VISVIM

Working on a paper about perceived American ruggedness in Japanese fashion. Bag by VISVIM.

Balance of Motorbikes

Inspiration this morning from bikeexif. Function, form, and (relative) comfort seem to find a great balance in vintage cafe racers. One of the most interesting rebuilders of these is wrenchmonkees in Copenhagen.

Nixie Tubes

These photos by Lenore Edman are highlights from the dismantling of a nixie tube. Such a beautiful design for visualization from the past…

CDisco: Documenting a Design Project

Part 1 in a series on documentating design projects.

As the Career Discovery program draws to a close it seems useful to document a couple of lessons learned. Amongst my colleagues and the CD students there is often confusion regarding how design artifacts go from studio >> camera >> computer >> portfolio or web. Since a minority of people will never see your original models, prototypes, drawings, etc. the documentation will be the end representation of both your work and skill to the rest. This first part in a series of posts aims to give an overview of the documentation process.

Step 1: Design

Using good craft on your design deliverables will yield the best results in the documentation phase. It is difficult, if not impossible, to make great images of poorly conceived and/or executed projects. Build good models, make readable drawings, and your documentation will work for you.

Step 2: Capturing the Artifacts

At the GSD we have a simple photography studio setup that is great for taking photos of objects and models. If you do not have access to something similar do not fret! It is simple to get a working setup with minimal investment. The three keys to a successful photographic studio are lights, background, and camera. Up until last year I used a couple of desk lamps, a large sheet of paper and a Nikon D80 to document all of my work. Drawings, diagrams, and other digital representation are already captured, but require similar processing as photos for final output. A further post will detail setting up a studio and scanning documents in more detail.

Step 3: Photo Processing

Transfer the photos onto your computer and save a backup before processing them. Your models and drawings will never look as the day you shot them, things fall apart, so backups are essential. Open your most promising photographs, drawings, and diagrams in Photoshop and process them in preparation for the final steps. Tutorial for this step here.

Step 4: Portfolio Design

Having a printed version of your work is a good idea for designers. Most design jobs and graduate school programs require a portfolio for application so your documentation becomes the face of your skills as a designer. Physical portfolios are generally laid out in Indesign and require high resolution images for printing. For publishing on the web images can be lower resolution and require a different process for publishing.

Step 5: Web Portfolio

Maintaining a website for your portfolio is a great way to be able to quickly and easily display your work. While a printed portfolio is considered more formal, a personal website can be updated and shared more easily. There are several great systems available on the interweb for publishing portfolios including Indexhibit and WordPress.

Works: New Textiles Coursework Complete

This semester I had the opportunity to study at the MIT Media Lab with Leah Buechley. The course was an investigation of embedding technologies into soft materials: a space I had naively marginalized to fashion. The challenge for me throughout the work was to avoid an aesthetic of technology embedded in fabric, something I feel is often relied upon as an end in itself. It seems more interesting to think about how this paradigm of soft computing effects the way we interact with technology at a tactile and symbiotic level. My resulting projects are all available in work.

Another aspect of this is how wearing our technology impacts the social discourse of uniforms and dress. The US Military is keying on an interesting aspect of this – the language of technology as strength – but I wonder what the future civilian interpretations might be. The collision of fashion, research, and proven military technologies in the public market will surely change the way we engage at the human scale.

Works: Um, Cities and Blocks

A animation made for Chris Hoxie’s Immersive Environments course at the GSD. I performed animation and rendering for the over 15000 frames of the full 720p version. Tools used: Rhino, 3dsMax, After Effects.