modern magic lantern, but I didn’t have the time to buy the lenses and build the necessary components, so I began digging around for something fairly simple and old that could be replicated using modern technology. Thus my idea of a hand fan was born. People have AC now, so they don’t usually waft around thin wooden slats to create a breeze, but AC doesn’t have designs or a secret language. I set about creating it through laser cutting. Unfortunately, I had forgotten about the specialized knowledge a fan needs. Somehow, people are able to make the slats open and shut, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how they did it. So I created a fan that wasn’t functional, strung with fairy lights to remind me of the mysteries of the past. Even something as simple as wooden slats wafting in the wind was more than I could figure out. 

Final Object

[cardboard-and-hope]

A rare problem: sealing wax control with a stamp

Obviously this couldn’t be done without non-plastic materials, but I would find it useful. You can put a stick of lit sealing wax in the top hole. It drips though the funnel onto the paper and you can press the wax with one of the stamps.

Issues I had: lining up the letters on the plane, and getting them to the same depth. 

Process:

Final:

[cardboard-and-hope]

Cat! (Jiji from Kiki’s Delivery Service) I made a cat. It took 10 minutes longer to print than expected. it was a simple design, and avoided spagetti-doom.

Final:

[cardboard-and-hope]

Enlightened Living - Organizer

Design Statement: 

A  compact,,customizable desk organizer that doubles as a night-light.

We (team Wuson) wanted to create a useful, multi-functional and beautiful object for our design. We first thought about a light, similar to others we had seen online, but decided that this wasn’t enough to be multifunctional, so we turned to a desk organizer, a place to keep your pens, notecards, paperclips, etc. This was useful, but we weren’t sure if it would be enough of a challenge, and we wanted to create something beautiful as well as functional. We then hit upon the idea of a nightlight that was also an organizer. I have a lot of stuff, and so does Emma, and not very much space to keep it (College living!) so this seemed like a cool fusion to us. The final idea was that the light could be customizable. We made the panel slidable for easy removal, with the idea that people could have multiple panels, or make their own online. Our model complements this design by achieving all of the goals that we set for ourselves. It has a side panel with a sumi-e, ink-and-wash style landscape on it, 6 compartments for organization, and uses no adhesive!

Technical Process:

Emma and I first sketched out various configurations for the box and light, mocked up a very quick sketch in Rhino, and then figured out dimensions on paper. We decided to use a few large teeth rather than many small ones because it was easier to control and more elegant in our opinion.

We bought a large sheet of birch-wood and some battery powered “fairy lights” for the light panel. I created an illustration for the light panel based off of several sumi-e and ink-and-wash paintings I had seen:

Mulan intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKkGoa4-dlE

In the BTU, we first tested the birch for tolerance and changed our measurements accordingly:

Laser-cutting was complicated, as per usual, and we didn’t get as much done as we wanted to. We had wanted to do a mockup in cardboard before cutting the birch, but time was low, so we settled for the cardboard for critique and birch for later this week. We learned a lot about tolerance, thoughtful prototyping, and the omnipresence of too-little-time. Improvements should be made in measuring (always) material usage, and the fit of the teeth.

Model Renders

(Construction Models next post!)

[cardboard-and-hope]

Team Wuson’s Joinery Adventures

So, our idea for the laser-cutting project is to take a desk organizer and a bedside lamp, and combine them. 

We were first struck by the beauty of wooden lamps with fine latices allowing for the flow of light in fancy patterns:

Then we thought it could be cool to have a light that could tell a story. I was thinking of this really cool Alabaster Light from King Tutankhamun’s tomb:

But together we thought it would be need to make the light more functional than just a light. we knew we needed to think of things that were possible to make with a laser cutter, and we wondered if a desktop organizer would work well for this.

We wanted to create a small, cute, customizable organizer so we thought about having drawers that could stack on top of one another without needing any nails. Additionally, we wanted to remove the hassle of having handles and opted to create neat-shaped finger holes to hook and drag the boxes out with.

We then turned back to the idea of the lamp, and wondered if we couldn’t create a side-panel that would act as a nightlight controlled by a ring of Christmas lights that could go out a hole in the back and plug in. We also wanted to be able to customize the panels to tell unique stories and have unique visions:

Together the two will function as a unified, customizable organizing and lighting scheme for a room that is low on space, but high in fashion!

We’re excited for the project and how we’ll put it together!

Team Wuson out!

[cardboard-and-hope]

To build a palette...

So, I fleshed out my palette drawing from the previous typography assignment into my first laser-cut, and I’m pretty darn happy with it, especially for a first cut! I worked with the wonderful Paul, who was very kind and knowledgeable. He explained how to work the settings and how to gauge how much fire is too much fire! We had to trace the palette outline more than once, which is why there is some charcoal residue on the sides. I also enlarged the letters a bit to make sure they weren’t too delicate. In the same vein, I made the connectors for the vowels a bit wider.

In progress images (from previous assignment)

I don’t have the final Create sizing because I did it on the computer in the BTU Lab. (Doin’ it live!)

[cardboard-and-hope]

Response to Rams, Rawsthorn, and Riley Readings

(So much alliteration!)

These readings made me think a lot about what I value in design and why Rams’ principles are useful. To me, they are useful because they do not make a large amount of aesthetic judgements. One could argue that the last commandment, “good design is as little design as possible” speaks to minimalism, but I could imagine organic softness (like his bonsai trees) fitting into this as well. Thinking to his other principles, I think two that particularly struck me were “innovation“ and “truth-telling”. In our mass-consumption era, we buy a lot of things we don’t need, and many of them are either not innovative in a meaningful way, or promise things they cannot deliver on. I think especially of fashionable clothes as the former and food marketing as an example of the latter. Fashion cannot be timeless because it is based in change. It is reactionary, and follows Sturgeon’s Law pretty well. Design should not be reactionary or ‘trendy” because it cannot be innovative if it is strictly bandwagoning. That doesn’t mean that riffing isn’t useful, but, as Foodspotting’s Alexa Andrzejewski points out in Riley’s article, a product must follow a vision of its own and fill something currently unfulfilled. In terms of designing industrially-produced food, a lot of it falls short of good design because, though it is chock full of aesthetics and promises, it fails because “only well-executed objects can be beautiful” and most of the promises are damn lies.

The only article that I largely disagreed with was Rawsthorn’s “The Demise of Form Follows Function”. Perhaps I am a Luddite, but I dislike the idea of removing all obvious purpose from an object’s design. I think that, though it’s possible, it is vaguely alienating. I want design to be accessible to more than people “in the know.” Nobody should ever feel stupid because of my design.

Thinking through the articles, I came up with a few basic design principles I think are essential for good design:

Accessible:

Things should have an intuitively understandable purpose.

They should be as cost-effective as possible; no one should have to suffer from bad design.

They should be usable by as many people as possible.  

Necessary:

Design fulfills a need. It does not exist for its own sake. That’s art, not design.

Thoughtful:

A design should have a vision and a clear goal besides making money.

No Planned Obsolescence: 

If we continue to make our products in the hope of their destruction, we ensure our own.

[cardboard-and-hope]

Laser-Cut Typography

Created a vector in illustrator!

Removed the lines between the letters

not shown: connected the “e”s

Used this palette as a pictureframe

A palette is born!

I created a motivational palette!

[cardboard-and-hope]

The Egg

The Egg - “Giving You a Space To Think”

Design Statement

 The Egg is an enclosed capsule that serves as a place to read, relax and rest. I have a hard time concentrating and feeling safe sometimes, and I wanted to create a place that I could imagine going where I can still see my surroundings, but they remain separated from me.

The Egg consists of an egg-shaped interior (furnished with pillows and blankets in the real world) that allows you to sit with your knees up, cross-legged, or in a sideways fetal position. I feel the most secure when I can curl up that way, so it seemed a good fit. The dome is to give the space (and me!) breathing room. The Plexiglass window in the dome is removable because I wanted to give the option of having sound and light muffled or not, and I was still committed to the idea of the outside world not being removed, just being separated. The dome-top comes off, and this allows you to get inside. The cylindrical base is thicker than the egg at the top because I wanted to give some space for books, and the star cut-out is a place to put a light.

This project was an exercise in introspection. Thinking of De Boton’s concept of designing against fear, I think this project shows my fears of being exposed while deep in thought. I just want to retreat to my quiet little bubble sometimes, and let this crazy world fade away.

Final Renders

Technical Process

The technical process for the Egg was fairly involved. I know I wanted something I could sit in that would some how remove me from the world. First I tried just a hollow egg, made from an Illustrator vector I created and revolved. I quickly realized that anything like that would be both extremely unstable and also hard to maneuver into and also probably not comfortable. 

So, after that, I thought about creating a bassinet-like construction with curve networks, but I decided that it might be too childish and, additionally, the round bottom would be unstable, just as the first one was. 

Then I started thinking about hamster balls. which keep small animals feeling safe, and the idea of using a muted color of light like blue or purple to help relax people came to mind. I managed to make the paraboloid I needed through a revolved curve on the circle. Unfortunately, this paraboloid was below the surface of the sphere I had put the egg-hollow into, and I wanted the dome in general to be opaque, but the paraboloid to be transparent, tinted Plexiglass.

After a lot of trial and error, I managed to cut out the part of the sphere I needed removed so that the Plexiglass didn’t have an opaque layer on top of it. in addition, I added a cylinder to the bottom to ground the structure. below is a picture of the Egg base sans cylinder and dome (I added the star because I wanted a cutesy light fixture.

Finally, it turned into what I wanted! A nice little eggy cocoon to forget the world’s troubles in!

This project was difficult, but rewarding. I’d actually want to use it if it existed!

Link to Presentation Sheet PDF:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2F7Pzo9Hhapbm5iel9FUk5va2M/view?usp=sharing

[cardboard-and-hope]

Trash Can redesign- make it more portable and have a sliding top.

My idea was a waste wall that can be modular instead of one wall, and additionally has a removable, slide-able lid for easy cleaning.

[cardboard-and-hope]

Game Piece - A Spooky Coffin!

My idea for this game piece came out of some ruminating I’ve been doing on a new game idea. Basically it’s a an asymmetrical strategy game where you belong to one of three factions: The Medical Students, the Antiquities Collectors, and the Vampire Hunters. A lot of it still needs to be worked out, but the main gist is a macabre + darkly humorous social commentary game about death, bodies, and morals in the Victorian Era (but with economic engine building and the ability to screw over your opponents through papal edicts/laws/public opinion!)

Anywho, I decided to make a simple coffin piece for the game idea. It isn’t incredibly detailed because I feel like intricate figurines aren’t as useful as weighty, simple pieces, but I thought carefully about the dimensions and overall look.

Inspiration:

I ended up not chamfering the edges, which I’m disappointed about, but overall, I enjoyed the process and learned a lot about systematic and well-thought-out design.

I sketched out my dimensions using units instead of weird inch-fractions. A unit was equal to .4″, and I made the length of the coffin 1.4″.

My basic strategy was: Make a rectangle:

Make some triangles using a rectangle with the desired base and height and judicious use of the split/join tools. extrude it into a sold, and attach it to the rectangle base:

 mirror the triangular prism and create another, smaller one for the top:

Now you’re done except for a cross, which I built with a rectangle and two squares that I exploded and fiddled with before joining and extruding them.

Slap a texture on it, and it’s good to go! 

I wish I could have figured out how to chamfer the edges of the sides, but I kept getting pesky overhangs or else weird distortions I could have done a BooleanDifference but I couldn’t get a consistent angle easily. 

Cool project! Motivated to make my game now!

[cardboard-and-hope]

Exploring Rhinoceros... with Dragons!

I read this really excellent story about a little girl who asked an Australian Think-tank, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) to make her a dragon. They obliged, and it was really really adorable...and pretty to boot. So, I thought to myself 5 and a half hours ago, I’ll make a dragon! It was a pretty daunting task to me, but I learn best by going as hard core as I can for a bit. It makes the learning curve/cliff a little more pleasant (for me at least!)

The first bit of inspiration was the CSIRO story (linked above) here’s an image of the cute little fabrication itself!

After that, I looked up character art for Toothless to see the basic body-shape and weird floofy legwarmer paws (Toothless is a very cat-like dragon).

Here are those:

Then I sketched out some thoughts (mimicking the references quite a bit, and making a components list)

Then it was time to begin the modeling!

To view the Images at a reasonable size, open them in a new tab. Thanks!

This was when I was really struggling with the basics. I had notes, but everything felt really rough and gross. The body was huge and unwieldy. The reason I didn’t give up was the tail. I figured out the bend!

A bit further along, I remembered elipses, and the way they make everything more pleasant. Whenever I sketch, I build up from them, so I started incorporating them into the design. The terrifying drum-barrel body was still a problem at this point, so I focused on the legs instead.

!! Now things are getting interesting. I got rid of the weird barrel body and started working on a new chest. What’s more, my dear dragon now has a head!

Yer a lizard Harry! Wings are next.

And here they are! Wings are tricky to do! They made me figure out the Explode, Adjust, Join, Explode, Adjust, Join cycle. Which was nifty to do and sounds super rad.

Tada! The final (for now!) result. I ended up not making the wings as batty as I would have liked, but i’m pretty happy with the result, especially for a first go. I might work on it more as I go along and figure out new tricks.

Things I think I did well: 

-Learned a lot about shape and curve interactions

Things I’d like to improve:

- Using the PointsOn tool more effectively and efficiently!

-Start at the correct scale next time, as resizing is a pain!

 *Note: I measured every dimension I could think of and they’re all 3″ or under. If I missed one, I apologize!*

[cardboard-and-hope]

Hello!

This is the blog where I will be posting all documentation and results from my Form class. Pretty excited!