Been there - the New Designers fair

I guess it's about time I revise my trip to London over the last weekend. First of all the city is wonderful, absolutely the place to be - I wouldn't mind moving there in future. It was also great to visit it with friends. Although they refused to join me in my pettit museum tour, they were happy to spend hours and hours playing with toys in Hamley's (Barbie section was such a disappointment)

Well, but the highlight of the weekend (after Harry Potter :) ) was the New Designers fayre, which was the annual exhibition of the Design graduates from Great Britain. We went there on Saturday and spend the most the day looking at the stands of different product design courses. I invited my friend Oliwia who's a design layman to join me, therefore I could see how a person who's not involved in the design views this sort of exhibition. Our forth-years display was right at the front, so naturally we went there first. I wanted to show off to Oliwia what kind of stuff we do in IPD. Unfortunately when we moved on, we have realised that the other Uni's exhibitions were much more attractive and eye catching. Our stand was quite dry and boring. It was definitely lacking presentation boards and the display of the products on top of the glass, having a collage of things loosely related to the projects underneath, was not the clearest way of presenting.

A few stands that I enjoyed the most was Brunell, Bucks and Northumbria
When it comes to Brunell their products were really high standard in finish, branding and presenting. All students displayed under a logo 'MADE IN BRUNELL', which somehow made an impression of a good quality. When it comes to the content of their show, all of their products were very commercial as their briefs came straight from industry from firms like Cannon or Malboro. I reckon that is a completely different direction from where Dundee is trying to go. Our design process starts with identifying the 'real world's' problems, investigating it deeply and then finding a design solution. Hence our products were (or at least intended to be) more mindful and thought through.

Bucks had two displays: one of them was said to be more 'arty', another more commercial. I spoke to one of the exhibiting students and he said that the 'Bucks style' represents sort of things shown in Icon (I wish I could say that about Dundee...). The product design section was very consistent - the products were quite similar in stylistic (simple shapes, white and primary colours). The presentation was also kept the same for each product.

In general I was overwhelmed by the amount of the talented young people who leave design schools - it's must be super competitive in the industry, considering that only a selection of courses was presented at ND. For the next year, I reckon we must really focus on the presentation (branding, marketing). The ability to sell our products is also a very important skill to show off. However we must decide first if we are exhibiting as a group of individuals or a group (one company / IPD graduates)

Design Process Map

Yesterday I got really good feedback about my design map which I had to do as a part of my water project. I have decided to develop the hyperlinked graph in a form of string tangle (which very much reflects my unordered way of working). It is entirely done using Illustrator, Photoshop and Dreamweaver, so it cost me a lot of time and effort and frustration sometimes when things didn't want to work the way I planned... But the final effect is pretty impressive - you can see it here

Pet plants

I have found those cute plant tamagotchi objects somewhere in the web. They are called Domsai and they are designed by Matteo Cibic. And of course they were displayed in Milan when I couldn't be there... ;(
For last weeks I have been spying on those amazing things I have just missed, because the final week of my project was at the same time as Salone del Mobile.

Flowless

I have finally finished the water project. This is the picture of the final product - a vessel pouring running tap water directly at the users table.

Ceramics

For the last month, as a part of my product design project, I have been experimenting with ceramics. Exciting as I was in the very beginning I never expected it to be such a time consuming and monotonic process. I was really keen to learn something new and 'real' - genuine craft, like in old good times... But I guess those times were not that stressing and the pace of life was much more relaxed - especially comparing to life pace of an product design student. Well, my point is, pottery doesn't accept rushing and impatience. It's also very uncontrollable. Hence, it gets me really frustrated.

my digital presence

Last Monday we were given a presentation on CV's, portfolios, job interviews and all that professional – ‘grow-ups’ things, that we will have to go through after we graduate. It was done by our Product Design lecturer Pete Thomas and his friend Matt Shannon practitioner from Imagination.

Although the presentation was very constructive and valuable, I had an impression, that after we graduate, it all becomes about how effective we sell ourselves. Nevertheless, it was good to find out about certain do's and dont's of presenting our work to the outside world. I found this session particularly useful, as my personal website is just starting to take shape. (I reveal a snapshot of it here)
The main conclusion concerning the digital portfolios was, that we shouldn't show too much. Just demonstrate some of the strongest parts of our university work and treat websites more as a catch enticing our potential employers to invite us for the interview.

Looking at my digital portfolio from this angle, it appears very amateur. But on the other hand this was my primary intention. I wanted it to be something personal – an evidence of my passion towards design and art; my own development and different experiences gathered during the years of studies. I was intending to reflect most of my skills, to demonstrate flexibility, multidisciplinarity and my general enthusiasm. I was assuming, that as a graduate, my main advantage is, that I still have a fresh mind and I can prove myself in different areas and aspects of design. In a way I don’t want to pretend that I am professional. It’s dishonest – I’m still happy to learn and shape myself as a designer. And in this respect my website demonstrates a charming clumsiness of young design student.

Little kettle family

I just realised that, while prototyping, I produced quite a collection of miniature kettle-like objects that are recently kicking about my desk. Together they make a nice little family, so I decided to take a 'family picture' of them.