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design and technology .07

Robert McCaffrey - Graduate of Product Design 

Products for Purpose

“life is like riding a bicycle, to keep your balance you must keep moving.”

Robert shared with us the insights and experiences he had that led him to his clever and classic designs. Having become a footwear designer, specialising in smart shoes for commuter cyclists, he has successfully designed for a real context and filled a hole in the footwear industry. His creations are designed for a very specific function, smart cycling. A smart shoe with a rubber panel in the soul to stop your flat-bottomed smart shoe from slipping of the pedal when wet, using materials that allow feet to breathe when the body is exerted. I ‘popped-collar’ style heal to make the shoes reflective when in the light at night. And my favourite feature was the show that made use of the patterned leather and underneath was a reflective layer that was so subtle you could only tell when the lights were off and we all got our phone torches out. I found this lecture very interesting, not only because Robert was engaging and had an interesting story to tell but because of the market he was selling to. After spending a semester designing for ‘the cyclist’ I have a pretty good idea in my head of who my customer is, someone very different to Robert McCaffrey’s customer. It opened my eyes and reminded me that despite being under the same umbrella, ‘the cyclist’, it is very important to remember the many different types of people you could be designing for and to not lump them all together within the same title. Robert highlighted just how important it is to have an image, and solid idea in your head of who it is your designing for and why.

“everyone is a genius. but if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

 - both quotes Albert Einsein

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design and technology .06

Matt Marais - Graduate of Product Design Engineering 

The Power of Kickstarter

Matt Marais is the creator of the camera equipment that sits under the company name Loki; which he started developing as his final year project when he was a student at GSA. He told us about the journey he took, after graduating with his masters, to get his project to market. Matt gave us one of the most inspiring and interesting talks that we have been given as part of out Design and Technology module, he spoke about a very important lesson in design; knowing when not to give up on an idea, and learning from your mistakes and failures. What struck me most was the way in which Kickstarter dictated many of the steps, both forwards and backwards, that he made.

Since making it’s debut in April 2009, Kickstarted has fully-funded, through crowd sourcing, more that 100,000 projects! Kickstarter acts as a platform for inventors, creators and people with ideas to launch whatever it is they believe is worth it. I couldn’t believe the extent that Kickstarter decided the success or trajectory at stages of Matt’s process. There are obviously other ways to fund projects but when you can source thousands of pounds from people all over the world at the end of your fingertips via the internet, why wouldn’t you?! The power of the internet and its’ abilities and capabilities is just striking. People from all around the world offering tiny all the way up to massive sums of money to a stranger just because they quite like their idea. The limitless possibilities for design and designers, makers and creators, is quite incredible and truly inspiring. What is also incredible, is the scale at which it can destroy a project or an idea. Relying on people to back your idea based on a 2 minute video that you have to try and cram your years worth of work and research into to fully fun your life (up until now)’s work. We only really ever hear about the success stories, as if it’s a dead set way to fund your projects, but it was interesting to hear from Matt about his struggles which getting across the correct image to make people feel compelled to donate and his failed attempts. It just makes me wonder how many revolutionary, life-changing products and ideas have been given the wrong image and not evolved beyond their kickstarted campaign.

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Heatherwick uses each of his design projects to answer a question; he describes every outcome as the sweet spot between certainty and doubt. Thanks to Peter McCaughey; we have all seen the Twisted Cabinet and Rolling Bridge: two iconic Heatherwick designs that evolve everyday objects into another dimension. Despite being and expert in 3D, every year Heatherwick designs a Christmas card; every time posing a new question and new design challenge to himself. Having started out designing as an individual; his name and style now head ‘Heatherwick Studios’, a huge team of designers, engineers and thinkers all working together to research and experiment with ideas and ways to make them happen, how to answer their own questions. 

The studios’ design process relies heavily on its’ workshop; realising ideas through making (experimental pieces, prototypes, full size parts of buildings). The majority of projects coming out of this design house are on a huge scale, often conceptual plans for future buildings or areas that challenge our current perceptions. 

Heatherwick still takes the time to send a special festive thank you to everyone who helps his team throughout the year. Returning the act of sending a Christmas card back to it’s original intent; with thanks, and made with care, effort and thought, not 2-dimensional, and not bought with a pre-printed message inside; a principal that echoes through all his work.

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march 4th 2017, a saturday spent wrist deep in concrete and the day my kitchen became a building site

Above are the some of the more successful pieces from yesterday that I popped out of moulds this morning, to be honest I’m quite surprised that they are even solid pieces having had no experience with concrete in the past. I was lucky to have been given some tips from Joe, see concrete bowls a couple posts back. 

After rummaging through my bags full of rubbish to be out of for recycling, I picked a couple of random things to try to make moulds from. I bought some snowcrete (white cement), sand a couple of buckets for mixing from B&Q. Pigments for colouring concrete cost a fortune online so I just bought a couple pots of paint sample to try out, the most true to colour being the pink; it’s purpose being for outdoor furniture and walls.

Mixing the dry ingredients then chucking in a bunch of paint and adding water and mixing till the correct consistency (a thick pancake batter I was told), in old yoghurt pots. Then pouring into the moulds and hoping for the best.

You’re supposed to vibrate the moulds once the concrete has been poured, a lot of people put them on top of their washing machine, or I’ve seen some funky drill hacks to make vibrating bits. I didn’t have any of this in my home so just repeatedly tapped the mould on the table top until I couldn’t be bothered anymore.

For the pink and white pieces I poured the pink, let it set then topped with white. I found that if I poured the second colour on top of the first before it had time to sets it tended to form as a puddle in a hole in the middle. For the top right piece; I was admiring the drips that had fallen and hardened to other droplets on the table cover I was using; I dropped different colours onto the lid of a tub and allowed these to harden before covering with white. As this was drying I decided to sprinkle some of the crumbs on the top surface as you can see in the seconds bottom row on the right; I think this is my favourite effect.

Being the extremely impatient person that I am; I sadly ruined the funkiest piece I’d made as I tried to take it out the mould last night. I’ve learnt my lesson.

I have a feeling I’m going to waste a whole load more time playing with concrete.

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my rjg card holders

repurposed leather and waxed cotton scrap matterial, hand printed canvas

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Our last semester challenged us to create a product that would be desirable to a customer at the Glasgow School or Art Shop. Then brief requires us produce 10 of whatever it was we decided to make. I wanted a challenge and wanted to work with something I’d never work with before; fabric. After screen printing my own fabric and finding quality scrap leather, I ended up creating 10 leather, waxed cotton and canvas cardholders. My hands-down favourite product from the who PDE range came from Joe. He made these beautiful Luna concrete bowls out of white and black-pigmented concrete. They all had a similar shape but the patterned varied depending on how the concrete mixed and set when moulded, despite this variation, every single bowl that he produced was undeniably beautiful. Above is the second one I’ve bought, as I finally managed to bag one for myself and I think they’re amazing. Joe’s work instantly inspired me to work with concrete.

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A post shared by stefan sagmeister (@stefansagmeister)

I'm not sure how this works yet but it would be extremely fun to explore

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yummy columns 

Universal Everything explores potential to turn 13 everyday objects into screens ›

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design and technology .05

Peter McCaughey, tutor in Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art, a very non-linear man. 

I don’t think I have ever witnessed, or been a part of, a presentation that starts of with a ‘round-the-world’ high 5. Or have ever seen one been be accepted. Or responded too. Or even seem ‘cool’. Peter talked about everything and anything, with anecdotes about his time at university and photos with stories about his young kids. He is a captivating man and I would love to be able, one day, to speak as eloquently and confidently about my interests as he does. 

At one point, the topic of artificial intelligence came up, this is something that has really taken my interest since starting researching it as part of my design and technology blog. Peter spoke about different levels of AI, speaking of RFID chips that can be inserted into the body to be used to pay for your round ‘at a pub in Glasgow’ (I didn’t believe this but after some pretty quick googling, it turns out that Bar Soba in town offers this service...!), also questioning what happens when computers become so over developed that they begin to tell us what to do.

Elon Musk, a firm believer that as artificial intelligence advances, people will need to augment their brain power with digital technology to prevent them becoming irrelevant. He also backed the idea of a “neural lace” – a new electronic layer of the brain that would allow us to instantly access online information and greatly improve cognitive powers by tapping into artificial intelligence.

“We have drawn inspiration from nature, from the extraordinary capabilities in the animal kingdom and from practitioners of ancient traditions such as Feng Shui. They sense their orientation to the Earth and they use it to influence their movements, decisions and ideas.”

Cyborg Nest; the opposite of artificial intelligence. This is a product designed to extend a human’s 5 existing senses by changing the mind; not the body. The North Sense is is meant to be attached at the chest (which is usually in the same direction as your face) it then vibrates whenever you face North. Many people ask ‘Whats the point, just use a compass?’ but the creators of The North Sense think a compass is a tool, you use it when you need it, a sense is something that is constantly working that becomes a part of your permanent existence. The idea is that this constant background vibration when facing North will link humans to the earth and give their bodies a ‘sense of direction’. WACKY.

“Life will be much more exciting when we stop creating applications for mobile phones and we start creating applications for our body.”

- Neil Harbisson, co-founder of Cyborg Nest and first human recognised by a government as a cyborg.

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brain plasticity

Last night I watched the second episode of the BBC’s Incredible Medicine: Dr Weston's Casebook series. It’s only episode 2 and I’m already hooked, last week featured the stories a young 7 year-old girl who’s heart was on the outside of her ribcage instead of the inside, and a man who’s body couldn’t store a single gram of fat. This week showcased the only human on earth to have been cured of HIV; I didn’t even know that had happened, and I’m not sure how I didn’t know. What I found most incredible was the story of a 28 year old girl, Casey, who at the age of 3 years old, started to suffer from seizures that cause one side of her entire body would become paralysed causing her to collapse. It got to the point that Casey began to have fits nearly every 3 minutes and her parents had to be next to her in order to hold her up. The doctors worked out that it was a condition known as Rasmussen's encephalitis; a rare illness that causes chronic inflammation of the brain, most commonly occurring in only one hemisphere of the brain. Her neurologists concluded that the only possible way to treat the condition was to remove the half of the brain that was effected.  By removing the right-hand side of the brain it was hoped that the left hand side would compensate and take over it’s functions. 

This phenomena is known as brain plasticity, the brain’s ability to adapt, organise and change its’ function. Because of the young age that Casey was diagnosed at, (because of the early stages of development,it is thought the brain is in it’s most plastic state when we are children) her brain was able to alter it’s ability and adapt to compensate for the missing half. 

It is incredible that the human body can adapt to losing half of it’s most important organ in such a way that Casey can survive and function completely normally while having full control over her entire body. 

All the while we are adding to out lives, creating new ways to experience and replace our natural bodies, we are able to exist with much less than we think we need. This is all down to the remarkable and unknown abilities of the human body.

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deuteranomaly and protanomaly

terms used for people who suffer from red-green colourblindess and have trouble distinguishing between reds, greens, browns and oranges. They also commonly confuse different types of blue and purple hues.

I had friends at school that used glasses that created a tint to their vision helping them to read whilst having dyslexia. Apparently the use of a different colour of paper/text could increase some people’s ability to read more easily. It’s quite incredible that colour can have such a big effect on, not just your appreciation and understanding of the world around, you but can also benefit the way you learn and even allow you to read easier than a monochrome page. The thought of a life without colour makes me incredibly sad. When I was younger I used to think that the world used to be black and white. I hated when it was a grey day, I would look at old family photo albums filled with black and white photos of grandparents, and even parents, and I used to get sad thinking that they had to live in such a grey world.

The two types of light-sensitive cell within the retina that process colour are called the rods and cones, the rods work in low-light condition, such as at night time, whereas cones work in the daytime in high level light conditions. There are three types of cone cells, each having a different sensitivity to wavelengths of light; one perceives blue light, an other red light, and the last green light.Your brain then interprets the signals from the cones cells so that you can see the colour of the object. The red, green and blue cones all work together allowing you to see the whole spectrum of colours. The exact physical reasons behind colour blindness are still being researched but it is believe to be caused by faulty rods and cones.

I found these really funky glasses that have lenses which alleviate colour blindness, by enhancing colours but without compromising colour accuracy. EnChroma lenses solve the problem by the use of an optimal filter that targets specific photopigments, using some protected/patented method they are able to filter and cut out and sharp wavelengths of light allowing the enhancement of specific colours. They do this by separating the overlapping red and green cones, improving the difference in these colours for people who struggle to differentiate. Literally incredible. The technology for this was created and designed through research into the genetics behind colour blindness along and looking into various anomalies related to photopigments. Seeing, and seeing in colour, is something I totally take for granted on a daily basis. Colour blindness is something most sufferers are born with, imagine being gifted with something like being able to see colour.

more @ http://enchroma.com/

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design and technology .04

A very thought provoking short talk from Ben Craven on the importance of approximate calculations from the very beginning of any project.

Using extremely vague and roughly estimated numbers, we were shown how doing the most simple of school-standard sums can allow you to get a very quick insight into the feasibility of your suggested project. It also brought to light a factor of sustainable energy that I hadn’t thought too much about previously. Ben spoke about the difference between large energy savings versus small energy savings, he questioned the promises of companies that would be ‘solely powered by wind’ without calculating what percentage of the country they would need to cover in wind farms in order to make this possible, how car companies planning to produce solely electric cars without mentioning that the solar panel required per car would need to be the size of a tennis court. I think people have extremely unrealistic, skewed and optimistic views on ‘saving’ energy (I know, to some extent, that I did).

We were set the question of ‘How many cups of tea can be made for the energy equivalent that of flying a single person out from Glasgow to Singapore and back?’ 

I have always been told to only put as much water as I need and no more to boil in the kettle. And whilst this may reduce your energy bill by a couple of pence along with a few more ‘green life hacks’ and allow you to feel good about saving the planet, the impact is infinitely small. I, by all means still agree with this way of using a kettle. It is estimated that we, as a nation, guzzle 165 million cups of tea alongside 70 million cups of coffee every single day. Based on our approximated values from today, for every one cup of boiling water made, it takes 80 kJ of energy. If you so much as use half a cup too much, you’re essentially wasting 235million x 40kJ, and no estimations need to be made to work out that that’s a lot of wasted energy.

What struck a cord with me was the relative energy. You think you’re doing your bit for the world, saving the planet one cup of tea at a time, but one holiday to Singapore and you’ve had your life time supply of cups of tea; 300,000 of them! And when you multiply that by the number of people on a plane and how many planes travel around the world every day, the energy usage and carbon emissions become crazily substantial. The topic really hit home with me, I think I’m doing my bit by recycling my plastic and cardboard packaging but I still eat meat, overuse my heating etc. It was just very apparent that if you think you’re helping the planet in one way, you will undoubtably be harming it in some other aspect. It made me wonder if there is any way for a human live that doesn’t disadvantage the earth?

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design and technology .03

Plastic Mouldings, Irvine 

Despite the struggle to breathe I really enjoyed our trip to Irvine visiting the Plastic Mouldings Factory, it was also a really interesting place to try out my beautiful new 50mm lens (which I clearly haven’t quite got the hang of yet..).

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design and technology .02

Urban Spaceman - a BBC documentary about the Australian designer Marc Newson.

It’s funny, I watched the documentary about this ‘great designer’ and I don’t really recall much work that I liked, to give him his dues I want one of his Ford concept cars, that thing was cool. As someone that is yet to learn to drive, the idea of a simplified car with minimal and ergonomically pleasing controls is certainly appealing, and is achieved perfectly in my opinion. 

Despite the majority of his work not being to my taste I would still argue that Marc Newson is a great designer. The sheer range of stuff he has produced is nuts. He has managed to apply his design thinking to so many different applications, products and furniture. All the while while I don’t necessarily like the stuff; I can more than definitely appreciate the thought and execution behind it. 

When I first saw the well known Lockheed Lounge, I instantly decided I didn’t like it (it reminded me of the characters in the video game WORMS). Part of me doesn’t agree with what appears to be a worldwide opinion, that these ‘great design chairs’ are worth up to £650,000; when their main function, to be sat on, cannot be fulfilled as they are ‘not comfortable’ and they are ‘too expensive to be sat on’. 

However, after discovering the intention behind the chair, attempting to create a piece of furniture that replicates the appearance of liquid mercury, I was able to appreciate the meaning and work that had gone into creating it. Maybe all design should be sold with its’ story, but then again, maybe it shouldn’t need to be explained. 

I chose to feature my two favourite pieces of his design from the documentary. A table and chair, each formed by an extrusion through a single block of marble. Not only incredible in appearance but the engineering and perfection in tooling that went into the forming of them. I think the transformation of a 2D image into a 3D form is extremely beautiful and the material used makes it even more impressive. 

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design and technology .01

A weekly assignment with the intention to broaden my understanding behind design: I will be giving my reflections on the events and discussions covered in our Design and Technology Module. 

‘The Demise of Skilled Traditional Manufacturing - What are you willing to pay for?’

Above is a photograph of one of the skilled craftsmen that works on the Brookes saddle production line. His job is to, by hand, chamfer the edges of the saddles to give them a gradient along each edge. This job requires an enormous amount of skill and experience along with hours and hours of concentration every day. It is a job that has taken years of watching, learning, practice, and experience to perfect. This can be said for many apprenticeships, a path way in life that is becoming more and more obsolete. 

Renowned for their longevity and the personalised fit that comes with longterm use, Brookes produce a product that is arguably one of the best in the field, one that takes 3 days to be made by hand, and one that is going to last you a long time. The question is, ‘Is it the meticulous, perfected hand-production of their product that is the reason for all these features?’

In a time of additive manufacturing, more and more products are made by creating a digital version on a machine, programmed to another machine to create the parts, another machine to put the pieces together and onto another to package it. The only human contact being fingers to keyboard and mouse at the initial computer stage and at the very end when the customer takes it home. While this is all very impressive, that man has created machine to do all these tasks, there is definitely something in having someone spending their day pouring over your product, paying attention to the little details, applying the human touch. Is there a point where machines do too much for humans? Don’t get me wrong, machined production lines have their place (I distinctly remember watching a documentary where it was someone’s job to put the caps on toothpaste tubes). It is a way of keeping costs down for large batch lines of the same product, for having less employees and staff, and in someways is probably more reliable than real people (in the way that humans can detect cracks by observation and touch, but only to a visible scale, whereas technology like lasers and radiation can detect mirco-scale cracks.) At this point it seems that the only truly human parts of all manufacture is in the design stages. 

After our last project, I have had a very personal experience working with leather by hand. I got to design a leather product from the very first sketch, making iterations, trying out prototypes, discovering different ways it could be made, failing, doubting the idea, seeing what was in my head in my hands, creating a miniature hand-crafting production line, right through to handing them to the shop they were sold. And I was able to be proud of what I had provided. Maybe you don’t get that, as a designer or creator when you design on such a large scale, that enjoyment of knowing someone has chosen to pay for something you spent time, care and attention on, maybe you just get money.

It will be heartbreaking when hand-crafted design is ‘a thing of the past’. ‘Handmade’ appearance is ‘trendy’ but in reality it’s mass-produced. I really hope it doesn’t die out, but if it does, I have no doubt you’ll be able to find a bunch of graduate PDE students working away on their latest project in their garden sheds, guaranteed.

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My perception and expectations of what a bike should be were quite rigid. To me the frame needed to be solid and straight, it needed to look sturdy in order to allow the rider to trust it enough at speed and to take their weight. It needed to have two wheels in a line, that you sat above and between, and forwards onto the handle bars. To me, that’s just how they worked and I never really questioned it. It did the job, why would you change it? I learnt to ride my bike by going on a normal bike that had stabilisers on either side of the rear wheel, shakily rocking from side to side as my balance shifted and the terrain underneath me changed. The day those stabilisers came off was a big deal: a loss of security, of comfort, the reason I could ride a bike up until that point had been taken away from me. 

I was first made to question this idea when my little brother received his ‘balance bike’ a few years ago when he was 2 years old. It was extremely similar to an ordinary children’s bike, it had 2 wheels, a set of handlebars, but it was missing pedals. The seat is at a height that allows the rider to have both feet flat on the ground and can almost mimic a running motion but with a seat (and the rest of the bike) between their legs. the design of how to learn to ride a bike has been changed, you no longer ride your normal bike, gradually reducing the stability and gaining it your self, this was a flawed design. Now you start from the very beginning of the process controlling the balance all by yourself, you have full control over the speed, yet can only go as fast at your legs can run, and you simply slow it down by putting your feet flat on the ground as brakes, this encourages children to lift their feet from the ground to let the bike move. Essentially gifting them with instant ability and understanding of what it takes to ride a bike.

This meant Fraser, my little brother, had no fear graduating from his balance bike up to his ‘big-boy’ bike. He jumped at the chance to have pedals, to finally be able to move faster than his legs could push him. It’s the way these balance bikes have approached the issue of learning to ride a bike from a completely different angle that I think is great design. I don’t think there is anything drastically wrong with the way I learnt to ride my bike, I still can, and many others who learnt in the same way, also can. But these balance bikes almost eliminate any fear or inability involved, and make it a much easier and care-free solution.

I think these Brum Brum bikes are amazing, not only in their appearance, but in how they make you question their function. Being made from wood makes it more of a toy, similar to a rocking horse, it’s much more child-friendly, less harsh and cold than metal. The U-bend in the wooden frame allows the seat to be suspended by the natural give in the material, this gives protection to the child’s spine without having big chunky hydraulic suspension on the bike, it’s simply ‘built in’ to the material. Genius function with a really funky design.