Carrying on from the conversation that I had yesterday with a tutor about my project, I have spent most of this afternoon giving things a good think over. I decided (after it was mentioned yesterday) to take a good look at the companies and products that I like, the companies that I would want to work for in the future and the sort of materials they use and the colour palate amongst other things.
I used Pinterest to keep a tab of all the products that I like from the companies that I like and on the whole there does not really seem to be much of a difference between them. They all seem to be electronics companies that are heavily influenced by design with the odd other company thrown into the mix. Click on the picture below to be taken to my board of images.
Even though I would really like to work for an automotive company or do something with cars at some point, for the purpose of this exercise I left cars out of the equation. What I was left with company wise was the following:
- Bang & Olufsen
- Apple
- Sony
- Muji
- Braun (Dieter Rams)
- Eigenlabs
- Art Lebedev
- Mr Jones Watches
Taking cars out of the equation is probably also a very good thing to have done. Irrespective of the odd piece of Top Gear work that I have done, I personally find that area unreachable at the current moment in time. Getting back on track, the products shown also have very distinct materials used compared to what I had in mind for my project.
What I wanted to do for this project, as you may already know, was to make the product out of wood. But from the products I pinned up on Pinterest it is clear that modern electronic goods do not use wood in their design. They used to many years ago and the only products that tend to now have a retro feel to them. Again this was a point that was brought up yesterday but it is all coming clear now that I have investigated it myself. So what I should probably do for my project is to make it out of MDF and spray it to resemble the material that I would like it to be. Though this could be a problem if I would like to emulate brushed aluminium…
This nicely leads me onto the next obvious problem (again brought up yesterday but now obvious after further investigation into the topic), colour. With the wood idea, I was set on having a dark wood. Either natural or through staining. Now that there is a possibility that it could be made from something more modern (?) the use of colour is important. Gone is the calming tones of a carefully crafted wood, replaced with what could be a cold stark soulless material. This will definitely be a topic for discussion during further user testing this weekend, though I am spending time mocking up images on Photoshop to see what it would look like in white, black or any number of colours.
Looking at the selection of products that I put on Pinterest, there is a very limited colour palate. With the exception of some of the older objects, they are mainly black, white or silver. In this day and age it could be interesting to emulate the look in the project, but only if it looks convincing.
Decisions decisions.
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