I was at the sleater-kinney show last night with I think every lesbian in Portland. You should have been there. Really.

I was going tell you something. Or, well, maybe you would tell me something. Something never, ever got said. So I went ahead, alright now go ahead, I said. Perhaps, well maybe I forgot what to say, but hey, it obviously didn't matter that much anyway.

So what do you say?

Screw you Kinkos. Screw you and and your overpriced printing services. Screw you and your employees who never know anything. Screw you and your exorbitant design station rental fees. Screw you. I will never, ever walk in to your store again.

Now I have this. Thank you god.

mmbop mmbop mmbop

Watches tell more then time, Del Coates, analysis, chapters 1 and 2

Chapter One, The Product Sea.
This is a very interesting chapter, a philosophical approach to the understanding of industrial design, it’s role and from what I have read, the very large part that it plays in human life. The products that we buy, everything from the cars we drive to the houses we live in to the sunglasses on our head are extensions of ourselves. The industrial world has taken us by storm with mass produced products that speak to the us, that evoke an emotional response, and that we, as consumers, ultimately use to define us.

The power that mass produced products have over our culture is enormous. Every product has a voice. There is an aesthetic level that we connect with. A product is a significant piece of modern culture, the embodiment of it’s ideals, morals, values, and taste. The product designers pay close attention to insure their design is effective, attractive, and embodies the values that consumers have collectively asked for. If the designers fail in their design, the product will not meet the ideals and values that our culture has set as standard. It will be considered of little value, low sales would ensue, and production would likely stop.

Designers usually work in a team, often with a small hierarchy of management that controls the outcome of the products. The designers, all with different backgrounds and life situations, collectively design the products. Each person adds his perspective and values to the product, essentially creating a piece representative of modern culture.

The French have two words for design, both with very different meanings, dessein, and dessin.

Dessein is the imaginary and intangible aspect of design. The future planning, scheming, the proposition not yet followed through. It’s about thinking of the future and planning for it. The human race is a race of designers. We depend on our ability to visualize the future. We design our life to fit the image we have in our head.

Dessin is the act of conveying an internal idea. It is the process of churning out ideas, sketches, mulling them over and revising. A “feedback loop.” The book calls it. The designer usually begins with empathic sketches, which show the idea. These sketches lack technical elements like measurements and proportions. After the concept is brought to a fully realized idea, the industrial designer will do a technical illustration detailing all measurements, proportions, and other geometric characteristics.

Designers often embellish their products with design elements that truly aren’t necessary. These details are the designer’s personal touches, which with modern technology, are easy and cheap to add to design projects. Where as prior to the computer age embellishing often meant higher production costs, and were usually emitted.

The truth is that these embellishments do not make the product embody more design. There is no such thing as more or less design, the design can only be judged by quality. Good, bad, or mediocre. This can also be described as the aesthetic sensations, or the gut instinct that tells you what is good, bad, beautiful or ugly.
This is why Dessein plays a major role in the design process. Planning, scheming, envisioning the product and how best to design it is key. Without good planning and proper attention, a design could easily fail, it will not carry the aesthetic value that consumors desire.


Design priorities, Chapter two.
After aesthetics, ergonomics plays a large role in customer satisfaction. Good ergonomics create the greatest ease of use. Essentially, aesthetics pull people in, and good ergonomics keep them there. Good ergonomics also increases the word of mouth sales.

A product often is put through several constraints before production. The constraints help to create a better product by forcing the designer to think of a more efficient design. With the help of a computer design program (CAD) parameters can be set in advance, giving priority to aesthetics and ergonomics.

If you've read this far, that means that maybe you are bored, as I am, and as I think most people in the world are at this exact moment in time. I could be wrong. Anyways, that is my homework for my information design class. It is here for no reason but to make you ask for a reason.