Color Transforms

Marco Boschini once said, “Without color, il disegno may be called a body without a soul.” This statement literally tells us how important color means to a design. Everything surrounded us are in colors; for example, red apple, yellow taxi, green grass, or blue bird. Sometimes we even try to make clear glass with colors.

Imagine what our world would be like without colors. The world would be plain and dull.

The picture below is of my favorite umbrella, which integrates several colors including violet, green, yellow, blue, and pinkish-red. According to Itten’s coloring wheel, the colors on the umbrella are consisted mainly of tertiary colors, but also of some primary and secondary colors. In fact, the umbrella’s design is a demonstration of interaction among colors, and it alternates the how the color is portrayed by applying the colors in different sizes and in thick or thin lines. In addition, the thesis in the book of Interaction of Color wrote by Albert saying that color is subjective because color can be view differently due to its size, hue, or shape. For example, in the case of my umbrella, different size of line can make a color seen as another color. The thicker pink line makes the green looks like light blue. However, if the thicker green line when place next to the yellow thin line, the green line will transform into a yellowish green. The umbrella strictly abides by the laws of the coloring wheel.

(Photo resource: Ying-Chu, Chan)

Also, Part of color theory includes the idea of color psychology, which is the thinking of how color is correlated with out emotions. Colors can inspire sentiment in humans’ minds through consciousness. To illustrate, color can reflect our moods such as happy, sad, angry, or love. For instance, color red often related to passion, or love, whereas black often associate with sadness, or death. To illustrate, when comparing the umbrella’s tertiary colors to its primary colors, the tertiary colors portrays a lighter and livelier mood. With a mix among primary, secondary and tertiary colors, the umbrella would be able to communicate the alternating mood of its user.

Design is Dangerous

Generally, all designs can be dangerous to both humans and society if they were handled improperly; however, some designs due to their applications, are more likely to cause danger than other designs. For example, heavy-duty machineries such as construction crane are great representation of what dangerous designs can be.

(http://clearwaterbeachdailyphoto.blogspot.com/2008_08_10_archive.html)

First, construction cranes have not been intentionally designed to be dangerous, but could became dangerous through flawed operations. Construction cranes are essential to today’s society and play an extremely important role in city modernization and construction advancements. Well designed and engineered, construction cranes allow construction workers to efficiently transfer materials and minimize project costs. In other cases, cranes are use to load and unload shipments off of freights, benefiting our bustling import and export businesses.  Despite all its uses, construction crane, if not used carefully, would cause more danger than the benefits it brings. To illustrate, a crane operator who has not been paying attention while working on the crane might accidentally drop a steel beam. Hence, the construction cranes would become a hazard for other workers. In this case, the construction crane was not been dangerous to begin with, but had become unsafe from flawed operation.

However, people tend to have the impression that construction cranes are dangerous overall because of the cranes colossal size. Moreover, people usually misinterpret that construction crane are not safe to be around because the crane often carries around heavy object that are gigantic compare to a single human. In addition, the slim appearance of cranes brings people to the hypothesis that the crane might break easily. Nevertheless, cranes are carefully designed and engineered to prevent the kind of danger mentioned above.

In conclusion, most of the dangers posed by the construction cranes are unintentional. Evidence demonstrates that most irreversible damages are cause by flawed operation rather than flawed design.

Utopian Design: The Copenhagen Wheel

One of the main concepts of a design is to solve problems. Most of the objects that are around us are designed to improve our society, objects such as computer, cell-phone, or cars; all of these objects contribute to improve our life in different places such as in information, communication, or transportation. As I surf on the Internet to find a unique utopian design, I have discovered “The Copenhagen Wheel,” designed by Christine Outram and students from SENSEable City Lab at MIT. It is a design that truly aims to improve our society.

(http://senseable.mit.edu/copenhagenwheel/wheel.html)

The Copenhagen Wheel is a wheel that can make a positive impact on the way we live. It can not only boost power, but also keep track of friends, fitness, smog and traffic. What makes this wheel special is that it can transfer human power into battery power; therefore, the wheel helps bikers to bike a longer distance and distribute more powers to the bike without the use of gas and other forms of consumable energy that pollutes our surroundings. In addition, the Wheel can be installed on our preexisting bikes, and it is fast to set up. The Wheel generates electrical energy from the physical power we input while we brake and cycle on the bike. Furthermore, the wheel has a pollution sensing function that tells the bikers real-time environment sensing capabilities including noise and air pollution. Other than the real-time environment sensing, it also contains congestion and road conditions. Moreover, it has another design element in which we can place our Smart phone on the bike and control the Wheel through our phone. From the phone, we can unlock or lock the Wheel, change gears, and select the amount of motor assist. In regards to aesthetics, it is simple and elegant and is different from other electric bikes because all the parts are concealed within the disk. Thus, we don’t have to worry about  appearance.

The Copenhagen Wheel is a revolutionary bicycle wheel design that provides both green and energy saving environment. It is indeed a design that is utopian because it aims to improve our society and to better our environment. 

will.i.am, Nicki Minaj - Check It Out

In design 1 class, the YouTube video “Check it out ” by Will.i.am and Nicki Minaj was showed on last Tuesday. It was an example of how music video combines words and image together. In the video, there is no written lyrics but filled with exaggerate facial and body expressions, and as well as some big Korean typographies. After watching the video, we had a small group discussion in class on what we think about the video. One of our group members, who has Korean background, mentioned that this video represents K Pop music because of the Korean typography, the clothing, and the dancing. Therefore, we thought this video is portraying the Korean culture and as well as conversing to Korean and American pop music. This video tells us that K Pop music is not only limited in Asia but also gradually getting popular around the world. Moreover, most people in our group agreed that the Korean words in this video could convey messages to audience even to those non-Korean speakers, which this video design has approached the concept of design as a conversation. It communicates not only the viewers in the video itself, but also other people. The words worked well with dancers by using pops forward effects in this music video. And the Korean words were designed in 3D effects, which was another communicating way to viewers. The clothing that the dancers wore was futuristic, and the dancers danced like robots, which makes the whole video in a futuristic theme. In addition, the bright pink, purple, and green were used in this music video that catches viewer’s attention. Also, the repetitive effects in both typography and human figures were commonly used in the video. Overall, the design elements in the video well combined words, image and music together that can communicate with people all around the world. 

Basis of Design Criticism: Logitech mouse

       In the field of design, every designer should know what the word ergonomic means, because it plays an important role in designers producing good designs. Etymologically, the word ergonomic originated from Greek and can be broken into two parts, “ergo”, meaning works and “nomos”, meaning law, so together they mean the science of work. According to International Ergonomic Association, it defines ergonomic as “The scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a system, and the profession that applies theory, principles, data and methods to design in order to optimize human well-being and overall system performance.” To briefly explain this statement, it states that ergonomic literally means the idea of applying science to make things comfy and efficient. In addition, ergonomic designs are consisted of five elements, which are safety, comfort, usability, performance (productive), and aesthetics.

Image source: Amazon.com

Image source: Amazon.com

     This Logitech computer mouse above is an object that I use on a daily basis; it is considered a great ergonomic designs. To illustrate, computer mouse is designed to reduce stress on the computer users who work for long hours, In this case, an ergonomic computer mouse is useful that it reduces the risk of injuries caused by repetitive motions, such as clicking and scrolling.

      First of all, the primary element of ergonomic design is safety. When designers design things, they need to regard safety as a priority. If safety is ignored, the product may cause injuries and harm its users. With safety in mind, the designers engineered the Logitech mouse so that there are no risks and danger when using it. In fact, the exterior of this mouse is made into a smooth round shape and does not contain any dangerous edges. Furthermore, this mouse is big enough to prevent children from swallowing it. Moreover, there would not be any electricity leakages because both the wires and electricity of the mouse is sealed tightly within the mouse. As a result, the mouse is designed to ensure the safety of its users, and its users can exercise the product without fears of getting hurt.

     To continue, comfort is the second element to look for when one is analyzing an ergonomic design. Comfort is an important element to products because it can reduce stress or distraught feeling in people who use the product. In contrast, we may develop health problems such as back pain if we consistently use a product in an uncomfortable way. The comfortable Logitech mouse allows us to relax and relieves the pressure of our wrist from extended computer usage. As mentioned earlier, the grid of the mouse is sleek and can be comfortably controlled.

     Despite safety and comfort, user friendly is another important element for creating ergonomic products. Complex designs and features can confuse the audience, so many designers and design companies tries to reflect the concept of “keep it simple” on their designs, which provides easy of use feature. This Logitech mouse is simple and easy to use; you only need to plug in the little USB receiver on your computer and turn on the power switch under the mouse. It is a wireless mouse that intelligently positioned its buttons at our fingertips, allowing it to easily perform tasks such as scroll, cut, paste, and zoom. It is also designed with a flexible rechargeable system that lets the users effortlessly charge their mouse through their computers.

       Next, the performance of a mouse design is determined by how well the mouse receives an order. For this Logitech mouse, it has a high performance sensor that can receive orders efficiently and smoothly. Also, the use of wireless helps the mouse to maneuver quickly and effectively. This computer mouse includes fast scrolling options that assist people to scroll through long documents and web pages. This special performance makes this mouse unique and “hyper-fast”. Moreover, the performance of this design is excellent because it actually works on almost every surface. The mouse can even perform smoothly on a glass surface. Thus, this mouse, without doubt, is easy and convenient to use.

       Finally, the last component of an ergonomic design is its aesthetics. In previous classes, we learned that aesthetic means the beauty of things that is visually pleasing to viewers. Looking at the mouse, it contains several sleek buttons, black and sliver color, and some lines on the mouse. Although this Logitech mouse is not colorful, the aesthetics of this computer mouse presents a functional feeling. This design simply demonstrates to the audience that it is an ergonomic and high performance computer mouse that consumers can look forward to purchase.

       In conclusion, ergonomic design approaches human’s natural laws. It combines science technology with designs and makes designs more comfortable and efficient. Nowadays, ergonomic designs are getting more and more important, because designs without ergonomic may cause health problems. Therefore, ergonomic designs not only improve our life but also prevent our health from being jeopardize. It is most important that a good ergonomic design meets the five basic components: safety, comfort, usability, performance, and aesthetics.

Plastic City

Since the beginning of design 1 class, Mr. Housefield started to question how and where can we find our inspiration when we design. In addition, we spent a class to do “Stone Soup” activity, which helped us to find inspiration within ourselves. Besides, Mr. Housefield also introduced many inspirable designers, such as Tom Friedman, Tara Donavon, and Andy Goldsworthy, and all of them finding their creativity from nature, or daily life objects. All the examples are helping us to understand it is important to explore our life and find creativity from our surroundings.
While watching YouTube, I came crossed with this video, a Taiwanese designer, Bang-Yao Liu also found his creativity from things around him. Liu thinks that creativity can be found everywhere around our life, which attached the concept that we have learned in design 1 class.

In the video, it was Liu’s first visit to Shanghai. And he found that Shanghai is filled with plastics materials, which caused him to want to make a “plastic city”. Without any planning or sketches, Liu gathered different colors, sizes, and shapes of plastics and finally made his “plastic city” that in his own view of Shanghai look. Although Liu’s is not a famous designer, and his works cannot compare with that of Andy Goldsworthy, or Tom Friedman, he still did a nice demonstration for us on how we find our inspirations. As a designer, I think it is essential for us to go around to different places, absorbing and learning information, and then design what we have learned.

Words&Images examples

When words and images are combined together, it tells story, or convey message to audience. We can find words and images interact in comics, page designs, advertising, book covers, or motion graphics.

(IMage source from Amazon.com)

A good book cover design makes audience starts to engage before reading the book. From the cover of Mom’s Cancer, it has a person sitting and looking hopeless near to the window. In addition, the image is made into two panels, which separates the woman’s head and body. This book cover caught my eyes when I first saw it. I started to guess from looking at the picture, why does this woman looks sad, and why is it designed in two panels? Then, after I know the name of the book, all the questions were solved in a second. I realized the book cover is telling the readers that the woman looks hopeless due to her cancer. And by knowing the woman is illness, I begin to understand the purpose of using two panels, which is a view from observers. Fies’ book cover of Mom’s Cancer is perfectly illustrated that when words and images come together, it connects to the reader right away.

(IMage source from Amazon.com)

The book cover above is another example to show the importance of words and images. This book cover contains two red chairs in a room and one chair looks falling down on the other. Looking at the image itself and since chairs is one of industrial design objects, I could guess that it might be a book for industrial design, or interior design. After discovering the name from the cover, however, the book’s topic is far from my guess. The book has nothing to do with design but is about general theory of love. In this case, we learn when both words and images come together, it create a powerful meaning. I can now know that the two red chairs represents human, and one is lying on the other, presenting human interaction. Furthermore, the color red symbolized “love.”
From these two examples above, we can comprehend the importance of words and images. Both words and images are important to exist in a design, because it both has its function; the words can explain the message, and the image allows us to picture. Combining words and images indeed can help readers to approach the real meaning behind a design.