Industrial design at crossroads

Recently I have been looking at the development of traditional "industrial design" and I find myself often amazed about the variety people can find in their specialization. Others seek to concentrate on services, others on interaction, even they are formally trained as industrial designers. Others, however wish to concentrate on traditional branches, such as furniture and product design. Even at the university of Lapland, one can have different masters programs, to truly differentiate himself on certain branch. Industrial design seems to almost explode.



Is an industrial designer the next to god? Seems that nothing is enough and designers seek for new ways of working and soon, I would say, start to play with molecule biology, just to create new ingenious materials... Creativity is taking over everywhere. Should they remain in the pit and create products, or should creativity boost the economies with even stronger touch on all fields?

interesting discussion takes place in core77.boards

Book tips! Blue Ocean Strategy

I got a nice tip from a visiting lecturer, Simo Rontti, concerning strategic design related books. Blue Ocean Strategy is about systematicly finding spaces in the strategical map, to create products and services that make competition irrelevant. A good example could be igglo that changed the way of seeing real estate business. Another one that hits my mind, was Samsung, creating the Ultra Edition.. finding a 6.9mm space in the mobile phone business is not easy.

However, some info on BOS. Some in finnish, too

The Enthusiast - Kim & Co

One of my closest friends, Kim Haataja that currently studies his Master´s degree at Hokkaido - Tokai University, has started a blog where he writes about design and his life as a foreigner in Japan.

Kim is one of the most talented people I have ever seen and has the ability to really extend the boundaries. The unique sketching style with totally own design language makes Kim a truly diverse and intelligent designer. Having worked aside him for many years, the development and healthy competition has truly developed us all. Kim is one of those guys that tend to create unique pieces with great intelligence in them.

The Enthusiast

Touchscreen digital camera

I got carried away with some of the nicest touchscreen user interfaces.. One of the nicest performances I saw over the net, couple guys had different ways of giving orders to the screens with different touch combinations, a kind of a Human-Machine language..

Since touch is surely soon a part of mobile gadgets (Nokia aeon, iphone) , I started to ideate a finger operated touch screen user interface for digital cameras. In my opinion, a truly well sighted development, who hits first?

new website!

Finally I have finished my new website layout, even though I still have to translate the pages in english. Somehow this html starts to come to me, and I begin to understand the rules behind.. Selftaught design is this way somehow. However the bright and light composition is something I like at the moment.

Check them Out

Singapore, the design capital of Asia?

I have a long time wanted to do this post on Singapore. Before I ever went there, I had the image of a city with strict rules and order. I had thought the city was full of huge buildings, and the traffic would be overwhelming. However, I was wrong.

Singapore offers a nice, warm (hot!) and clean place to live and even the nightlife is lively with many huge nichtclubs and smaller pubs to spend an evening. Restaurants can be found on any cuisine available, even though my favorites were the local, chinese and indian. Everything (not alcohol) is considerably cheap, compared to Finland. For Shopping, Singapore offers huge amount of different boutiques and shops.

For a young designer like me the city has quite many possibilities. I would think that a student exchange, if possible, would be nice thing to consider. Also the amount of internships available will for sure be growing, since the design boom that is taking place there. Design is very valued and appraised. Things Like the red dot design museum really put Sg to the design map. During my visit the office had numerous interviews for magazines and National TV. Also some v.i.p´s visited the office. Places besides DW , interships can be found in numerous companies, HP and Philips design, to mention a few.

All in all, the reason to really consider Singapore for the exchange/internship, is the climate. My eyes still sometimes dwell to the the beaches of Malaysia, which are actually just a bus ride away. In addition, cheap living expenses, good service and also very international population make Singapore a place worth checking out.

package design - future could be brighter

Just wanted to write about a nice experience. Last November I took part in a workshop/course on package design, led by Prof. Michael B. Hardt. There we tried to create scenarios and concepts on the Future Package . The Lectures that Michael held during the course on future research were really interesting and gave ideas and a nice insight in packaging in general but also the methods used in defining routes for the future.

Our Team created this funky packaging system that actually would take us away from the usage of plastics and include new nanotechnology and the concept of "living package". As a concept example the team invented this make up package that would not only include nice aesthetic appearance, but also pointed out some weird new ways for the actual usage of the package. The Best possible: skin moisturizer that sweated out of the package when wanted.

illustration by Mikael

a sketch I made on the concept

Apparels - combination of complexity

I was again going through the products map and stumbled upon apparels design. How could strategic design processes give value for an apparels company? Started to figure out the design processes used and realized that the design is quite often purely focusing on the usability/usable details and not so much perhaps on design language itself, at least on heavy duty backpacks etc.

How could a design language become the driving force for apparels design? Of course, in heavy duty goods, the design language seconds the usability and durability, but perhaps one could go through this sort of language that actually supports the features. Using certain forms on openings and vents and also using som semanthic forms to guide the user through the inevitable complexity. Some sort of layered design language could perhaps be the best option. Topped with some great concepts, a good product for a design company to offer!



However, I made some sketches, too.. just fast with ballpoint and markers..

Tool no.1 - Design sketching vol 2..

since blogger accepting only mini posts...

More info about sketching techniques can be found in many places: car body design, car design news and also by looking at what others have made for example at coroflot, even though it tends to be mostly of 3D and photography. Don't forget the Design Sketching -book where techniques are well explained.

My own sketching skills are built up a bit by bit. I use mostly pen, but sometimes I change for my tiny wacom and try to create nice renderings. With wacom, one can quite easily and fast create nice pictures. However, the speed still is far from the one reached with traditional media, if no special diamonds are needed.

pencil and markers - a fast sketch

Ideation sketching

Tool no.1 - Design sketching

If one is into (strategic) conceptual design, the tool that you use the most is a pen. Accompanied with some markers, the pen and a sharpener, you make a terrific team together. As an industrial designer is a professional in visually explaining the creativity and it´s outcomes, The designs need to have a fast and reliable means to be presented in the team and to the clients. Therefore one has to know how to master the basic sketching techniques. It is not quite enough just to be able to draw beautiful pictures but there has to be rules in making the sketch so that everyone understands the meaning of the sketch, without the designer explaining what is going on. The works should present themselves.

In my educational oven at the university of Lapland, sketching was not appraised enough and the workshops did not require sketching. Everyone was going for the 3D and no sketches required for the completion of courses. I assume that it is one thing that separates us from the top schools. During Last spring, when I was applying to DesignworksUSA, I realized that the sketches are the essence of design profession, at least in consultancy world. Also car design includes heavy sketching and rendering. Somehow I think that during my studies, the sketching was just something expected, not looked after. If there had been more workshops on basic sketching and rendering, perhaps it would have been easier to get internships etc.

However, there seems to be a gap also in the presentation of sketches and the real world. No one shows the crappy doodles even though they are the ones mostly done and looked into when working. I didn´t want to show my first sketches because they were not flashy or beautiful enough. However, the sketches are there to tell something, so show them!

On the elven cars design language again

I made just a sketch on the elven design language. Perhaps it could have been even more exaggerated.. Really into looking at this kind of surface complexity management now. Making mixture of different surface speaking the same language.

Design process and the relation to marketing

Design processes are important as tools for making design systematic and easier to follow by clients and manage by participants in process. The process descriptions (processes?) are, however, on certain level the same and in this sense perhaps useless in marketing purposes.

I have heard that usually a process should be available to be seen by prospecting client, but I still assume other things, like consultancy reputation and previous clientelé (project outcomes) actually do the trick in consultancy selection. Therefore one could think that "the same - process" could work.. Processes as spines are also important for the actual designing and scheduling, but in some discussions I have learned that the actual process can actually dramaticly differ from the one presented in marketing material. What is the reason? Another tricky thing is actually the support from government that is in some cases given to creating the "tools", but later resulting in not using them.

I have created this kind of a design process draft that would present questions to be answered, instead of going into scheduling the design process. It then should be set with the client regarding to the need of different process particles. If the time spent on a certain section is the same, things that you do are the same and the tools used are the same, but only processes are different, is the process genuine then??

simple, non organized draft

Of course I relize that creating procedures is important for quality and maintaining the workflow is important for efficiency, but some differentiating and new leads perhaps needed? This is also a thing that could need some research done. And yes, my website needs one, too.

The Elven Car Technology

Again doing some studies on cars, just a styling exercise, some photoshop on freehand ballpoint sketch. However, here I was looking at an opening top side of the car.. mechanism perhaps rooting to the saab aero-x.

By the way.. the Saab site is perhaps one of the nicest sites on product exhibiting digitally.

One can also notice the Elven's nice rear light/wind spoilers.. Snow is something not so nice on rear window.

Nature makes designs that actually work!

Just went through the Bleu nature website and remembered this nice piece we made with Mikael on our annual adventure trip through Lapland wilderness. Actually it was only the hole of a woodpecker, but in this case acted really nicely as the platform for cooking rod...

picture by Mikael

somewhere...

webfindings

funky piece of "a could be lightning" on the second image! actually it is a artificial bonzai... Semanthic reminded me however, a table lamp.

Atelier A+D - Modern Architecture and Design: Ciao Milano!

..and also a nice blog about architecture. Wall mounts definitely worth looking into!

droog makes people drool with these hits!