I did something I haven’t done in a long while this weekend, some illustration type things on my computer. It has been a while but it was still fun.
The first thing I did, whilst watching Skyfall on DVD was a C30. I tried to keep everything quite clean. It is still a work in progress as you can see.
The next thing I did was take three side on views of cars and then to draw them using only a single line. It worked and here they are. An A3 Sportback, a Leon and a Golf.
In an attempt to keep creativity up at the weekends and do more personal projects, I have decided to show and detail part of my flat. A mundane subject yes, but it also gets me back into the habit of trying to keep adding posts.
Below you can see the corner of my living room in my flat. I have then highlighted everything and listed what everything (almost) is. I am not quite sure what this has to do with creativity. Maybe keeping my skills sharp.
Doing creative things in the flat (namely on my laptop) is quite difficult. I like to work at a desk but there isn’t one. Also, I like to work on my iMac, but I don’t have that in Leeds with me, so the view in the picture is what I am normally faced with when using my laptop (excluding when it is attached to the Apple TV). The dining table isn’t really suited to working at so I tend not to do anything apart from eat there.
One of the main issues which my final year project, 夜間night*, tried to solve was young people using their mobile phone too much in bed and not getting enough sleep. There was a sense all through out the project that it could be taken further on the software side of things. I was massively disappointed when my idea for an accompanying application could not be made due to iOS developer limitations. This led to the shelving of the application idea and the focus remained on the physical project.
Recently, in an attempt to get back into the way of thinking, I decided to revisit the idea of a software based 夜間night* but look at it from a different angle. Taking the computer as the main focus and the application I blogged about a while ago, f.lux, I wanted to combine the two to envisage what I am calling 夜間night*mode.
Computer screens are generally bad for your eyes. However, this is more apparent at night when the ambient light is lower and the stark blue light from the computer screen can cause eye strain. F.lux gives the screen warmer tones, matching it more to the artificial lighting found in your home (my f.lux setting at the moment is the equivalent of halogen or 3400k).
夜間night*mode expands the idea of f.lux into what I would imaging being a feature built into computer operating systems. Not only would it change the colour temperature of the screen, but it would make a whole host of visual changes to the computer to make it easier on they eye, which would subsequently help reduce eye strain and help the user get to sleep.
Even though this is just a concept and the result of an afternoon of work, it does provide an endless scope of possibilities to take 夜間night* and turn it into something that will actually be of use to someone. Additionally, with the launch of iOS6 and ‘Do Not Disturb’ there may be a renewed possibility of making a mobile application more relating to my project once more. But that is for another time as I have another personal project that is in the sidelines waiting to be completed.
A full write up can be found on the project page I made for it on behance (click here or on the image below).
Hooray! It’s actually a new post!
It might not really be something worth shouting about but I haven’t really had much to write about over the past month from getting back from New Designers in London. What I have decided to do is to finally get to know Adobe Illustrator better than I already do. In order of proficiency of the three main Creative Suite applications used in design, I am most comfortable with Photoshop, competent with Illustrator and a relative novice (in comparison to others) with InDesign.
Below are some examples that I have ended up creating through the use of tutorials. I haven’t reached the point yet where I want to go out and try something new from scratch, but that time will come soon.
With both of the products finished, I wanted to get some decent shots, or see if I could get some decent studio shots of my projects before they are boxed up and sealed before the presentation. Camera in hand I went through to the rapidly declining photography studio at the back of the electronics workshop next to the studio. These are by no means high quality or my one great image but they really are for my own personal use and are of a record.
I am going to retake them again, probably tomorrow. The one thing that I am worrying about is that the studio shots that I took today, highlight the flaws. In a way it makes me feel quite ashamed about it, and I know that there isn’t time to fix it anymore, but it is something that I am now going to have to live with… hmmm
Anyway, onto the pictures.
After the general disappointment of yesterday where things didn’t seem to be going right at all, today was a completely different kettle of fish. My fourth 8 o’clock start in the studio this week meant that I could go in early and try and rectify things that hadn’t quite gone to plan. The first thing to try and achieve was the coding. It only needed slight adjustments but it was way beyond my control and I was out of my depth by quite some way.
Thankfully, Ro Ramtohul, who is without a doubt an arduino magician as far as I can make out, helped me sort my code in just over an hour, which I was dead chuffed with. The changes that were made that makes it better and much more believable are as follows:
It was really only those two parts that needed fixed. But I am massively grateful to Ro for helping, as I am sure most other people in the class are for his assistance in their programming times of need.
The photograph below is just a glimpse into what the insides look like. I am not going to show you the rest, mainly because you cant see as it is very tightly packaged and it is just wires… everywhere.
With the coding sorted, I could finally get on with assembling the black one completely. I painted the edges that end up touching the light prism white because they do not show up as much when they are joined. I can’t remember if I have already mentioned this but no matter how I try and join the pieces together, there will always be bits which look untidy.
The photograph below shows the mood light working in test right before the parts were joined together. It will be quite difficult, but doable, to take them apart again.
ANYWAY. The parts were joined together and I set about just keeping my phone in it all day, doing continuous testing. It still works. And I am hoping that with the weekend at home I can further test it by doing some user testing and whatnot.
It wasn’t just the coding and the joining together that was successfully managed today. Here is a brief list of what else I managed to achieve:
All in all it was a good day.
Continuing on from the packaging theme of recent posts, I am going to continue on with them. I am a strong believer that a good piece of packaging helps to sell the product and make aim towards the right sort of target market.
One of the things that I was talking about in my last post was the slips that are going to be going round the boxes which help determine what colour the product is on the inside. The photo below shows one of the boxes with one of the spare slips wrapped around it. That is basically going to be it in terms of appearance. I don’t want anything too complicated. Just nice and simple, as per what the product is designed to be like. In a way, it just works.
Still pursuing the packaging side of the project, things are coming along nicely. I still believe that the packaging is as much of a deal as the item itself and that a well designed product should be in a well designed piece of packaging. This holds true to many companies and I like to take care of all the details from start to finish.
The boxes have been finished. Once the right size was created it was just a case of making a good version of it. They are slightly bigger than I hoped because I don’t know how big the plug is that I ordered for it yet because it hasn’t arrived yet. But as soon as it arrives, a smaller internal piece will be made to house it and the USB cable. The booklet has also been finished. A smaller version was created as a 70mm square rather than an 80mm square. This means that it fits on the internal surfaces of the product nicely (a photo later on when the internal box structure is made will explain all of this). The packaging has also been kept to a minimum. Single core cardboard (~2mm thick) makes up the box. Some quick calculations tell me that if put on pallets to half height, it would hold about 400 boxes, so shipping would be made cheaper and more efficient than if it had larger, more extensively padded boxes.
What was going to go on the outside of the box? This was a problem that I thought would cause more trouble than it was worth but as it turns out, it wasn’t. I bounced ideas off a friend about what I should do and we both ended up agreeing on the same thing. Because the boxes were too big to fit on the laser cutter (annoyingly they were 20mm too big when I was wanting to cut the net shape out), a paper sleeve or slip would be used with just the name of the product on it. Nothing else. The colour of the paper used would determine the colour of the product inside. The cardboard box in that case would be left blank. It mimics the product itself. It has no product information on it, usage instructions or graphics apart from the name of it on the light prism.
This type of packaging should also appeal to the target age group. Younger people today tend to be more interested in higher quality or looking products. Hence why you see most of them with a smartphone and wearing stupidly expensive clothes. If I can try and convey a value of expense and quality with the packaging, it should make them more interested in the product and hence more people would buy it. I suppose it is a case of judging a book by its cover with this one, as I mentioned earlier, a good quality product deserves a good quality box to put it in.
Something else that I have been working on whilst waiting for my parts to be painted is the diagrams to be included in the accompanying booklet that will go with the box. I have started to create them. I am hoping that the style of these will work well with the design of the product and the overall branding of the project.
