Saturday 29 November 2008

Checkmate!


"Straight Up Chess has just the chess board to fit today’s life style… a wall mounted chess board. The chess board tiles become the back drop to the chess pieces sitting on narrow acrylic shelves. The decorative frame adds the finishing touch to this fine art for your home or office. The chess board is off the table, out of the closet, out of the way and beautifully displayed on the wall. Let the game begin!

There are no time clocks when you play on a Straight Up Chess Board. This is a casual game. As you pass by the Straight Up Chess board, you make your move, mark it with the “last move” marker and continue on your way. Later, your opponent passes by, makes their move and marks it as “last move”. And the game goes on."


from http://www.straightupchess.com

Engineering

I feel that I've not given enough attention to one of my modules, engineering design, as I am studying for a Bachelor of Science degree!

This year I've really enjoyed it - maybe it's because I'm seeing some physical results from the work that I'm doing, but anyway, here's some of the results!


This is a project using microcontrollers and c programming (a bit dated I know, but it's similar to the Arduino platform). We had to design and build an object that incorporated a light dependant resistor (LDR) and four light emitting diodes (LEDs) using C programming, printed circuit board (PCB) design software, Solidworks and a rapid prototyping machine.


This is the result: a picture frame that protects the vaulable painting within it from harmful light levels (as strong light can degrade the pictures' colour quality). As the light level increases, more warning lights turn on, indicating to the user that the picture should be moved.

Wednesday 26 November 2008

After the competition...

Yesterday, I competed the selfish self service competition run by NCR. I managed to get into the final 16 which I'm very proud of, but what I'm even more proud of is what kind of designer I am becoming.

The Design for Industry course won the main prize, but that was exactly what the competition was - designing a service for an industry. Although their students came up with good ideas, they were all very "safe" in terms of the brief. Our course on the other hand challenged the brief, and came up with some crazy ideas and pushed the boundaries of what a self service actually is.

This is where I believe design has to go - there is no point going round in circles designing boring run of the mill stuff, we need to move forward and by thinking outside of the box we can do this!

Introducing Frame


This is Frame, a result of nine weeks work. Don't let the simplicity fool you, it has a lot of potential in other areas such as public transport and the environment.

This project managed to get to the semi final in a competition run by NCR, so I'm very happy with it!

Back in action!

Sorry for not posting as regularly, it's been a busy couple of weeks, so I've got a lot of catching up to do!

Friday 21 November 2008

Wireless Router Vase


A nice way of hiding technology. Well, when I say hiding, I mean making it a bit more human. Anyway it's a wireless router in a vase by company STC.

Saturday 15 November 2008

Boo!


A great way to learn programming through the program Processing. Here's the link.

100 to 1

After creating 100 ideas, I wittled down the list to 20 - broke that down into four categories; the home, control, truth and harm. I then selected my best one from each of the categories and showed them to Anab Jain and Bill Gaver, who then decided which one I should take forward as the final concept. The concept in question is in the previous post. The waiting is almost over!

The future is here!


Coming soon...

Thursday 13 November 2008

Sprout!



Here's a project I did in second year for an industrial design module - A one station radio tuned into BBC Radio 3. The result is Sprout!, a radio designed for use outside when gardening. Just stick it in the ground, turn its head and away you go!

It's all falling apart!

Yesterday I had a seminar about dissertation topics, and in short it got torn apart! I'm being too vague with what I want to do, and now I'm starting to second guess myself. I'm going back to basics by researching the people how do electronics as a form of craft and trying to find a common factor and asking why that happens. Fingers crossed!

Bros Mind Studios


Some really nice illustrations from the Mingarro Brothers - especially the anatomical drawings. Big Fan!

Friday 7 November 2008

Go Team Fundraising!

To help our year pay for new designers when we graduate, we're holding fundraising events throughout the next two years such as speed dating, sponsored climbs and t shirt drawing...
Watch this space for more information. We'll probably set up a dedicated blog so I'll post up the link soon!

Web design at its finest. Genius!

Change of plan

After attending the workshop in Mono on Wednesday, I have decided to change the topic for dissertation - how would the combination of electronics with craft affect the relationship between humans and products... still a working title!

I have came to realise that this topic is more suited to my subject and it will help me in my studio work, and plus I'll actually be able to research this one! What a nightmare it is trying to talk to ghosts!