Eris_Li

Reflection – Craft

For the last four weeks we did the craft module, metamorphoses was the project we did for our craft. I was hoping not to get this craft because I was bad with drawings. I thought Exquisite Corpse could be more fun, but i was totally wrong again. This brief was to design a fan book which would show multiple stages of a change. Alex stated that it could be any type of change or transition and it could be metaphorical or completely random. So we need pay attention to the process of transformation between these two different objects, and the process of the transformation was the hardest part! I started my brainstorming about everything that I interested. Personally, I really like the supernatural and  Occultism which are the things could and could not have a scientific explanation. For the reason of this, I thought about the ocean, we never know what kind of organisms living in the deep ocean. That was my idea come up to do something about the small organism and the large organism, which is shrimp  and whale. 

My metamorphoses artwork topic name is “The Big Dream”, the idea is about a small shrimp’s big dream is become a big whale, the artwork is showing the supernatural transformation of a shrimp to a whale. I did some research about the shape of shrimps and whales, and the colour of the live shrimp before I start the drawings.
Then I found out the shape of shrimp and whale is really similar, they all have the same curve. So I decided to draw the curve shape that could make the transform smoother. There are six pages in my fan book, front cover and the five metamorphoses artworks. After the class discussion, I tried about the dark blue gradient colour background with the white outline, but it can’t see the changing happening, so I just use water colour for the artworks. The colour that I chose is more similar with the live colour, because both of them is living in the sea. Therefore, I used the white background with black outline and used the water colour to create the live colour. I think the water colour work well with that texture paper, I was very enjoy working on this project, that help me improve my drawing skill a lot as well.  

Beside the main project, we also had fun during the class. Alex showed us some examples of  metamorphosing and we saw some interesting fan books that designed by last year student, we were moulding characters out of a novel by using the toys that he brought and the play-doh, then we did some sketches. Our models were too complicated to sketch, got many layers for the clothes design. That was fun with play-dohs. 

Reflection – Future

Future was my second specialist module and was completely different to the first strategy specialist. The futures module was a challenging but interesting learning experience. When the first time i got the brief I thought this will be a  written assessment in a boring word document, because i saw that word limit 300~400. But I was wrong with it. This specialist module had a lots of fun and interesting! At the beginning of the class we were paired up with another classmate, both of us chose a song that is important to ourselves, then we  interviewed each other to find out why this song is important. This conversation was the most important part that we did not know! My partner was Caroline, her favorites song is 7 years by  Lukas Graham, she said this song is very positive and always cheer her up. Acutely, I like this song as well because that make me think about our life time. This song wrote from 7 to only 60 years-old, because the singer’s father only has 60 years-old, he does not know what happens after his 60, so do I. How many 10 years that will have in our life time? We had dream when we was young, but have you keep the same dream and spend your life time to build on it. I was lucky to have this chance to study this song and make a packaging prompts about it. 

What i did was burned the paper clock, the clock has 7 years in Roman number, which is the lyrics’s 7 years, a little boy wants to hold the time that same as sings and all the people who wants to catch the times, burning is the time lapse, I think fire burning and time lapse are very close, things been past and disappear. I very like this project, that remind me treasure of youth by working on the 7 years song. 

Reflection – Strategy

The strategy module was the hardest of the three specialist streams I think. Strategy is what a company develops to differentiate itself from competitors’ actual or predicted moves. Our clients’ business strategies also form the framework for our design strategies. Design strategy refers to the integrated, holistic planning process examining the interplay between design and business strategy. Essentially the brief in this class was to dissect and explore a prominent brand. I chose to explore MUJI as it is a wide variety of good quality products including household goods, apparel and food company. MUJI values are all about simplicity, moderation, humility and self-restraint. I wanted to learn how the company behind the branding managed to create such an effective visual identity despite the obvious challenges. They have a strong brand personality from the company name which is “no-brand quality goods” for their all the products and they never changed their 3 business core principles:
- Selection of materials
-Streamlining of processes
-Simplification of packages

I had deep research into this brand, looking at as many case studies I could, I found out that MUJI’s products, born from an extremely rational manufacturing process, are succinct, but they are not in the minimalist style. We have been credited with being “resource-saving”, “low-priced”, “simple”, “anonymous” and “natureoriented”. Without placing a disproportionate emphasis on anyone of these varied assessments, MUJI aims to live up to all.Its origin was a thorough rationalization of the manufacturing process with an eye to creating simple, low-cost, good quality products. Through research I knew a successful company not only need high-quality products, but also need to focus on their design strategy, because a good design strategy can enhance the visibility of business.

CORE CLASS FINAL “FOOD”

Finally event day, do you think the makers are done? NO!!! We still aimed early to help Adrian’s furniture group more and arrange tables and chairs. Due to the Bureau of Meteorology forecasts that 95% chance of rain, most likely in the late moring and afternoon, so Adrian has given up his ourdoor fuunitures set up plan, we helped him quicky arrange the furnitures indoor. That was very great contingent response strategy, and the set up indoor still look nice as well. Charlotte brought some computer stands to Sylvie’s  group. They were using computer stands to fix the position of the projectors. At the begning of the event, we could see some of the outcome that we helped before, such as the event map from Kate’s group, the phone stand from Yusa’s group, the big mouth from Polly’s group, the camera filters form Clarence’s group, the furniture set up from’ Adrian’s group and the computer stands for projectors from Sylvies’s group. There were six groups we had help, almost one group for each of the makers!
At 11am, Andy showed up! We were heading to the victoria market all together using our tote bag, to buy some fruit and I bought a sweet pineapple. Our group bought 6 different fruits: watermelon, pineapple, blue berries, mandarins, kiwis and strawberries. Each of us spent about 3 dollars on buying fruit. There were a lots of fruit from each of the students, the fruit salad was very nice and fresh.

CORE CLASS WEEK #13

This week was the last week of the Semester and the final week for the food project, our group agreed to help Polly’s group out on Tuesday cutting out the printed paper mouths. That day was the hardest day of this Semester!!! We never seen that much of cutting before!!! What we did were cutting out two differents part of the mouth from printed papers, cutting out the curves of the red cardboard and sticking the mouths on the red cardboard. We made 8 sheets of red cardboard, 320 mouths, and 640 lips… That only 5 of makers, we have been working for this about 8 hours!!! From 12.30pm to 8.30pm, Charlotte leave at 5pm. The mouths almost made us crazy, but we still finish the task Polly that asked. For this I think we amazed by ours hard work and effort. We were not only spend all the time with those, and also helped Yusa with her folding phone stands. Unfortunate, I still did not get the last step of folding that phone stands, so I helped to fold all the steps and left the last for my groupmates. We speed up with folding the phone stands, because of the great teamwork!
I think everyone in this team all doing a great jobs, as Renae said all the members in our team have kept motivated, put in a lot of time and effort and I’m really happy with all that we’ve done!

CORE CLASS WEEK #12

We were getting as busy as we expect before, therefore we need to made up our group calender used to orgarise potential
jobs for the groups we were regularly talking to. We would check in with them regularly to see where they were and if they still needed our help in any point of their process, to make sure we got around to helping out everyone. I thought that was a very good idea to organise the jobs out so we got a month planer calender, writing in the jobs that we already check in, and 4w (when, where, what, who).
During the class, I brought my materials and tools to help Clarence’s group. I showed them the correct way use blade to cut cardboard and discussed about the maesurement of the frame. Some of the boards was not profect rectangle that made the wrong frame measurement, I helped to correct it and cutted out a profect measurement frame for example. As we cutted with a profect measurement, that made me work very fast and I helped them finish the frame part. I loan my tools to them after I finshed help, they had thanked me for helping them out.

At Friday, the “makers pals” helped Kate’s group folding map, we have 8 people working at the same time, the maps were finish quick at the end we all getting the wet ink onto our fingers, we laughing at each others pink hands. Charlotte also helped out Sylvie’s group with sourcing a stand for their projectors and we were also able to have time to learn how to fold Yusa’s printed phone stands. Folding the phone stands was a lot harder than the map, we all did the wrong way at first, Tristan and Yusa were teaching us step by step but I still couldn’t get though it. This week we were very very busy, finaly we had things to busy with.

CORE CLASS WEEK #11

Last few weeks we were expecting to help others do some production or help them in any ways, but always not much to do. So our group most of the people inclouding me start to panicky, we worry about our final marks, waorry about if no one need our help or our group will doing all the work at the last minute then we will get a lots of jobs that we can not handle and having to turn some groups aways. We asked Andy about those questions, he told us everything will be fine, because we don’t get much to do and nothing to do were part of our learning and the prosses. We may not have work to do now, but we could help the final event, we may not have a actual outcome but the event will be our final outcome. That made me feel more confident with our group, we started to try our best to get more wrok for our group. We did the promotion at Monday’ s class, telling them we are the “makers pals”,and we went around to ask other groups at Tuesday. That actually works, we had a lot responds during face to face and by email as well. Our group was alive when we got those request, we talk to each of them, know about what they doing and which part need help. We also discuess about the schedule, next week will make up a timetable for helping people.

For myself, I asked Clarence’s group and their  making the physical camera filters, they showed me examples that is colour filter with paper frame. So I offer them my idea about the foamboard and cardboard, because those are more stronger than paper, they kindly accected my idea and asked for example of both boards. We met at Friday with my examples, after the testing they planed to use the cardboard for filters, and foamboard for instruction. They booked my time at next Tuesday with materials and tools to help them with their production.

CORE CLASS WEEK #10

This week basically our group was begging for workfor people who asked us for help. We were going out to the Alumni Courtyard and counting the amount of chairs and tables and the different kinds there was for Adrian’s furniture group. The final idea for their group were re-using the furnitures which are existing from the Courtyard, and they re-arrange the set up of the furnitures. So they needed to know what was there to be used. We walked around to count the furnitures one by one, took pictures of the kinds of tables or chairs as well as listing the information that we got for them. Mostly we work in cooperation, I helped with the counting, the describetion, someone took pictures to confirm, someone recorded, and someone confirm the counting. Do not think that was easy, because there have 14 kinds of furnitures in total, and we need to describe each of them. After this we still walked around to talk to the other groups, try to offer our help. We also be surprised another group’s model replaced with ours, I shame for our little modle because the new one was bigger and useable. 

Our group were interesting about fruniture for the event set up, so I did some research about the event venue setup. The activities suggested above are usually undertaken in the last 24 hours before the event commences. One of the main reasons why a venue cannot be set up earlier is that it may be in use. It is not really practical to begin positioning equipment until there are no more activities and no more usage of the venue before the event commences. To do so may risk theft, breakage and damage that may severely impact on the event. If a venue has some lock up space it may be possible to transport some equipment to the venue
from: http://www.leoisaac.com/evt/top096.htm

CORE CLASS WEEK #9

Andy asked made Rapid Prototypes of our projects using paper, card and other found materials. I did some research about “Rapid Prototypes”. Rapid Prototypes, a group of techniques used to quickly fabricate a scale model of a physical part or assembly using three-dimensional computer aided design data.Construction of the part or assembly is usually done using 3D printing or “additive layer manufacturing” technology.
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_prototyping
Andy said the low-fi prototypes are like sketching in 3D, and they not only allow you to “think with your hands,” moving your ideas from the abstract or virtual space into the material world, but are also useful for evaluating the effects of your designs on each other.

I think made the Rapid Prototypes model could help us get some idea about the event set up and decorations, because that is like a event in rehearsal.
The “makers pals” finally got something to do with, that was to masure that tent of the Alumni Court. We masured it with a 3 meter long string to get the roughly masurement. Charlotte and me hold the string and count, the rest recorded and calculated. April suggested making it to scale but this was something my group decided against doing as Andy was only getting us to trial paper models and the materials we were provided didn’t allow us to make a big enough version to be a scale model. So our creative members builded a roughly model in 15 minute with the thin card board. We did our best to use that limited materials to create this little model.

CORE CLASS WEEK #8

During the class, we puted up our posters in the room and give flyers out to other teams after giving them a brief overview introduction. We found several groups willing to work with us and make use of our help. Our group got the first “customer” which is Group 23 Adrian’ group to disusses during the week 8 class. That made us really exacting just like we got the first job. They came over to us and began discussing that they might need us to help in the furniture set up and sourcing anout the material. What they willing to do was similar with our Part 1 ideas, there were including:

- Thick cardboard/wood for a table top
- Wooden Pallets
- Bricks to leverage the table top
- Milk crates used for seating
- Pillows or beanbags for seating

I think all of those were very great, and I had some of the Wooden Pallets that could help provide for them if they need it, they
Wwere very interesing. I told them the actual size, numbers that I have, and discussing about the transportation with them, but in my
point of view, the transportation was the hardest part because
Wooden Pallets is very heavy and they need to know the accuracy number that needs.