Form & Object in Water Bottles

Dating back into history, people have been using bottles or containers of all sorts to carry water around for drinking.

Even thinking about it now, I remember how water bottles looked like when I was a child:

http://www.indyposted.com/9110/chemical-in-plastic-water-bottles-may-pose-health-hazard/

Bottles used to be big and hard to carry around, but even looking at a typical bottle, we can see the content and form of the bottle already being improved or transformed by designers.

A couple years back, plastic bottles were the biggest resource for a travel sized refreshment. It seems that even as the water bottle got smaller just so it was easier to carry along, there were other problems found as a problem of the form and content of a water bottle.

These are what plastic water bottles look now a days:

http://greenlongisland.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html

Designers found a problem with the content of a water bottle, so they improved on the form of the bottle. Now, as well as carrying convience, people also like to look at water bottles as a problem for the environment so a plastic water bottle is now referred to as a "ecobottle," with the plastic being a hundred percent recyclable, the label is now 30 percent smaller, and many other features.

In addition to designing a "ecobottle" designers have also started a trend of using refillable watter bottles that are BPA free. They have transformed the design and form of a water bottle by discouraging the use of plastic bottles.

Designers have taken the previous idea of hand grips, and smaller waists so it was easier and more stable to carry around. In addition to moving over those features onto the refillable bottles, there are also rings that make the bottle even easier to carry or even different bottle heads so make drinking easier or more convenient.

http://www.welchsports.ie/index.php?main_page=index&manufacturers_id=15&sort=20a&page=2

There are many mass produced manufactured goods that are produced with the same sorts of purposes. Whether we know it or not, designers are always improving and changing the designs of our everyday objects. If someone has a problem with the form or content of a object, there will be a designer there to help improve the experience or usefulness of an object.

Content & Form in Objectified

According Lauer in "Design Basics" Form is "purely visual aspect, the manipulation of the various elements and principles of design." and Content "implies the subject matter, story or information that the artwork seeks to communicate to the viewer.

http://gizmodo.com/5177138/objectifieds-wonderful-gadget+filled-movie-poster

The documentary "Objectified" we explored many different aspects of form and content in various scenes from the documentary as well as the documentary as a whole and by itself.

I think the content of the documentary focused on the idea that everything is the result of design, in that everyday objects, regardless of whether people realize it or not, are designed for people. In order to convey the content and purpose of the documentary, the filmmakers utilized the form to convey the content.

In the documentary, we open to a scene of a manufacturing facility and the idea that when people see objects, they think of how much it object is, what it is, and what it does and etcetera. In the content of the documentary, they also emphasize how all objects were designed a certain way for a reason. The form of this idea was also conveyed in the introduction of the documentary. When we looked at how this chair was made we were shown how every part of it was created, the shaving of the chair leg and the puncturing of a hole on the back of the chair.

So, why was there a hole in the back of this "air chair"? Well, since it was a air chair, maybe the chair was designed to be light, so people can move it around easily. Maybe the hole on the back of the chair could allow the chair to be hooked onto something for stability or even for decoration.

We also see the interaction of form and content within the documentary. A big example shown was that of the vegetable peeler. When a design company heard that a typical metal handled vegetable peeler was not ergonomically comfortable, the company set out on improving the design of the vegetable peeler. They replaced the metal handle with a handle that was ergonomic. The handle was thicker, so the grip on it is more stable, there were grip ripples on the handle as well, and it curved to fit into the hands of average hand sizes.

Weekend Design

There are many ways t-shirts are made with different designs. http://shirt.woot.com/ is one of the biggest t-shirt producing companies based on the internet. This websites hosts weekly/montly competitions (a.ka. Derbys) for designers to submit a design on a t-shirt that matches certain criterias.

The reason why I am blogging about this website is because this weekend, I've had the pleasure of designing and submitting a design of my own to the website.

What happens during derby is there is a theme to each derby, and the designer has to follow certain requirements to submit a design. Some examples include submitting the design that has the correct theme, it has to contain less than 6 colors, it has to be a certain size, and NO STAR WARS designs. Then those who have a woot account may vote for the design, and the top three voted will receive 1000 dollars and a additional two dollars for each shirt sold.

This week's theme is "phobias". If you had a chance to look at the website you would see that there are A LOT of designs. It was really interesting to scroll through each design submitted because each and every individual design was unique. There were different styles of design present- seen through different use of colors, line formation, line thickness, and of course the design itself.

So, heres is what you guys have been waiting for- MY DESIGN! SO! If you guys happen to have a woot account please vote for me :D

What inspired this design was actually from my roommate. Hes had experience with his pets being afraid of the vacuum cleaner for some odd reason.

I didn't realize this at first, but the main colors used in this design were Primary colors! The reason why I made the vacuum cleaner red, was because that color was associated with Satan, evil, etc... And Blue- the opposite. Blue is light, happy, associated with heaven/sky.

Also, if you take a better look, the puppy is coming from a door that has yellow light- a happy place. The placement of the picture on the t-shirt also makes it look like the puppy was coming from the heart. In Lauer, he mentioned that designers tend to go for symmetry in their design. I noticed that I unconsciously did the same with my design.

Comparison and Contrast

There are many things and life that can be compared and contrasted. When I think of comparing and contrasting a design, my first thought are dresses and clothing. Many dresses look alike, but are different in their own way. The same goes for everything else, whether it is writing style, drawings, paintings, furniture, photography- anything.

When thinking about blogging a compare and contrast piece, I started to search for yellow dresses. There are so many yellow dresses in the world, all in different price ranges- so I thought I'd write a piece on how I can take a expensive several hundred dollar dress and compare it to a similar 40 dollar yellow dress.

This proved to be quite a challenging piece to blog about so I looked for different inspirations. Looking at my very last entry I looked at the two paintings I posted. The paintings that expressed anger.

This will be referred to as Painting A

And this of course, Painting B

Again these images were found on http://www.expressivehearts.com/art_gallery.html, a very interesting and awesome website by the way.

When I first glanced at these two paintings, I immediately thought that it accurately conveyed anger. Although both of these paintings convey that feeling, there are many differences and similarities between the two paintings.

The first similarity I noticed between painting A and B is the use of "fierce" bright colors. For some reason, I feel that the designers of these paintings, like me thinking of these colors as "angry colors. The obvious differences between these paintings are the actual colors- Painting A being all red, and Painting B being orange, brown and black. The strokes on Painting A, to me seem a frustrated violent anger as the strokes are rough, as if the designer is sort of rapidly, stabbing the paintbrush all over the canvas. In painting B, the designer seemed to have more of a contained anger. The brush strokes are a lot more smooth, less rough and planned. The splashes of black show a bit of sadness mixed in.

There are many other elements that contribute to differences and similarities of these two pieces, some more obvious than others. Some differences and similarities can even be seen by others that can't.

Design as Conversation

Design can be a conversation, a type of communication from the one person/object to another. This can be between the designer and the design, the design and an audience, or the designer and an audience or in other words, a cycle of communication.
From experience I believe that design is a conversation. During times of frustration and anger I noticed that I personally drawing, write, or create things that reflect my feelings.

This painting found on http://www.expressivehearts.com/art_gallery.html is similar to what I tend to express when feeling angry. I find myself being really rough with a brush and I choose bright "fierce" colors. This example can be an example of a conversation between a designer and the design. It in turn can also include the audience in the conversation. Maybe the audience can understand what the design is trying to say or how the designer was feeling when it was created.
A setback to designing with a feeling is that it does not last. The conversation can be cut off abruptly when the feeling the designer started out with is no longer there. I may have started off the design with a feeling of anger for example, but if the design was left unfinished, it can be hard to finish the "thought" again. Many unfinished piece of design remain as a result. Alternatively, if the conversation is continued- even with a different feeling, the conversation may suddenly switch topics. This is typical in human conversation as is design as conversation. Looking at one end or one angle of a design can change the feeling or meaning being communicated to the audience or design.
A very good example of design as conversation is a piece designed by multiple designers. My group's stone soup design can be an example of conversation.

Because every piece of this design was created by a different person and ultimately put together, different views and angles of this piece convey a different feeling or idea. Every designer did not have the same exact feelings that day, so maybe every unique piece says something different to someone. Not only that, a completely different conversation can occur over the same object with the same angles, it really does depend on the person, their individual thoughts and feelings.

Designer Labels

Now a days, there are only some clothing and accessories that are terms "Designer Labels." Why is that?
When referring to "Designer Labels", people usually mean expensive, "fashionable" things such as DKNY, Dior, Gucci, Coach, and other such labels.
Since we are taught that design is everywhere and can be anything; I would like to assume that every article of clothing and accessory we own is in some sense a designer label.
A designer label is like a signature clothing someone has created and design as their own. So, the pair of 15 dollar P.E. shorts I am currently wearing is in a sense, a design label.
What really intrigues me is how something can become a popular "designer label."
When a designer is successful in the fashion industry their products' net worth start to rise. How does this happen? How can a simple pair of shoes be worthed up to 500 dollars? Sure, the material used could be really high quality material, but it can't possible be that expensive can it?
Its so strange that society can be so judgmental on a person depending on what they wear.
Even at a young age children are conditioned to judge their peers based on their clothing and accessories. As an example, Let's go back to a childhood memory of mine:
In the 7th grade I remember receiving a pair of tennis shoes from payless because my parents were not very rich people. These shoes were nice; they were basically imitation shoes of the Addidas brand tennis shoes. I never had a problem wearing payless shoes- it was cheap and it served its purpose. This was not the thought of my classmates- I was teased countless times for being poor and wearing payless shoes. My classmates knew that the Addidas brand name shoes had 3 stripes on each side of the shoes and my shoes had 4. That one extra stripe on my shoes told the world I was poor and that I could not afford the popular Designer Label of Addidas.
There are many reasons as to why something may be referred to as "designer label", whether it be the quality, the style, or the name, but I think everything is a designer label- clothing and accessories were designed and created by someone. This is their "designer label".

Creativity from Without

Creativity from without is when artists do not find inspiration from within themselves, but when they can effectively design from their surroundings.

In my previous post "A Stone Soup Garden" I talked about bee- the landscape designer who does just that. Her "Stone Soup garden" was inspired and designed from the ability to utilize materials from local areas to design her garden. Bee is just one of the many artists who can create from "without".

A very interesting Designer that I will be blogging about today is Adriana Bertini.

While Andy Goldsworthy's inspiration is through Nature, Bertini's inspiration is from condoms.

Adriana Bertini is a 35 year-old Brazilian artist who creates "condom art" to help raise AIDS awareness. Bertini designs dresses, skirts, suits, pants from rejected condoms that did not pass the quality control test for proper use. In this respect, similar to Bee, Bertini's designs are environmentally friendly. The rejected condoms would be thrown into the trash or be incinerated if is was not for her. When the rubber is incinerated the sulfur that results from this process may end up in Landfills as well. She is able to successfully do this with the help of preservative companies.

These condom designs are very interesting in color. Modern condoms now have different colors and textures, Bertini was able to effectively utilize quality rejected colored condoms to create colorful designs.

Bertini uses "beautiful" inspirations to create her art from. In these pictures, it can be seen that Bertini successfully created condom dresses and a beautiful Asian condom lamp with the use colors and light.

Not only does Adriana Bertini create clothing out of clothing, she also made sculptures, pictures, and even figurines. Currently, Bertini is working on a line of condom clothing for men and also working on a house called "Venus' House"- which is a home with condom art furniture and condom art persons. The purpose to "Venus' House" is to endorse easier and more communication on the subject of sex within families and even easier communication to people in general.

Bertini is the not only "condom artist" out there, many more all over the world are getting into condom art as well.

Images found on http://www.guidespot.com/guides/funny_condoms_clothing_gifts

Condom Art Fashion show in Asia

Works Cited in Blog:

Campos, Gloria. "Would You Wear This? Bertini’s Condom Couture."Inventions, Innovations and Interesting Ideas for the Inventor in All of Us. | InventorSpot. Web. 10 Oct. 2010.

Stone Soup Experience

According to our class reading: "The Etymology of Design", we see that the Greek root of the word "design" is "schedio" and derived from the Greek root "shedon" which means "nearly, almost, about or approximately. So essentially in design, we strive to achieve ambiguity. We don't plan everything we do. We go through three steps when designing:

1. Thinking

2. Doing

3. Looking

We all go through these steps, and not necessarily in this order. The concept of stone soup is designing without planning. We all contribute something to create another something. This is exactly what our Design 001 class got together and achieved.

This was the "trash" that each and everyone of our group brought to use in our stone soup project.

The process of this project was very fun in that everyone of the members pulled out their sketch books in an attempt to plan out what we would build out of these materials, but ultimately scraping that idea altogether. We looked at the materials and proceeded to jump straight to the "doing" step of the process in designing.

Each of the members started taking parts of the pile and building. What we learned from Housefield and Lauer was right. We cannot help but employ the three steps when it comes to deign. After building separate parts of the stone soup project we had to employ the "thinking" step to eventually bring our contributions together, thus creating this:

It was clear that this object was the work of several creative minds, as if we look at different sides and angles of this design, there are very different textures, styles, and materials used.

If we look at "creativity from without" in a different light-one that does not consist of museums, and popular art like that of Andy Goldsworthy's inspirations from Nature; but instead remember that Design is everywhere and always around us- we can see this element all around us and throughout history. The main reason as to why our class did this stone soup project was so that we as designers can understand and learn how to design with things all around us.

Look at those who won the Nobel Prize this year for the creation of Graphene. As Housefield has pointed out- this was the result of their little stone soup project. they worked with things they had as a side project. this was a very interesting experience and I feel that most designs are like the the children's story "Stone Soup"- we can craete designs inspired by anything and everything around us.

Et Voila,

All the Photography by Minh Chau or yours truly.

A Stone Soup Garden

The two concepts of “stone soup” and “creativity from without” are related to one another in that artists/designers create and design not through ideas that were predetermined but instead; through influences from their surroundings. Both concepts are analyzed and shown through the evolution of what I will refer to as a “stone soup garden” created and designed by Bee W. (Real name not provided)

Bee is something I would call an environmentally responsible landscape designer; one who utilizes local materials that others would otherwise discard into landfills. Upon looking at Bee’s “stone soup garden” and further discussion of how this garden came to be, I quickly figure out that most of the materials are recycled goods. While the artist Andy Goldsworthy creates works of art through the influence of nature, Bee creates and transforms her garden with the influence of her neighborhood.

When this garden first started out, Bee confessed to me that her initial intention was to have a typical suburban garden designed like those of the 70s, but it slowly transformed into a garden meant to attract wildlife (i.e. birds, bees, etc…) One of the biggest impacts that led to the creation of this environmentally friendly garden was the acquisition of free mulch from an arborist.

If one were to take a walk around her garden, they would be able to find mulch everywhere- the front yard, the side yard, the back side yard, and of course the back yard. The mulch has since served three main purposes:

1. It reduces weeds without the use of chemicals

2. It decreases the need for watering because it retains moisture

3. It creates compost, resulting in improved soil.

In addition to the mulch, many other parts of Bee’s “stone soup garden” were the inspired and influenced by the resources surrounding her. Since Bee had been given more mulch than expected, she further expanded her garden by building an urbanite wall surrounding the mulch. This wall was created as a result of a local resident removing his patio and giving away the concrete. Though the pieces of concrete were not idea, Bee effectively created a wall with the pieces by spending hours chiseling the concrete pieces into the desired size.

Many garden designers do not utilize the concept “creativity from without” as recently, garden pathways are built from fancy materials specially ordered and made for that purpose. Bee was able to create a tasteful walkway from pavement pieces.

There are many more areas of Bee’s “stone soup garden” that are influenced from materials locally. There are many designers who create stone soup projects with not really any purpose of meaning to it however, Bee was able to create a stone soup garden that not only has a purpose- be environmentally friendly- but the garden can actually create soup as well! Her garden yields many fruits and vegetables including corn, squash, tomatoes, figs, basil, mint, lemons and much more. This stone soup garden is one that is a unique design all on its own that gives back to the environment and society.

All Photography is by yours truly.