Week 20 | 3DD - Product Design

Our new topic was 3D. This was something I was really looking forward to as it had been mentioned to me before that I was best suited to 3D. I was definitely looking forward to this topic. For the first lesson we were required to bring in two objects, one that we were fond of and we had some sort of connection to and another that we found quite useless, something that we bought and thought about why we bought it because it ended up being so unimportant.

My two objects were an Airwick Air Freshener and a Tattoo ink liner.

// Air Freshener //

// Tattoo Ink Liner //

I chose the Air freshener as the object I didn't find very useful, partly because I hated the look of it and i'm sure it was years old and because I really wasn't fond of the smell. It smelt like cheap soap and that really didn't appeal to me. On the other hand I chose the Tattoo Ink Liner because it's something I use fairly often, it has a great design and its function is something that I really enjoy.

Our first tasks were to put the objects in front of us and then do a specific drawing of that object. The first drawing we did was a five minute observation drawing of either one. This was my first drawing, I decided to draw the air freshener and shamefully didn't take into account how long we had to draw and so I didn't produce a finished piece. It was good enough, it was almost a clear representation of the air freshener it would have just been better if I managed a full drawing in those five minutes.

The second drawing was also a five minute observational drawing but this time I feel like I managed my time much more wisely. The structure of the object was really coming together and from the drawing you could honestly tell what it was I was drawing, given that you'd had some contact with a tattoo gun. This was more successful than the first simply because this was a more complex object and I managed to get way more done in the same amount of time.

This was my opposite hand drawing, as you may have guessed it required us to use our weaker hand but also we had to change the angle we were looking at. The whole purpose of this exercise, I think, was to see what shapes or new forms we could create. This was a more interesting way than the simple observational drawing. I always tend to enjoy the weaker handed drawings because they always produce a drawing that is visibly far more expressive and free. I have thrown precision out of the window and ensured I try to capture the shape as best I can, inevitably making mistakes.

The next drawing was the five minute memory drawing. Our task was to draw one of the objects blind for five minutes after only observing it for about 30 seconds. This one was difficult because once you removed the pen from the paper you were lost. There was no certain way of determining where you left off without opening your eyes and essentially cheating. However, in the other hand it did prove to creat some very interesting shapes and forms once the five minutes were up and we got to actually see our drawing for the first time. It was never going to be perfect because we aren't perfect drawers but it would surely hold some sort of resemblance.

Our final drawing was the typical straight line drawing, now this one was a little tricky depending on what type of ruler you had. A lot of my classmates were using short 15cm rulers whereas I was usuing a bulkier 30cm metal ruler which was a pain to keep having to quickly rotate and move whist also observing the shape and striving for accuracy. I think this one was more focused on the form of the object, not the details but the general shape. 

 That was our little warm up task, after our break we were tasked with choosing one of the objects we bought in and recreating it on a 3D scale. The material we were using was simply cartridge paper which was always going to be difficult when making a 3D model because the material isn't made to be sturdy and used as a building material, it was produced to be a surface. However despite this I did find some success when making my piece, all I had to do was recreate my object at a scale were it would be strong enough to hold its own weight.

As you can see from my image above I have seriously upped the scale from the original model. I decided to do this because working very small is much more challenging than working on a larger scale. Also this was an opportunity to see if anything will change during my making process. As you may have noticed a lot has changed and that is mainly the details. The front panel is a lot different to the air freshener but that was because I had the wrong materials to make it with. The paper was more difficult than expected. It was easy enough to make the nets for the back of the object and the front panel had to have pieces cut out of it and that sounded very simple but I was striving for accuracy and so I made sure it was fairly neat, neat enough to resemble the original product.

In terms of a first attempt at making something in this new project I found it very successful. I had taken an object and recreated it to the best of my ability with a material I wasn't very great with and a material that really didn't suit the product itself.

Our next task was to create an Orthographic drawing of our object. The Orthographic drawing involved drawing all of the possible views of our object including the front view, back views, side views and birds-eye views. The faces had to be represented in a 2D format so that meant just drawing the block shapes you see when looking directly at that shape revealing no indication to is third dimensionality.

These were my Orthographic drawings. A lot of people were getting them wrong because they wasn't aware that you had to think about the layout when drawing your faces. My object was really tricky to draw because of all the little details on the front. That really tripped me up.

The idea behind these orthographic drawings is to help us with our making and to show our ability to create technical drawings of a 3D object. Overall I feel like my orthographic drawings turned out really well, they look neat and they represent the 3D object really well. If I had to change anything I would probably make them slightly bigger in scale as that would have reduced the margin for error.

After we had created the orthographic drawings it was time to create a more developed model of our product. This time we started to use cardboard and tape instead of the paper. This already gave me high hopes because Cardboard is so much stronger and easier to work with. It isn't flimsy like paper and so the structure will benefit from this.

I started with the base of my largest panel, the back. Also as the back panel wasn't as complicated as the front it made even more sense to start there. I cut the cardboard to size using my measurements. I made sure to keep tabs on the sides so that I could fix it to the panels I was preparing to put around the edge. 

The panels around the edge were fairly tricky because not only did I have to cut them to the correct scale but I also had to fix them to one another. My original thought was to use glue so that the appearance wouldn't be ruined but strips of tape, but unfortunately the glue wasn't tough enough to keep it in place and so I simply used taped over the tabs I made sure to include. The bottom parts of the side panels had to curve a little to match that of the base so in order to do that I had to score the inside where the corner would be and then bend it. The scoring allowed the cardboard to bend freely without ruining the rest of the panel.

Another view of the back piece with all side pieces attaches. Everywhere that it is taped is where I included a tab of cardboard. In the end the tabs really helped me. They helped me a lot.

I made the front of the model by cutting a similar sized shape than that of the back piece. I decided to give it a slight hollowness as the front of the air freshener isn't exactly flat. To achieve this I simply cut out a smaller panel from the middle and bent the remaining edges upwards and replaced the panel in. I secured it again with cardboard tabs but these weren't attached to the side pieces becuase I forgot to include them. Therefore I simply attached pieces of excess cardboard.

The front view of the front panel.

My Final Product Model.

Overall I think this is a very successful model simply because it has the same qualities that the air freshener has, except for being fully functional. At first it was a little tricky to try and grasp how I was going to do it but it all came to me in the end. It took me a while from start to finish but in terms of the actual making and not the time sitting still thinking it really didn't take me long to construct. The cardboard was as I guessed, amazing to work with. 

Additional views of the model. 

Fashion Final Evaluation

The brief required us to create a Fashion accessory from everyday objects. The accessory had to be on trend and you must be able to wear it. To me, already the most challenging part of that was being able to get the accessory on trend because I didn't have the ability to realise what was on trend and what wasn't. The aspect I was most looking forward to however was the I could use and also what constitutes to an every day object.

Whilst considering my brief I also had to consider other aspects of the potential design, such as the scale, silhouette, the pattern, how repetitive my material is and also how I was planning on joining it together. From the beginning I almost instantly ruled out sewing as a way to join it together because I was trying to think outside the box when it came to the material I was going to use. If i was going to use some sort of object made from plastic or metal then sewing would be completely redundant, It would make more sense to use a glue gun or a similar, strong adhesive.

I utilised the extensive library to accumulate images and inspiration for my initial mood boards. I also visited Dover Street Market in order to gain a perspective into high-end fashion design, they had many top designers such as Balmain, Comme des Garcon, Gucci, Dior etc. It was definitely very rewarding because I discovered some very strange clothing items and that gave me a little confidence when it came to thinking about my design. The artist that gave me the most inspiration was Zaha Hadid. Although she isn't quite a fashion designer I still managed to find her work appropriate.

The steps involved in my making process included researching about what inspired me. Originally it was about nature but that changed to architecture through the use of artist research. Then my sample making which was fuelled by the need to find the right everyday object. I used the objects I brought in to create interesting shapes and patterns and then applied that to a mannequin to see what it would create. The sample making and experimenting didn't work well for me. I didn't find it very successful in that I didn't feel like I discovered much. The big turning point in my work came when I swapped out my samples for plain paper strips. With one of my samples I often found myself twisting and turning it to give it a ribbon-type, dynamic look. With the plain paper I could do that much more easily and also manipulate my silhouette more.

The everyday Object I chose to use were just ordinary plastic bags. In a heat-press workshop I found that if you melt them under a sheet they will all merge together to create a leather-like material. That material was easy enough to mould and it was strong. My piece relied a lot on structure and so a material that could support itself when necessary was great. The plastic bags worked really well for that. Overall there weren't many challenges that I faced, It was all just the making that was the challenging part. It was difficult because I hadn't made a full garment before and I wasn't familiar with what patterns I had to cut.

Week 19 | Fashion Accessories

This was the final week of the project and a finished, photographed piece was due for a crit on Friday. My piece was only in the very early stages of being created. I knew already what material I wanted to make it out of. I chose to heatpress plastic bags because the result had really nice qualities such as being sturdy enough to shape into Hadid inspired structures but also having a feel that was wearable. I also decided to go with plastic bags because they are now considered an everyday object. Now that shops are requiring we buy a bag for our items, people have opted to keep the ones they already have and reuse them to avoid extra costs.

This is what the bags turned out to look like, these are just a couple of samples. It may be hard to see but there is a slight texture to the material that makes it feel quite leathery.

I made my piece straight onto the mannequin with my sttrips of melted plastic. At first I was really excited for what I was about to make but I really didn't consider how difficult it would be. My starting point was really just bending pieces of the material to see If i could create some sort of base that would also be fluid with the design but that seemed a little far fetched especially since I didn't have a final design drawn out. I opted for a different route and cut out a pattern to use on the side of the body, the hip right up to under the armpit, which I would use as my base. 

I pinned down the pieces I wanted added and then used the sewing machine to sew them into place. That was pretty difficult because my experience with a sewing machine didn't extend much further than turning the thing on. Although I had some difficulty I managed to get the pieces sewn down and they turnout out to be fairly successful. I was judging it in terms of how sturdy the pieces are and how dynamic it ended up.

Now that I had my piece made and ready I needed to have a way of presenting it which was going to be a photography shoot. I really didn't want to use a model because my theme evolved from nature to architecture and because of my new theme I didn't want to use a human figure to represent architecture. I wanted a way for the architecture to represent itself, or at least be represented without the presence of something that is natural and not architectural.

The way I went about it was this. This is something I created onto one of the boards that make up our classrooms. It is essentially the same thing that I did with my accessory but on a different surface and also for a different purpose. I decided that there wasn't anywhere in the college or to my knowledge that would look anything like my piece. I was better off going to one of Zaha Hadid's buildings but that was a little geographically undesirable. In order to create this effect I cut up strips of a2 paper and used drawing pins to pin it to the boards. I played around with it a lot and changed it a couple of times because it took a while to become satisfied with it. I had to ensure it looked consistent and comparable with the accessory.

I took a few photographs with the accessory on a mannequin next to the wall i decorated hoping that that would be all but the pictures just really didn't seem to work well. It was a brilliant idea but the execution was seriously slacking, it needed a bit more originality. 

These three pictures were the solution to my problem. Initially I didn't want any physical representations of the human figure so the mannequin I was using ultimately ruined what it was I was trying to communicate

Week 18 | Fashion Accessories

The third week was all about preparing to make our accessory. We've spent two weeks already exploring and researching what we might want to create so this week was the right time to be finalising our ideas. Despite this I still wasn't set on a final idea, I knew roughly what I wanted to create but that wasn't a final design.

I made this mini moodboard in order to help outline what it was i wanted to focus on. In many of the samples I made I often found myself turning the pieces of paper into loops and curves, trying to add dynamism to my work so that it wouldn't end up so "flat". It was the only way to add a 3D element to my work because I was working with paper. The loops and curves I ended up creating really intrigued me, not only were they easy to create but they were easy to work with, I could overlap them well, change the scale and they would still work together. It was a brilliant find for me because my earlier moodboards at the start of the project showed my desire to create something that accentuates the curves and figure of the body.

If I was looking more at the curves and making my accessory more 3-dimensional it made sense to explore some creators who dealt mainly in 3D. An architect seemed almost perfect. It wasn't hard to find one, straight away Zaha Hadid came to mind. Hadid is pretty famous for designing the London Aquatics Center that was used for the Olympics but that wasn't the building I was concerned about. It was the Heydar Aliyev Center. The building straight away showed resemblance to my work, or rather my work showed resemblance to the building. Either way this was a perfect match. It was simply the elegance and fluidity of the architecture that spoke to me. It was precisely what I had in mind for my piece.

Based off of what I had found I started to create simple designs on the mannequins to begin to visualise what I may come to create. I used plain mannequins and simply started to recreate the curved panels from the Hadid buildings I previously saw.

 Although the idea was very clear, I did struggle to create the designs. I struggled with simply being free enough and expressive enough to create these dynamic, elegant and free forms that Hadid was so brilliant at. I decided to switch it up and put one of my samples behind some mannequins. This definitely made things more interesting. The sample I chose was the one I created with the gloves where they were all bunched together. I placed a tracing paper mannequin down on top of it and any edges and curves i could see through the mannequin coming from the gloves I would draw over.

I really do wish I decided to do more designs over my samples, maybe try some of my other samples beneath it not just the ones i knew would give me something i was looking for..

I wanted to get more hands on with my ideas so I decided to do a bunch of stand work in relation to my designs. 

I made some possible designs using strips of cut up paper and pinned them to the mannequin. I really liked what came of it. I like it because the paper was really sturdy and behaved well under all the bending and twisting. What was more pleasing was that it was actually starting to resemble something similar to Hadid's buildings.

 

 Both pages of designs.

We all partook in a heatpress workshop to get to grips with the technique and technology. It was a really fun workshop because it felt really artsy and crafty and it was also a cheeky little break from the stress of fashion.

We begun using ink to create patterns on some a4 sheets of paper making sure to cover the whole page.

I managed to do something different on each piece of paper simply making sure not to have the same designs. The next step was to grab a piece of square white fabric and place the two together and put it under some heat. The heat press met temperatures of about 200 degrees celcius so it was imperative that we operate it properly. In order to merge the two together we also needed some grease proof paper so that the materials wouldn't either burn or stick to the heat pads.

This is one of the pieces I made. It wasn't anything special because it was just an experiment
I did another one where it involved adding fabric glue to the samples of fabric and then you can add more elements on top such as plastic bags or shiny foil. On my one i just added bits of plastic bags.

Week 17 | Fashion Accessories

This week consisted mainly of making again, It was with all the samples we had created. Although what differed from last week was the fact that we were focusing more on the silhouette of our mannequin. We wanted to create something far more unique and crazy. It started off with joining one part of the body to the other but it progressed into putting more focus on the shape of our garment. I think this was just a way to get us to free up our minds, not be so disciplined and go crazy with what we create.

However despite all of that I still managed to create exactly what I was creating last week. That was most disappointing because it felt like I was really stuck. I needed to be inspired again, I just felt like my ideas had come to a halt. My ideas ran dry because I wasn't focusing on what I should be. I should have been focusing on creating a unique and interesting silhouette for my mannequin. 

This is how I ended up creating this:

For this I simply grabbed a white sheet of cartridge paper and began cutting length ways making sure to cut it in to  15cm thick strips. With these I just tried to be crazy but still elegant. I didn't want to have many rough and sharp edges. I wanted everything to be smooth and soft. I started off with using the paper to caress the mannequins shape and then building off of that. That allowed me to intertwine the strips of paper to hold it in place better. After establishing the foundations I simply grabbed more strips and piled on, making sure that the elements I added were dynamic and they protruded from the body in order to change the silhouette.

I felt it came out quite nicely seeing as I didn't use many materials and all of it came from an a1 sheet of paper. I simply cut it into strips and voila, a garment. It was probably merely a concept but nonetheless I felt pretty accomplished. To compare what I was creating at the start to this was amazing, I had actually focused on just the shape and silhouette and created something quite pretty.

After doing some making for quite a while we had to now come up with some designs and concepts. It was essentially the same thing but on a 2D scale. We were required to use our samples to create conceptual ideas and designs but on an illustrated model instead of a mannequin.

This was my first set of designs. I went along with the idea of remastering the silhouette but using elegant and soft curves. They definitely don't look pretty and that was my issue. They were just too plain, the medium I used just wasn't colourful enough. 

I decided to photocopy my samples and then cut them up in shape with the mannequins body. I then started to place the samples anywhere and everywhere so that I could pick certain things from each design. Although it wasn't as fun as the other way we were designing it was a great idea to do some of this. Its a different way of designing and anyone would happily welcome new skills. It would have been nice to have chosen more interesting materials for my samples but thats only because I didn't have any fun patterns or shapes to play with.

Week 16 | Fashion Accessories

Fashion

Our first week of fashion was certainly an interesting one. Upon reading the topic brief I realised it was a fashion accessories course which of course meant creating an accessory instead of a full garment. That wasn't so bad. I had never done fashion before and so not diving straight in and making a dress or t-shirt is a great way to be introduced to fashion.

In preparation for the lesson we were asked to assemble a collection of images based on either Art, Architecture, Science or Nature. I decided to choose nature and went straight to the library in order to get some secondary research from some of the books they have. I found a lot of images I wanted to use but I only chose the ones that seemed to have a connection.

I made use of my images and made a moodboard, mainly because that was what was required but also because it is a great way to visualise ideas and gain inspiration. The images I selected were a range of leaves that all caught my attention, the golden coloured ones are amazing and i felt it really represented some sort of embroidery as well as being a leaf. We hadn't been told what we were using the moodboards for but I tried to aim it towards fashion in some way. Hopefully looking back on it I won't regret being a little more free.

I decided to make another moodboard. Although it wasn't representative of either Art, Architecture, Science or Nature I felt it was really necessary to have in my book.

I designed this one because this is where I'd like to focus on the body. I want to create something that really accentuates the curves of the body. I felt that in order for me to try and focus on that part of the body and identify areas that I want to work on this needed to be somewhere in my book.

We were told to identify certain aspects of our moodboards. This could be a specific shape that we found interesting. Once we found it our task was to multiply it and manipulate that shape to create a new shape. I played with the scale and orientation of my chosen shape and placed it onto the body to see what I could create.

This was the area of my moodboard that I chose, it was just a snippet of one of the leaves but I chose it for the very interesting shapes within the leaves. 

I outlined the shape onto a piece of tracing paper and changed the positioning. I didn't really focus too much on the detail, I was just trying to be playful and see what I could create. 

After much experimenting I decided to take it up a notch and actually place the shape straight onto a mannequin. This seemed more effective and it definitely made the concepts look better from the introduction of colour. For this I changed the scale and orientation of the element whilst also bearing in mind how to join one part of the body to the other. I made a couple of designs similar to this.

For the remainder of the week, Thursday and Friday we were asked to bring in some everyday materials from the pound stores that we could experiment with. We had to bring in bulk quantities of whatever we bought so that there weren't any restrictions with what we decided to make. I bought in a load of a5 folders, rubber gloves and plastic cutlery.

The materials we brought were to make samples. The samples weren't anything specific but just to see what interesting shapes we could make and any wild ways we could manipulate the materials. 

These were the materials I brought in.

These were the samples that I created.

We were asked to create a minimum of 6 samples. I found the task quite demanding. This was because the selection of materials I chose really weren't the best. I failed to select materials that could easily be transformed and manipulated easily. One of the materials I brought in was a selection of plastic cutlery but because of their rigidness I couldn't really find a use for them. Every time I tried to bend them or cut them they'd snap. Eventually after many failed attempts I just gave up and decided to stick with the rubber gloves and folders. 

Once we had created the samples it was now our job to put them onto the mannequin. A quick and cheap way for us to do this was to photocopy each of our samples and attach it that way. We only had one of each of our samples and photocopying was a great way to get multiple copies that we could play with. 

It certainly felt strange using paper instead of fabric on a mannequin but the point was just to experiment and get to grips with how a fashion designer would go about designing an accessory or garment. 

These are some of the designs: