Utopian Design: Volkswagen

When I think of a design that is designed for the people I think of Volkswagen. Now I know it sounds really odd but why not talk about another utopian design like the iPhone? Well because I think Volkswagen deserves a  spotlight as well.

Volkswagen Logo and history, from http://www.cartype.com/pages/1765/volkswagen

Volkswagen, or VW as known by its it iconic mark, is one of the world’s largest automobile manufacturers. That should already tell you that the Volkswagen design is made for the people if so many consumers are interested in buying such a product. Also added to the fact that when directly translated Volkswagen literally means people’s car in German.

The most interesting thing about Volkswagen is it’s history. The Volkswagen was originally designed by a Nazi trade union, called the German Labour Front in 1937. The German automobile industry was largely composed of luxury cars, and the people then could hardly afford the expensive models. With a new area to market in mind, the auto industry began to build the ultimate people’s car. Adolf Hitler has a hand in the creation of the Volkswagen, giving the basic guidelines for a Volkswagen car to be able to transport at least two adult and three children at a speed of 62 mph. Due to it’s mass production, the People’s Car, or VW would be able to sell to consumer for a cheap price.

Ferdinard Porsche (1875-1952), Image and history from http://people.westminstercollege.edu/staff/bknorr/html/history.htm

The creation of the Volkswagen was designed by the Engineer Ferdinand Porsche who made sure that the VW was fuel efficient, reliable, easy to use, and economically efficient to repair. While Erwin Komenda developed the recognizable body of the car known today as the Beetle.

Volkswagen Beetle, Image and history from http://people.westminstercollege.edu/staff/bknorr/html/history2.htm

Over the years Volkswagen had to create newer designs to market with the trend of society, from external to internal changes. With mass market cars, Volkswagen had an arrange of colors that a consumer can pick from and even customize detailing on their cars. On the other hand, over the years, the company has focused on creating fuel efficient models that aims to save gas and help improve the environment the best way it can. So far VW has developed many different hybrid vehicles like clean diesel, flexible fuel vehicles, and even electric cars and hybrids (so far they have discontinued ethanol vehicles). The aim of VW to go along with the times is to create a car that is both fuel efficient for society, accessible for everyone to use and attractive. Although, I purely believe that the attractive quality about the VW Beetle is in the ability to customize or pick out the car to best match the identity of the consumer. In this sense Volkswagen is every sense a utopian design, it is the People’s Car.

Here is a video of the Volkswagen Beetle design in 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsVcpk6Z8Qs

Dangerous Design

Earlier while discussing with a friend the idea of what is a dangerous design, she came up with the ideas of elevators. This was a new idea to me, since elevators are generally thought to be safe (although people with that phobia will disagree.)

I decided to humor her and set about to discover how dangerous elevator could be to humans and society. First, I believe that the most important thing to understand is that an elevator is a vertical transport that moves between floors. These elevators are usually powered by electric motors, cables, counterweight systems (like hydraulic fluids or pumps). The idea of elevators would generally be considered utopian since it is thought to help the handicap move about much more easily. I would agree until reading how its is only cables that holds a very heavy compartment up.

Elevator, image from http://www.ltfexperts.com/elevatorsescalators.htm

Now generally, elevators are safe, in fact it is considered one of the safest vehicle systems, so don’t let my own anxiety fool you. Generally if there is an elevator problem it is due to the door’s inability to open. Thus far, there are no cases of free-falling elevators that kill its occupants. Most of the deaths are maintenance related or other easily avoidable accidents.

Image from http://www.jakesnewblog.com/tag/heights/

This brief study on elevators made me realize that the design for elevators is not dangerous, its is the idea that people place in their own minds. To me it seems that people fear what they do not know, and since most people do not know that elevators are generally the safest vehicles of transport, they will continue to fear it. I was a little fearful at first knowing that all that holds me up from certain death is a bunch of cable wires, until I understood that  elevators are engineered to conform to a basic standard that must meet the basic requirements and safety standards of the US.

Thus this fear is purely unintentional, but instead perpetuated by movies in society that instill a sense of fear into its consumers by showing scenes of free-falling elevator compartments.

An example of such a movie is called The Shaft, a horror/thriller about a evil possess elevator

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVaPS5zl9VM

Color Transforms

Color is an essential instrument in a designer and artist’s tool box. The way color interacts with each other is a key component in making a design and masterpiece attractive and appealing to the eye. The way color interacts within a given space can produce a sense of balance for a piece of work, color can give the product a finished look and harmony.

Josef Alber's Book, Interaction of Color

In Josef Alber’s book, Interaction of Color, Alber takes on the challenge to explain the complexities of color, stressing the importance of balance in a composition of color. He illustrates the importance of each example with another illusions of color – how color behaviors in relation to other colors and shapes.

Example of a color wheel from http://www.realcolorwheel.com/tubecolors.htm

My most favorite illusion is the strange and captivating interaction between complimentary colors. Complimentary colors are pairs of colors that are opposite in hues in a color wheel. In color theory, complement colors are only truly complements if, when mixed together, they produce a neutral color, such as brown, gray, white or black. For purposes of art and design, the traditional set of complimentary pair colors are white and black, red and green, blue and orange, and yellow and violet. Thus, a complimentary color is usually a primary color paired with its secondary opposite.

Complementary colors from http://www.artsparx.com/color_complementary.asp

The combination of complimentary colors in art and design is aesthetically appealing. The contrasting hues between red and green, blue and orange, and yellow and purple is attractive due to its bright warm tones juxtaposed against cool colors. Each of the complimentary colors pop out against each other, making one another appear much brighter, standing out as pure and bright colors. The contrast presents a balance of dark and light colors that is engaging to the viewer. In fact, because the colors are in high contrast the colors are especially stimulating when placed and designed correctly in an object, if not the process can be overdone and hard to look at, or ignored due to its lack of color.

Albers uses examples like complimentary colors to teach us that colors can work together harmoniously if the designer or artist presents their work in a logical and organized fashion. If so, color can be used to the designer's advantage to attract wanted attention. Thus, color is a equilibrium, too much color is over stimulating while too little is too bland.

Ergonomics Of An Object

Ergonomics is the study of human centered design, which basically means a study of everyday objects designed with people in mind. Now when doing ergonomics research this process can be applied to any object worth studying. The five areas of concern in ergonomics research is safety, comfort, ease of use, performances, and aesthetics.

So what is something we all use daily? Well I know what I use daily, besides this computer, my Blackberry Curve is quite possibly the most important thing to me. It is my connection to everyone inside and outside school, it is my connection to family, it is my alarm, my calendar, and my note taker, basically my cell phone could be my life (but its not, believe me I am not that obsessive…). Anyways, my Blackberry Curve can be a simple or complex device to use, but lets break it down to the five basic concerns of ergonomics.

“Safety first!” they always say (well who is they?). ANYWAYS, the safety of the Blackberry is creating a functioning mobile phone that is safe to use. For example, making sure that the battery doesn’t malfunction suddenly causing the phone to over heat, or making sure the charging port isn’t loose or built in such a way that would cause it to spark when connected with the electrical plug. Basically, what designers create and produce, they have to consider the safety issues. (Though to be honest, when I got my Blackberry it did all of these dangerous problems. Thank god for insurance!) Thankfully, my Blackberry Curve now is visually and currently very safe to use in my daily routines.

Second is comfort. I love my Blackberry Curve, especially because it is wide, it fits within the palm of my hand and the grips on the side are a velvety rubber and thus securing that grip. I love the wide screen on it because it allows more text to be easily read, and like most phones you can increase or decrease the size of the text allowing more comfort. The volume of the phone can always be adjusted of course, but I never had much of a problem with the sound, and it is generally very comfortable to talk on the phone for long hours. The compact size makes it a comfortable guest in your jean pockets. The Blackberry Curve is definitely made with the business consumer in mind, it has everything a business savvy person needs – a calendar, a notes program, a Word and PowerPoint program, an alarm, email and other entertainment needs like music, camera, video and games. Comfort for the businessman is a plus with the Blackberry Curve when everything can be placed within this small device.

Now with ease of use, after reading the instruction manual and playing around with the phone, my Blackberry Curve became pretty easy to use. It generally has the basic call and off buttons of every cell phone. However, calling and texting actually proved to be a struggle for people who have never used a Blackberry, several of my friends who have tried to mess around with my phone always needed some help to figure out how to call or send a text message – a definite downside, but a plus to help you realize who is playing around with your phone. The one that I love about my Blackberry Curve in particular has a QWERTY board, now if that does not says comfort I have no idea what does. The QWERTY board allows the comfort of a small keyboard built into your hand held. It just makes texting so much easier and faster.

Overall, the performance of my Blackberry Curve is on and off, like humans it has its good days and bad days (this is also probably due to my clumsiness, where dropping it a couple of time has probably slowed down its function). But for the most part my Blackberry Curve has been performing beyond average, after using it for two years I am proud to say that its performance is great and generally very reliable if you take pretty good care of it.

The aesthetics of the Blackberry Curve is sleek; my phone is outline in stone gray, generally promoting a sense of professionalism and cool. The design of the phone is very black, with the speaker at the top, the wide screen below it, the call and menu button after and the keyboard and the microphone at the bottom. The sides has buttons, the phone allows you to adjust the function of what the buttons do (such as adjusting volume or a quick short cut to your email). The port for the charger is generally well placed. Generally the Blackberry Curve is about a clean sleek design, perfect for every day use that elicits a mode of professionalism.

The Blackberry is perfect for any consumer, because of its function, its programs, and its design.

Blackberry Curve 8310 Review

Creative Motion: "Tips for Better Ideas"

One of my favorite hobbies is making creative videos. I mainly make videos like this one from Rethink Scholarship at Langara 2010. This video was a Call for entries, which was both inspiring and entertaining.

The video all about the mechanics of design, it called on its audience to think outside the box for creativity and inspiration, to do something extraordinary rather than ordinary.

For me, videos like this all have a message to convey and I believe that the ability to grab your attention and inspire someone to do something greater then what they did yesterday is admirable. I might be giving a lot of credit to this video, but I think a video like this is only successful if it makes you focus on the work you love the most, if it reminds you why you are doing what you are doing, and why doing it makes you fall in love with your work every day. It reminds me of the very basic principle I have learned in design so far: DO WHAT YOU LOVE.

I believe that this video was cleverly designed. It was in a sense the most basic and most simplistic it can be. A video in a slightly fast-forwarded speed, however the content is what spoke to me – the creators of the video had made a book from a hardbound sketchbook. Then they made it into something that was interactive! Each page that they flipped to was something new and innovative, it called on artists to use their creativity to design something worthwhile, to be inspired and to stand out.

This video basically gave advice on how every artist and designer should work out THEIR design/creative process. It asked everyone to have their own ideas, to trust your guts i.e. have confidence, to think of a thousand ideas not just one, to speak out, to think of everything i.e. to think up every problem with your idea and find a solution, to never repeat, to get feedback, to leave an impression on your audience, and most importantly to keep on going. The video was ultimately encouraging and the music was pretty good as well but… this is just something you HAVE to watch.

&

Words and Images: Part 2 COMICS

Today, I was perusing through a copy of the California Aggie a newspaper produced by my school at the University of California, Davis. Where by chance I took a glance at the tiny comics section where I was met with a little two panel comic strip that illustrate perfectly how words and images need to be well balance in order for things like comics to work.

Comic strip, NAMES, found at xkcd.com

The comic is simplicity at its more basic form, line drawing. The characters are stick figures and the clothes on the characters are there to indicate status, position or gender.

The comic is actually a focus on the male character’s frame of thought as he stands as a groom next to his bride. In one panel is a close up of his dilemma, where he has forgotten his soon to be wife’s name. In the next scene, the comic book artist has zoomed out, giving the viewer the entire view of him at his wedding with his bride next to him and a preacher just about to announce his wife’s name. As soon as the preacher recites her name, a thought bubble stemming from his figure appears and exclaims “Aha! Rachel!” while this was not the most elegant comic, or even humorous, it does show that words and images have to work together to make some sense. If there were no words, the two-panel scene would be all together meaningless. If it were only words, we would not see too much humor, only a cruel joke. The comic together gives the joke a lighthearted experience not to be taken too lightly.

Read more comics here.

Words and Images: Brian Fies

Last week, Tuesday November 2, 2010, our design class had a wonderful guest lecturer by the name of Brain Fies, a comic book artist for renowned works like Mom’s Cancer and Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?

Book over to Mom's Cancer

He gave us a specific lecture on his creative process, or how he went about creating his two books, thus the color schemes, the layouts, the design, and most importantly the idea. The inspiration for his two books came from his life experiences and his interests. He heavily emphasized that he could have easily wrote a book about his experience especially when going through his family crisis with Mom’s Cancer, but he chose comics.

Why?

Because he had always loved comics, he felt fascinated how words and images worked well together to complete the idea. Words and images gave the story more impact, it made his story more profound, the images were sympathetic and it echoed in his story. One would not survive with out the other. It was an equal balance, the image called on the words to explain what images alone could have not and vice versa.

Excerpt from Mom's Cancer

I believe Brian Fies really showed us the beauty of comics, I have never found comics interesting until he explained his interest in it. Now that I look at it in a different light I can see the beauty in which image and words are juxtapose together create an existence of time. Comics brought life into his mom’s journey and battle with cancer. His comics beautifully stretch or condense time through panels, a skill I have come to admire in comics. In this one strip, Fies illustrate a passage of time through his mom’s struggle with lung cancer in which she makes a commentary on her addiction to cigarettes, while she goes through her chemotherapy treatments. Fies used selective quotes from his mom’s arguments with herself and images at each process to show exactly what his mother was thinking. If words had only been used, there would not have been much of an impact. Seeing the chemotherapy eat away at this woman, along with juxtaposing words made me feel sorrow, anger, and a multitude of emotions as she dealt with her chemotherapy and abstinence from cigarettes.

Brian Fies and his Family

Check out Brian Fies at his own Blogspot!

Arik Levy's Preliminaries: Dick, Pussy, and Ass Exhibition.

A friend on Facebook posted an interesting design article I came across this weekend, the article was about a design concept in which geometric shapes were symbolic shapes for sexual organs.

The controversial idea is a three-part collection of three cabinets called Dick, Pussy, and Ass by French Designer Arik Levy. The artist states that the stylized geometric furniture boxes can be rearranged to make statements about sexual organs.

Dick, Pussy and Ass by Arik Levy

Each cabinet is made of black-waxed MDF (medium-density fiberboard) and colored with different accents for each piece. For instance, Dick is accented with gray, Pussy with red accents and Ass with yellow accents.

The entire exhibition is called Preliminaries.

Levy comments that the controversy is that the symbolic images are considered inappropriate in society, but he wants to emphasize that these shapes are beautiful. These 3 part pieces can all communicate with each other through rearrangement. For instance, Pussy can be considered loose or tight by the distance for which it is placed. Dick can be considered erect or not based on whether it is up or down, while Ass can communicate with either piece by placing it by any of the sexual organs.

The fact that these sexual organs are reduced to geometric shapes, Levy says, is that it reduced the issue of "vulgarity and obscenity."

Personally, if I had not read the title of the article I would have merely thought these geometric shapes were just badly arranged and that the Ass piece looked a lot like a star, but you tell me!

Check out the whole exhibition!

Mass Produced Objects: Movies and CDs

One thing my Art History: Photography in History class has taught me so far is that photography is easily reproduced and if photography is so easily distributed then films are too. Movies are quite possibly the easiest to reproduce, distribute, in a variety of ways. They industrially massed produced with the same contents, a CD and a plastic boxed case that protects said contents, and a strip of paper that illustrates the front with the title of the product and the summary in the back.

In many ways FILM itself is mass-produced, it is made FOR the people, it is made with people in MIND. The storyline itself it is always targeted at a group of people and its function is easy enough: to be your entertainment. Movies are very much a part of design; the commercials are cut to capture the consumer’s attention and each scene sets out to deliver the product (plotline).

The CD the movie finds itself encoded on, the box that contains it, and the wrapping is the physical industrially mass produced product. The function of this package is universal so that everyone can enjoy it. The product function is the same no matter where you go. The shape of the CD and the Box is generally the same, built for easily storage, protection, and organization. The CD and box are formed from two of the most basic shapes in the world the circle and the square.

The circular shape of the CD allows the ease to transmit information and designers have kept this traditional shape due to the cheap cost. I believe that this is the reason since it is easier, safer and longer lasting to carry information on a USB drive but it is easier to store it on a CD still since much of technology still use the CD to transmit information.

The box, itself, is just as universal since its main function is to protect the CD from breaking or gaining scratches. Even the thinner paper casings are used in the same basic way and function.

Thus, the film industry itself is an industrially mass produced object. It is an easily distributed object that can be passed and utilized worldwide. So in fact the CD is generally a very modern function that will not seem to be outmoded anytime soon.

How Form and Content Interact in Objectified

Objectified is a 75-minute documentary film by Gary Hustwit in 2009. The documentary explains how form and content interact together within design. It emphasizes how the object’s function and design to complete that goal is important to the object. In fact, the aesthetics of an object comes almost near to last sometimes.

In fact, the only company that has ever satisfied all points of design is the Apple Company, according to the documentary. Their modern innovations are functional and aesthetically pleasing.

The film displays how designers try to answer the BIG questions of design such as what is design, who are the people of design and especially what is the role of design in our society? They showed interviews asking designers to explain their process to creating a product that is functional, easy to use and aesthetically pleasing. In order, for a design to be successful function has to be above form. If the design just looks good but fails to convey its function then the product has failed to achieve success.

Designers MUST obsess over the goal to fit people’s needs and desires. They must improve the product or create something FOR the consumer.

The film follows the three phases of modern design, which demonstrates the relationship between form and content.

First, the formal relationship or formal logic that gives form to a traditionally accepted object. Form should easily show the object’s function.

Second is the symbolism of the content is which the form is influenced by society and culture. Third is the design-contextualized sense of technology that seeks to satisfy the relationship between human and object. This last step seeks to find a way in which the designers must seek to answer the big questions such as a away to make the product easily recyclable.

Objectified demonstrates how form and content should always work together to create an easily accessible product. To quote a line from the documentary, “Good design is aesthetic, innovative, honest, unobtrusive, consistent, long-lived, useful, in detail, environmentally friendly, and have as little design as possible.”

LOGORAMA!

OH MY GOD. I apologize I could not contain my excitement but this is quite possibly the most epic short film ever made and quite possibly every single graphic designer's dream world to be living in. OKAY. Okay... you got me I must be exaggerating but truly this is one entertaining short film! So give me a chance to explain myself here.

Well first off, what film am I talking about? LOGORAMA! A short 16 minute film directed and created by a French collective called H5 that was presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009, they opened for the Sundance Film Festival in 2010 and also won Best Short Animated Film. H5 is a small graphics and animation company in France.

The short animation depicts a story that takes place in Los Angeles utilizing over 2,500 logos and mascots to tell its story (Can you even imagine the amount of time they had to spend JUST to avoid violating patents on these Logos and Mascots?) The film makes comments on how deeply logos are embedded into our culture and it presents a commercialized universal that is both real and fantastical.

The first few seconds into the film is already awesome, the scene spans a shot over Los Angeles using logos to set as buildings. People as Aim icons, birds from the Bentley logo and butterflies from Microsoft. The story revolves around Michelin Man Cops in a cruiser, a Pringle man propositioning s Esso Girl waitress and some kids on a zoo tour lead around by a flamboyant Mr. Clean. The Cops soon are called on a chase for a loose criminal which turns out to be Ronald McDonald. A thrilling gun battle ensues and then…

Alright well I told you enough, now if seeing Ronald McDonald as the villain doesn’t interest you I don’t know what will. Enjoy it.

Check out the full 16 minute film, Logorama!