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I have a few ideas about bringing forgotten products back to life, the ones people would think are so out of date they wouldn't buy them anymore.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.