12/Oct/2011

I have been thinking about what I am going to do for my final year projects all the time, day and night. I have only two projects to do, but I couldn't sleep because of it, I couldn't do anything without worrying if half a year later I still don't have a clear clue what to do. 

Generating idea is such a big deal, your project could go smooth as silk if you've done well in this part of the process, or you could find yourself in a dead end after spending a huge amount of time and money just to prove your idea was rubbish if you haven't, and to me, I simply can't afford it, not in my final year. I have to be so careful at this stage.

I have a brief from D&AD student awards, it was a competition brief from last year. Michelin were hoping for a design that could help in a motoring related emergency situation. I thought this was doable but since I first saw the brief- which was about a week and something ago- I still can not think about anything to do with it. Everything I thought about was either invented or technically impossible. Yes this is the very early stage of the project and yes as a designer, I should have an attitude of everything is possible, but saying things like this just doesn't help in any way. 

Then there is a brief from RSA, creating a workplace for tomorrow. I could chose any working environment and design anything to improve it. It reminded me of a project I have done in my first year, I still remember I had a tough time when choosing a working environment at the beginning of that one. So I already have some experience on this and I do have a few ideas for this brief, it will be either a piece of furniture or some sort of device. 

What about making a brief myself? There are a lot to consider, but I am thinking of designing something that exists, but only better. So I will have one design to create something completely new and another to possibly impress people by showing them how good their toasters could be with a better design. Designers should have the abilities to make everyday ordinary objects spectacular. 

I have a few ideas about bringing forgotten products back to life, the ones people would think are so out of date they wouldn't buy them anymore. Hopefully with some nice thoughtful touches, and a sophisticated target group, it will work.

Still, I need to figure out the other project, and more importantly, once I have decided my two briefs, I need to carefully work out which one I will do for the major and which one is the minor. 

I am so under pressure now, with just a few weeks left to make a decision on what to do. Pressure is good, it makes me work harder, think harder. On the other hand, in the end of the day, I know that a designer should be able to handle anything he was thrown at. Pick up anything and carry on with it, maybe that is what I am going to do. 

10/Oct/2011 A little tribute to Steve Jobs

I heard the news a few hours after he passed away, probably. My friend told me the sad news. 

At the time, I was discussing with my group mate on how to make our group PowerPoint presentation more attractive over Skype. 

Then all of a sudden our conversation came to a pause, because of the news.

It felt like the moment when I heard Michael Jackson passed away. Two very different people, from two very different business, but they all left their marks in the pages of history.

I loved Apple products, I own a MacBook Pro and an iPad, i owned an iPod Touch but I sold it. I enjoyed using them, I admired Steve Jobs for his innovation, but at the same time I never cared about his presentation and so on. I didn't care when he resigned from Apple's CEO. 

When I heard that he died, I started thinking what he had done for Apple, what's more, for the world.

Apple made neither the world's first computer nor the world's first laptop, but they did make the worlds first mouse, and the first windows style OS, which Microsoft was later given permit to use a similar thing. I love Apple products, I have my MacBook Pro for over four years now and even though I am getting used to Windows 7 on my VAIO, I still think the Mac OS is a much better OS.

Life in the last century was significantly slower than now. Apple's three products in the 21st century had changed the world one way or another. 

First was the iPod, together with the iTunes service, had completely  re-written the personal music player market. 

Then there was the iPhone, without it, touch screen phones wouldn't have dominated the high-end mobile phone market today. The first generation iPhone was the first touch screen phone that actually worked. The iPhone OS and the fact that anybody could go and make an app were rather the more convincing reasons to the success of the iPhone. Steve Jobs was such a genius on delivering user experience to Apple's customers, and more to the point, he was such a genius because he knew how to promote the advantages of his products, and the fact the more people using them, the more they get better. 

Finally there was the iPad. Before its announcement, tablet PCs were normal laptop computers with screens being able to twist. Everybody looked at the specification sheets of the iPad and ran about telling it would be rubbish. After just 80 days of the release of the first generation iPad, Apple had sold 3 million of them. Again, it was all about the user experience. With an iPad, you do many jobs a proper computer could do, and at the same time it provided convenience as it was light and thin and you didn't have to wait forever for it to start, as well as the amusement you get from the whipping and tapping on the screen with your fingers. So the result is that all the tablet PCs from all the manufacturers you see on the market today, were more or less inspired by the iPad. 

So with Steve Jobs gone, could Apple carry on their magic? The answer is certainly yes, because in the short 56 years of Steve Jobs' life time, he had inspired and opened the eyes for so many young designers. 

R.I.P Steve Jobs (1955-2011), the man who inspired our generation of young designers so much.

Image from the official UK Apple website

09/Oct/2011

As my final year kicked off, it is time to get cracking. For my final year projects, we were asked to produce only two projects, one minor and one major, so you get the sense of how professionally and carefully they need to be produced.  

We can dream up any brief as we want, or we can go on a design focused website and enter a live competition. 

I have temporarily decided that for my minor project, I will be using a brief from the D&AD Student Awards 2011, to make a range of packaging designs for The Body Shop. However this is not the final call, I can change it until the last minutes, in about two weeks time. 

Still, I have no idea what to do with my major project at the moment, I wanted to do consumer electronic product design, since this is a field I always wanted to work in, but it is dangerous because, for me, it could be easy to find myself following the trend created by Apple half way through the project. Then it won't be creative or innovative, it will just be another Apple-wannabe product and I don't want it to happen.

So a couple of weeks to go before I have to make decisions, serious considerations and proper evaluations are needed, good luck? We will see.

02/Mar/2011 BeoSound 9000

If you have seen one of these in real life, I promise you, that you won't forget it. It's called the BeoSound 9000. In the UK, it costs a staggering £3,475, which is a lot for a CD player.

In a range of David Lewis designed Bang&Olufsen products, the BeoSound 9000 is by far my favorite. I first knew Bang&Olufsen was from a brochure on my stepdad's book shelf, a picture of the BeoSound 9000 made me remembered its name and it has somehow made me choose to study design.  

Looking at the BeoSound 9000 is like observing a beautiful piece of modern art installation. Every line is straight, every edge is perpendicular, every part is made from aluminium or glass. While the black bit with mechanisms inside has lots of lines to make it look rather complex, the CD cabinet is only covered by a single piece of glass showing its pure simplicity. Put it in any environment, it will stand out from the crowed. 

I can't afford to own one, I have never used one, but however, I have seen one working before, about four years ago, and I still remember it. The glass cover swings open and close silently and beautifully, the CD clamper moves between the six discs quickly with elegance, as the CD starts spinning, the sound starts flowing out immediately. Its detail to attention is another reason it makes people having the desire to own one. Insert a CD with the graphic and texts upright, after the machine finished playing the CD, the graphic and texts on the CD will be back to upright again. 

While other electronic product makers trying to make their products as unnoticeable in an interior space as possible, but all Bang&Olufsen products are designed to be standing in front of the furniture, they want to be seen. Their products are not only nice to look at, they can also be used to help arranging better visual effects of the space it's being placed at, which is why most of Bang&Olufsen products have so many ways of installations. Take the BeoSound 9000 for example, it could be installed on the wall, on a stand or just simply placed on a top surface of a table or cabinet. 

I really think glass and aluminium go very well together, they all have their different natural beauty as well as giving people a feel of cutting edge technology, polished aluminium has an advantage of reflecting colours from the surroundings, which I think is a reason David Lewis applies it to so many of his designs for Bang&Olufsen.

One thing staggers me the most when I first knew the BeoSound 9000, was that it was designed in 1996. 

28/Feb/2011 Water tap

British water tap is a catastrophic design failure.


Normally on a water tap, there are two knobs for controlling hot and cold water, and hot and cold water goes into the same pipe so you can adjust the temperature of the mixed water by turning the knobs to change the flow of the hot or cold water. However on the British ones, there are two pipes, one for hot water and one for cold water. That means you will never have the running water in the temperature you wanted, you have to mix the water in the sink. 

How annoying is that! 


I was discussing this with Kiu Yu Ho today when we were visiting B&Q and saw a large selection of those stupid taps. We couldn't think of any advantage of having two separate pipes instead of one. 


I just hope that nobody would buy them anymore, 

27/Feb/2011 Teasmaid

We have a project of designing a teasmaid for the modern world.


I have never heard of such a thing before, on the brief, it says 'the teasmaid is a product of a previous century', then I did a bit of research, I found out that it is a machine that makes tea automatically when the timer reaches the time the user sat. 

I was talking to Lee Tsz Yan about this product, we both agreed it is a bit useless as we can make a tea easily by ourselves and nobody wakes up in the morning and desperately needs a tea anymore, we need to brush our teeth first.


Is that the reason why this product is now disappeared and nobody of my age had never used or even heard about it?


What I'd really like to talk about, is that if designers can make an old concept come alive again.

I searched in my head for some examples. Now because I don't have very good knowledge about the history of design, I only have a few answers, the Mini Cooper, the Fiat 500, the Volkswagen Beetle. Weirdly they are all cars, and that makes it very different from the case of the teasmaid, because teasmaid has been proved to be functionally useless whereas people can't really live without cars since the Model T was introduced. What the designers have done to those cars, are that they have modernised them, to fit them into today's standard while kept the essences of their classic design elements. 

Can a designer make the teasmaid popular again by giving it better functions? Why coffee machines are so popular? I think that professional coffee makers make much better coffees, but professional tea makers make the tea to be no different from teas made by ourselves, however there are some obvious drawbacks about the teasmaid. First it doesn't add sugar or milk automatically, which means you still need to spend time adding milk and sugar. Second, you need to clean it everyday. Last, it makes noise when it is working. What we find here, are exactly the drawbacks a coffee machine has. It's not because of tea is a less popular drink either, because English people keep drinking teas. Now I am in a massive confusion. Why I want a coffee machine but not a teasmaid? I drink as much tea as coffee.





I am going to find it out by doing this project, hopefully.

26/Feb/2011 Random thoughts

Haven't really thought about a topic for today yet, maybe just talk about something random?

In a few months, I will finish the second year of my university study, which is quite sad because I will probably be going on a placement year, or if not, I will be going on third year. Either ways, I won't be able to see most of the people I am seeing now and my life will get much busier, I think my life is already very busy now. 

In fact, we don't spend much time in class, which I think is so different from China. I was never a university student in China, nor have I finished my high school over there. I only have a rough idea about how university life is in China since I have friends over there and also I spent a few months living in a university studying an English course some years ago. 

In China, we spend a lot of hours in classes, but now I can't remember almost anything happened in those hours. What I do remember, is everything happened outside the class. What I mean is that I didn't learn anything from classes. Maybe I was one of the stupid students who had no understanding of knowledge, but what I could work out was that maybe only 5 out of a class of 60 were not stupid students. To anybody in the world, that's not good efficiency. 

So I am glad that I am now studying in the UK, especially for studying a product design course. We do a lot of practical things here, teachers throw us a project, we gonna to work it out ourselves, step by step, from which I have really learned a lot and enjoyed most of the time. 

When I was comparing my work now to what I have done when I was in foundation course, the difference is huge. I can't believe such change can happen on me. I certainly feel that I can produce work in a much more professional manner now than before, even though I am aware that my work is still not professional enough to be real professional. I feel happy about the fact I have actually learned so much during the time I spent in university. 

For this reason I will continue to work hard, maybe even harder, and find a placement in or near Nottingham because I like here. 

One thing though, I don't feel confident when it comes to materials, I know I am supposed to know more about them, but without systematic class I found it hard to actually work on it myself. Self-study is a hard thing for me.

25/Feb/2011 Navigo Card

Today I want to talk about card, purely the design of the card itself, not the graphic design but from a product design aspect. 


If the transport department of a city asked a designer to design something that could be used to pay fares for buses and undergrounds in the city, what would the designer come up with?


In the great city of London, there is the famous Oyster Card, I bet that most Londoners have one, and many people who don't live in London also may have it, for example, I got one and I love it. The concept of the Oyster Card is brilliant. 

It is a very simple design, it's basically a card, exactly the size of a normal credit card so it could be easily kept in anywhere, e.g. a wallet. It's a contactless smart card and when people use it to pay for buses or undergrounds, they only need to hold the card near a sensor, of course they also need to top it up when there is no  money in the account.

The story in Paris is very different. They have a thing called carte nominative transport, or what I heard people call it Navigo. It is also contactless smart card and the way to use it pay for buses and undergrounds is still the same, but apparently that designer thought for this design they need two separate cards, then they have to have a plastic case to keep them together. Now I am going to try describing them. 

First of all, there are three parts. A plastic case contains a paper card that wraps around a plastic card. I think the plastic card is the contactless card, there is also a chip on the back side of it so it looks like a chip-and-pin card from behind. The chip might be there for topping up. 

The paper card is twice as big as the plastic one because the paper one wraps around the plastic one. On the front, there are symbols of Paris' transport operators, a space for an ID photo, a box for the card holder to write a name, a serial number, a little window so when it's wrapped around the plastic card, the serial number on the plastic card will be seen, which will match the number on the paper card(the description is so complicated...). On the back there is something looks like terms and conditions.

Then everything are supposed to be inserted into a transparent plastic case.

While the Oyster Card is only about 0.7mm in thickness, the Navigo has a thickness of a whopping 4mm. Which is clearly way too thick for a normal wallet. Then there is a big waste of materials, and it costs more during transportation, most important of all, the plastic case and the paper card seems to be completely unnecessary. Of course one could argue that the paper card is there for the ID photo and the plastic case is to protect the whole thing, but many people don't need an ID photo and a name on their Oyster Cards and I see no problem at all with that. Even if they do need ID photos and names on the student Oyster Cards, they are printed on the cards, so still only the plastic cards are needed. 

Why do French want this kind of over complicated and unnecessary design? I thought about the cultural differences between Britain and France. Yes I am neither a Brit nor a French and I don't know too much about these two countries, at least compare to the natives. What I do know is that Brits drink lager and bitter while French drink champagne and wine, Brits eat deep fried fish and chips while French eat fine dining. Britain has cheap and cheerful Cath Kidston and in France, everybody needs to carry Chanel and Louis Vuitton. Maybe there is a natural flamboyancy in the French culture, everything needs to be delicate and attention to detail, they spend long time to do everything in France. But in Hong Kong, where people also drink champagne and carry expensive bags, they have a card which has exactly the same design as the Oyster Card, with the name of another seafood. Everywhere else in the world, all cards are designed to be cards, not something to be protected in a plastic case. 


I really think the Navigo is over-designed, and the results are really not that brilliant. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe once said less is more, and Dieter Rams once said less but better, they were all master designers. Look at products that are popular today, most of them very simple designs.

24/Feb/2011 Motorola Razr V3

Mobile phones go out of fashion unbelievably quickly. Apart from many models from Sony Ericsson, I think the Motorola Razr V3 is one of the phones that still look nice after many years of its release. I have never owned one of these but I always liked the design of it.

At its time, it was the thinnest clamshell handset in the market with the thickness of only 13mm when the screen is closed. Its body is aluminum and the good thing about it is that the use of metal materials gives a mobile phone an impression of high quality. On the front, the camera lens, external display, the Motorola logo and a gap for the loudspeaker are neatly arranged in a straight line. One thing I found a bit disappointing is that the black frame of the external display is too wide, it would be extremely ugly if the phone is in a brighter colour such as silver. The length of the maid display doesn't cover the entire keypad, a very nice touch is they made the border of the display and the bottom part an arc, to balance the straightness of the arrangement of other elements on the front. Looking from the front, the chromed volume buttons, camera button and another button can also be seen on both sides of the screen.

Flip open the phone, there sits the 2.2 inch screen with an average display quality. The real special bit is the keypad. It's called an electroluminescent keypad, it is a single piece of metal with all the numbers and symbols on the keys cut by laser. It's looks very high tech and innovative at the time, but when I actually used the keypad, it gave me a very fragile feeling, I think the main problem was due to the thin body. The keypad also felt a lack of feedback compare to traditional buttons. However I think it is acceptable considering its aesthetic value. The electroluminescent thing made the keypad really clear, easy to read and beautiful in dark environments.

Since I haven't actually owned one of the Razr V3s, I can only describe it by looking at pictures on google but can't really talk about the whole design in details. To conclude, what I like about this phone are the material choice, rather unusual keypad and its neatness. A few details are not perfect but it is still a good design to me after all.

23/Feb/2011 Innovations

If designers apply their innovative thoughts towards different directions, the difference between results could be dramatic. 

Both Alessi and Dyson are companies that famous for applying innovative designs to their products. While they produce products for completely different purposes, I found they are actually quite similar in terms of innovative design. 

Alessi's products are all everyday, they used innovation to improve the aesthetic values of their products. Kettles, corkscrews, timers, they are all very ordinary things. They do their jobs proper and nobody expected them to be beautiful. What Alessi have done, was to gave these ordinary things hearts and souls. Alessi brought them to life. Mind you, products cost a tenth of Alessi's could do the same job and produce the same results, the performances are not improved in anyway.

On the other hand, Dyson are more of an inventor. Over the years their innovations made the performances of their products far beyond others'. Compare to Alessi, Dyson's innovations helped more on the technological values, which made their products unique. 

With a bit more research, I can write way more than this on this topic. The problem is that I am really sleepy now, I might continue this another day. Got class at 9 in the morning. 

22/Feb/2011 Function-Follows-Form

I have a calender on my wall, I got it when I bought an issue of the Top Gear magazine. So in the calendar, every month has got a few pictures of a car. 


Yesterday, I turned the page to February, and before that it was January. It has been three weeks since February arrived, and very often I look at my calendar. How could I forgot to turn the page?

The reason is simple, on the page of January, it's got pictures of a Ferrari 458 Italia, it's a beauty. I always remembered that there are some pictures of a Ferrari 458 Italia in my room, but I have almost forgot that it actually is a calender. 


So that got me wondering, do people ignore the real function of a product if it is very beautiful? 


They do.


I was reading a book this afternoon, on one of the pages there was the Philippe Starck's lemon squeezer, the Juicy Salif. I have never used this product in real life, however on the book it says it's 'more of an iconographic style statement than a functional object', which means it's a bit useless for squeezing a lemon. Nevertheless this is one of Philippe Starck's most famous products and one of the best-selling Alessi products. Apparently people don't really buy it as a lemon squeezer because it's very easy to squeeze a lemon by hand. They buy it because it makes their homes look stylish. Look at it, it's like a component from a UFO!

Now I realise I am talking about function-follows-form products. 


Many other Philippe Starck's designs follow the same route, especially his watches. When I was in India, one of my mates bought a Philippe Starck watch, I liked that watch but it took me half a day to figure out how you read the time on it; and for two weeks, Leslie has been moaning about he can't read his new stylish Philippe Starck watch in class.

One thing they do very well in common, is to bring beauty and fun into our lives. The Juicy Salif works as a mini sculpture, and the watches are there to show ways of innovative thinking. If I had a Juicy Salif, I wake up in the morning and see it in my kitchen, I would be happy. Like I said, the function of function-follows-form designs, is to put smiles on people's faces.

I don't know what the conclusion of this article is. Function-follows-form designs are not as useless as it sounds? Or aesthetic is far more valuable than practicality?


One thing I know, is that my calender might stay in February a bit longer, because it's got the Koenigsegg Agera in February's page.

21/Feb/2011 A mint package

I bought this box of mints in Costa, when I was having it in the classroom, two of my classmates noticed that I was eating mints and more importantly, both of them mentioned that the box is a very good piece of design.

What is so special about this little tin box?

First, I am not going to talk about what they said was good about this box at the moment. Many people buy mints, and I bet a million quid, that even it’s something so unobtrusive, people will prefer to buy mints with nicer packages, because all mints taste the same and people always like better looking things. POLOs are nice but the package is just so perfunctory, and that’s why I stopped buying them. If there is something I need to take it out of my pocket time to time, I need it to be delicate, a little metal box will do the job. 

I’d like to say this box looks appealing to me. It’s silver with its name written on the top of the box in grey, again a minimalism visual effect. It’s rectangularly shaped with rounded edges, that makes it fits better in pockets, especially for people who like to wear skinny jeans, which according to Jeremy Clarkson, is one of the two coolest things in the world. The back of the box has a sticker with some information nobody cares about. Such as ingredients, nutritional values and weight. The box is thicker in the centre than the edge, it looks bulky, feels like they filled more mints in the box than it can contain.  

Already, so many details went into designing a little peppermint box.

Open the box, you can see the reason why my classmates mentioned it was a good design. Under the metal cover, there is another black, plastic unremovable cover with a little hole on it, so whenever you want some mints and you shake the box, it only allows one or two of them to come out each time. Also the hole is placed at the bottom left corner of the rectangular shape, so it's easy to pour the mints on hand. Consider the surrounding environment when people want a mint. It could be on the street while walking, could be standing on a bus, or underground. Without this plastic cover, mints could be spread all over the floor if the person using it had a big wobble. This is an example of a little detail that improves the whole design.

Ignore the rounded edges, ignore the colour choice, ignore the bulky effect. This little black plastic unremovable is the essence of the design of this box. As Dieter Rams said, good design needs to be unobtrusive. This box design ticks the box for that. 

20/Feb/2011 Form and Function

I came up with a theory while I was thinking about what to talk about today. That form-follows-function designs are generally more masculine and function-follows-form designs are generally more feminine. 

The first object came up in my mind is the original, military spec Humvee, it is an obvious example. Everything made for military uses doesn't need to consider it's aesthetic aspects at all. Every detail on this vehicle is there for the practicality. The doors open 180 degrees for easy access to the cabin and to do so, they need to leave the hinges to be seen. The tall chassis allows it to be driven cross complicated environment with ease. The armors protect its passengers from bullets, etc. When they were designing this vehicle they thought so much about how well it would perform in the battlefield and they completely forgot about all the bolts and hinges, so they are all exposed. I don't think anybody would describe it as beautiful but doesn't it look like a big, strong man?

On the other end of the scale there sits the first Macbook Air, I use the first Macbook Air instead of the new one as my example is because I really think the new one is one of the ugliest designs from Apple and it looks like a door stop. To make it as thin and light as possible, Apple have compromised a lot. They got rid of many things a decent computer needs. Disc drive? It exists only in your dream. On the entire body there is just a power port and one USB port, which means if you want use a mouse and a import some photos from your camera at the same time, you'd have to buy an ugly USB hub. So you would think it's rubbish, but wait until you see it. Boy it's such a beautiful piece of design. The soft and feminine lines and curves made it elegant and pretty. While it's lack of practical function, it's got another function of putting smiles on people's faces. 

Another unusual computer on the market, the Panasonic Toughbook CF series, has a very different design philosophy. When the screen is closed it looks like it's the suitcase that contains the Desert Eagle. I have seen the Hangover, I noticed that there was a Toughbook CF series in the stolen police car, I know many construction companies use it on the construction sites, they also have them on the British ambulances when I was watching Emergency Services. Because it is water proof, shock proof and dust proof, to say it in another way, you can use this computer in almost any environment. Its body is extremely thick so all the fragile computer components can be wrapped in shock absorbing materials, all the ports around the computer have rubber covers to protect it from water, the display might not be able to display the best quality you can get from laptops, but it can stand a free drop from 90cm height with the machine running. Again this is a form-follows-function design and again, it looks so masculine. Look at the front of it, it's so powerful. 

There are so many examples I can talk about, I found this quite interesting. I am not saying that because of function-follows-form designs are not functionally perfect, so they are not good. In life, what can be better when they give you a good mood?

19/Feb/2011 Some moaning

It's been almost a week since I started my blog, I enjoyed writing the articles and expressing my thoughts, but it is really hard to think about what to talk about in the next article. 

One reason is because I don't have the confidence. At this stage I can't just point at something and then talk 10 minutes about the design aspect of it, I simply don't have the knowledge. Before I can talk about something, I need to do research, lots of it some times. I am a little bit behind many of my classmates on design knowledge at the moment, I am learning and learning is a really slow precess. Then there is my problem on English, I found it hard to describe things accurately in English, especially when I need to describe an object. 

Plus, I have so much work to do lately, can't believe how busy it is in second year I really had not expect this before the start of the year. 

However I still like my idea about having this blog and I am really passionate about it, I am not going to give up and hopefully in the future more people will come and read my blog and will find my opinions helpful, but at the end of the day, I write this blog for myself to learn about design. 

18/Feb/2011 Destination Control System

All students of the Nottingham Trent University might have noticed that the elevators in the Newton building are a bit different from ordinary elevators. When I used it for the first time I was totally confused, I walked into the elevator and found no button to select floors and then I looked like an idiot.


Now I have been going to lectures there for almost half a year and I can use the elevators with no difficulty.


So I am now trying to describe how they work.


There are only three buttons in the cars, open the door, close the door and call for emergency, that is because all the buttons with numbers on them to choose the floors are outside the cars, just next to the doors. Before you enter the elevator, you select the floor you want to go to, then the screen over the buttons will tell you which car you need to wait for. I have never seen anything like this in my life! Before I started using my brain to think about the reason, I thought it was a stupid idea because instead of having one set of buttons inside the car, they now need a set of buttons for everyone single floor and that sounds like a big waste. 


Then I saw the clever bit, because you need to tell the computer which floor you want to go first, the computer can tell everybody that's going to the same floor to wait in front of the same car, it improvs the efficiency. It avoids the circumstance when one car has stop at every single floor. 


The disadvantage is also obvious, if you decided to change your idea and go to another floor while in the car, you will not be able to do anything. That's fine if it's been used in a university, because you always know which lecture room you are going to. However there might be problems if this system is applied in places like a shopping centre. 


I didn't know what this kind of elevator is called until I read about it on Wikipedia, it is called destination control system, developed by Schindler. Some elevator companies say that this system can improve efficiency by 30%.


I don't know anything about elevator design and I am not going to act like I am an expert, but this system is really clever. 


According to Wikipedia, the first electric elevator was built in 1880 by Siemens and elevator was invented long before that. The destination control system was introduced in 1992, so it's been over a hundred years of its invention that someone had came up with an idea to improve itees efficiency. What I can lear from this is really very simple, to think out side of the box and in this case, it's really outside of the box. As design students we are always encouraged to do so, but it is so difficult to achieve. We are too used to everything we know, everything we use and everything we learned. 


So I could imagine time goes back around 20 years, in Switzerland, an elevator designer was sitting on his table and went 'right, I am fed up with elevators have to stop at every single floor, let's make something new'

17/Feb/2011 The Arco Lamp

It is my all time favorite piece of design, it is a master piece, it is legendary. I can’t remember how I came to know it for the first time, but whenever I ask myself what my favorite design is, I always think about it. It is the Arco Lamp by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni brothers.

It was designed in 1962 by the Castiglionis and then manufactured by Flos at the peak of Italian design movement’s influence. It is one of the most popular and most copied floor lamps in history.

Its heavy base is made with white Carrara marble, joined by a stainless-steel arch made up with four pieces of curved tubing and fitted together telescopically, which allow the lamp reaches 215 to 220 centimetres into the space. The highest point of the arch is 232 centimetres. The light source is situated in a rounded and polished aluminum reflector and its height can be adjusted between 145 and 175 centimetres. The top of the reflector is pierced by a number of holes which allow the light to emanate from the top of it as well as the bottom. Meanwhile the heavy marble base acts to keep the lamp balanced, and a hole on it to allow the user move it around easily by putting a stick through it. The entire lamp weights 63.8 kilograms, which I feel is quite remarkable for a lamp.

The Arco lamp was soon becoming a means of fashion. It could be found in many fashionable interiors, whether hovering over a desk, dining table or sofa. It has also been used widely as props or a decorative object in a range of films, such as the original The Italian job. Today, the Arco lamp is still popular and being used as decorative illuminators in many interiors such as hotels , dine dining restaurants or people’s houses etc. It is an iconic design of the 20th century.

Back to the end of the Fifties, Italy has started offering a range of furnishing products which full of practicalities and innovative ideas, and many of them are still popular on the market today. Furniture made in Italy was widely considered of having the characteristics of well made, stylish and functional . Italy has been holding a strong position in the world of furniture and interior design. The Sixties was a rapid period of the electrical appliances growth, Italy became Europe’s top manufacturer of such products, and second in the world after the United States of America. Lighting design offered a great sculptural opportunity for designers since it brought art together with utility. Flos, who manufactured of the Arco lamp, was founded in Merano by Dino Gavina and Sergiu Biliotti in the year of 1962, aimed to be the specialist of modern lighting. Flos was courage to be daring and provocative but uphold the fundamental of design. They manufactured products designed by a range of remarkable designers including Castiglioni brothers, Mark Newson and Philippe Stark. Castiglioni brothers’ Arco lamp was one of the very first products in the company’s history. Today Flos has successfully became a leading company of lighting and they are often recognised as the “Rolls Royce” in lighting.

Many of the Flos’ products arose as solutions to exposition problems, such as the Arco lamp. Inspired by the streetlamp, designed to be able to light up the dining area to replace the traditional celling lamp, without drilling holes on the celling of the precious Italian ancient architectures while the installation process, and easy to be moved around. The Arco lamp can be easily placed next to the dining table, and people can walk under its arch conveniently. Compare to the traditional celling lamps, it also has the advantage on practicality and function. 

However, I think the success of the Arco lamp is not only because of its practicality and function, but also the quality and style. Castiglionis’ choice of materials explains. The use of the traditional material, marble, reflects the heroic past of Italian architecture and art, while the stainless steel gives the a touch of modernism. In my point of view, the Arco represents a sense of continuity between past and present. At the same time it acts as a strong punctuation of Italian modern interiors. Together, the materials made it a perfect match for leather sofas and smoked-glass tables, which, are the main materials of furniture design of its time. On the other hand, the style of the lamp had just followed one major principle, simpleness. Combined two main materials, with no unnecessary elements added but has basic functions of a lamp, to illuminate and adjustable. Castiglionis made it pure, hence the Arco can be fitted into any environment and space, and it will never be out of date. In case of interior design, it could be a highlight in a colourful, vigorous living area or into a part of a series of plan dining room. They used the minimal amount of materials while creating maximum effect.

The Arco lamp marks the peak of Castiglionis’ careers. It is a classic piece of work in the lighting design history. After its release, a lot of designs followed the Arco lamp’s concept or inspired by it. In its 49 years of history so far, it shows a level of confidence, stylishness and life quality.

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