Height x Width x Depth - 3DD Project Evaluation

I was told in the brief that throughout this project I was going to be visualising three dimensional forms in both object and spacial. I was excited to look at each of these in smaller, separate but linked projects. I was most looking forward to the spacial segment of the project as I have worked with three dimensional objects in the fashion project already, however I had not yet worked in a spacial, architectural/interior design way. I have always been interested in making spaces and decorating and filling them in my own preferred way. I begin the object part of this project by choosing practical and impractical objects. I found this a restriction as although the brief for choosing these objects was quite open, I am not an incredibly sentimental person and therefore I found it quite difficult to choose my objects. I was therefore not very enthused about using my objects in the project, and this may be a reason as to why I wasn't incredibly excited throughout this part of the project.

I looked heavily into the designer Zaha Hadid. Although I am not a huge fan of her work as I find it very repetitive and predictable, I am a fan of the curves and overall style of her buildings in particular, opposed to her other products such as her sofa and shoes design. I think that this was very interesting as I found that her work was more influential for me during the object part of the project rather than the spacial part. I was heavily inspired by her sofa design when creating my own sofa from my pen knife, despite not actually liking her design. I new that spacial and architectural design incorporated a lot of calculating, however I didn't quite predict how much it would entail. Although this wasn't too complicated, it was frustrating when I didn't work out the scale of things correctly first time. This was to be expected as I am an amateur in this discipline, nevertheless it was still frustrating and not very enjoyable.   

For both projects I began by researching several designers that work in the appropriate fields. I always find researching designers very interesting as it is always intriguing to see how designers work and how they each come up with different and unique creations. I think that a significant step in my work was the sketching of buildings and objects. Up until this point I wasn't very inspired and therefore this was the first time in the project where I really started thinking about what object I wanted to create as well as the latter problem of how I wanted to go about changing my house. I found timings to be the area in which I struggled the most. I had two weeks for each of the smaller projects, with the first week of each being dedicated to more research based tasks. After completing the research I only had one week to produce and present my new object and space. I felt that in the end I was very rushed in completing my work and that therefore it is not up to the standard that I would have liked it to be. However the fact that I am an amateur in these fields I am proud of the work that I have produced. Feedback throughout the project taught me that I need to focus more on thinking outside of my comfort zone, although there is no real excuse for this, I think that the reasoning behind this is that I spend too long researching and therefore rush myself when creating my ideas and producing them into a final outcome. 

I used several architectural books when creating the floor plans for the spacial part of this project. I found this really helpful as it was good to see how other designers go about creating their designs. The books I used were; 'Drawing into Architecture' by Papadakis and 'Drawings of Architectural Interiors' by John Pile. The main technique that I learnt and used in this project was creating presentation sheets in InDesign. I hadn't worked on InDesign that much up until this project so it was good that due to this project my skills had been improved. Other than that a lot of the other techniques used where transferred from other projects, technical drawing being an example of this. I am thankful that many of the techniques that I have used throughout the projects have been transferable however it would have been nice to experience new techniques and skills.

I think I am a very organised person in the way I work, however I think that sometimes this leads into being a perfectionist, although this isn't necessarily a really bad things, it often leads me into running out of time and therefore I often rush to finish. I would like to change this habit in the future. I do think that I have improved on this throughout projects but there is definitely more room for improvement in this area

Drawing Floor Plans and Making My Beach Villa

I am fond of floor plan drawing apps and have been using them for a while now, so I was very excited to begin drawing one for this project. Although I have created many of my own floor plans in the past, I have never been taught how to produce one in the correct way. This being my first time I thought I did a good job. I chose to use a 1:20 scale to keep my floor plan quite big. I chose to do this as it would be clearer on the page and I think it made it easier for me considering this was my first time. 

Although it was easier to make the floor plan big, when it came to making my cardboard house I think that it would have been easier if I were to make it on a smaller scale. It may have been more complicated but I wouldn't of had to use as much cardboard, and it certainly would have been easier to store. 

I chose different techniques throughout the making of my 'beach villa' such as sticking down the walls with tape and hot glue. I found that the hot glue was a lot neater for my house, however I was constantly changing the walls, so the tape became my preferred adhesive. I chose to change my house into being a beach villa rather than just a house in the same location that I am living currently. I have always be keen to travel and have always wished that my family owned a holiday home in another country. I chose Spain, specifically the island of Mallorca to be the location of my beach villa as it was where I used to go on holiday as a child and therefore has sentimental meaning to me. 

Sketching My House

I started this project by taking photos of my house so that I could sketch it in different ways. These sketches included shutting my eyes which I found particularly interesting, this being because it made me aware of the parts of my house that I remembered and therefore were most important to me, even if I didn't realise it myself. 

I also looked at the good and bad points of my house, taking into to consideration the location of my house as well. I had always thought about what I would want in and around my dream house but I had never actually sat down and written a list of these points. I actually found it quite difficult after putting down the points that I have always thought about changing for my house. I think that because I had never thought very extravagantly about how I would change my house I found it difficult to come up with unique architectural developments for my house.

  

3dd Changing the Use of my Object

I decided to take my practical object further for this project and change its use of being a pocket knife, nail file and pair of scissors and alter it. I chose this object over the fork as the uses that the object already had were more interesting in my opinion, and I was therefore more intrigued to start manipulating the object so it would be suitable for a different use.  

After some rough designing I found that the scissor part of the pen knife was a better shape to manipulate into another use. I came up with a few different ideas, but soon found turning the scissors into a sofa was more interesting. I really liked the fact that if you sat on the sofa you wouldn't know that the sofa was in fact in the shape of a pair of scissors unless you saw it from above. 

3DD Orthographic Drawings

I had heard of Orthographic drawings before but I wasn't entirely sure how exactly to go about producing one subject of my impractical and practical objects. I decided that to practice the technique I would create an orthographic drawing of a product that one of the designers that I looked at, Karim Rashid, created. I took a simple product, a chair, to practice with and after this I managed to grasp the technique. 

I didn't quite get the hang of the technique straight away and therefore my first try is not one hundred percent correct. However I chose to include this in my work as it shows a learning process. 

3DD Practical and Impractical Objects

To begin the three dimensional design project, I choose an object that had a good use, that I enjoyed using and was practical. I then chose an object that I didn't use very much, didn't like using and was impractical to me. For the practical object I chose my swiss army knife and for the impractical one I choose a fork that lets water in and therefore is not enjoyable to use. I took these objects and drew them in different ways and with different media. I also drew them with my eyes closed. I thought that this was a really difficult as it really made me think about the objects' shapes in detail, something that you wouldn't really think about when using them in every day life. I used biro pens as well as pencils in graphite and various other colours. I think this was a good decision as the colours gave the sketches a more realistic feel, even if they were drawn with my eyes closed.

Fashion Accessory Evaluation

At first I thought that this project was going to be really difficult seeing as though we were gonna be using everyday objects as our materials to make our fashion accessory. We were told that this project will introduce us to 3D problem solving and I was keen to get started and see what I would have to adapt to for the duration of the four week project. This was the aspect of the brief I was most looking forward to. I did think that using only everyday objects would be a big restriction for me for this project and that this would be the aspect of the project that I would struggle with. 

I looked at Iris Van Herpen during the fashion project and I really enjoyed looking at her work for inspiration when it came to creating my fashion accessory. She has created a lot of chest, neck and general upper body pieces in her career and although they are all different, they are all easily identifiable as being her work and I like this about her work. A lot of the times when artists have clear continuity throughout their work after some time they can become quite repetitive and you can almost guess what they are going to bring out next. I learnt that sometimes the best designs can be those that have come from experimentations or were even experiments themselves to begin with. Therefore when it came to designing my accessory I chose to try to be experimental in the way that I worked. I think this worked well for me as I didn't think much about what I was doing during the design process and I just went with the way the paper folded or the way the pin attached to the mannequin/page. The experimental element of this project also reflects the trends at the moment I think. I also have seen that the a lot of the trends at the moment tend to be minimal and monochrome, both things that I feel come through in my accessory.

I began this project by finding inspiration. I did this by looking at other designers such as Eric Halley and Anne Valerie Hash. I focused on the accessories that these designers had created rather than garments as the brief told me that I myself would create a fashion accessory. After looking at some designers I went on to make a mood board. I focused on the colour pallet that I wished to use which was a monochrome pallet with some blues. I chose this as it mirrored the monochrome fashion trends that are popular today. I chose to look at architecture for my mood board as it is something that I am interested in and I wanted the structural side of it to come through in my accessory when it came to making and designing it. I started the designing process by creating several samples out of house hold items including string, bottle lids and pen lids. After putting together the samples I photocopied them lots of times to represent how the sample could be repeated to create an accessory. I took the photocopies, cut them out and manipulated them before pinning them to a mannequin in different ways. This was very much an experimental task and I used the time to think and try out different areas of the body to figure out where it was that I wanted my accessory to go. This was a significant step in the project as it was here that I started to think that I wanted my accessory to be a chest or shoulder piece. Throughout the project I also picked up valuable skills such as how to use a heat press machine, and also reminded myself on how to use a sewing machine, something that I was already comfortable in using. I then decided to make five more mood boards, one for casting, another one for hair and makeup, one for styling, one for location and one for lighting/mood. I found making these extremely helpful as it was a simple visual way to plan out the photoshoot of my accessory. I originally wanted a female model but due to timings I could only find a male one, however now looking at the photos I think that it is actually better when a man is photoed in the accessory and the image is far more powerful. Another problem I encountered while working on this project was the fact that I wanted my accessory to be strong, heavily structured but simple. At first I was unsure about how I was going to be able to do this considering I needed to have a fastening in order to keep it on the body while being worn. Eventually I came up with using an old pair of jeans as the base and using the button and zipper fastening that was already a part of the initial garment as the fastening for my accessory. This problem solving also worked as a positive for my accessory as I was reusing a piece or clothing rather than going out and buying new fabric. I was told throughout the project to experiment with other areas rather than the chest, neck and shoulders, and I did make sure I amended this and went back into my designs to experiment more with other parts of the body. I found that I was still keen to work in the area I had previously chosen but I was glad that I went back and made sure that I had made the right decision.

I used many designers' websites to reference and search for inspiration for my work. I also looked at fashion magazines as research for the photography portion of the project in particular. I have remained organised throughout this project which I think has become very important. I was very tight for time during the four week period and despite falling ill for one of the weeks, I still managed to keep track on all of my work and managed to produce an accessory that I am proud of. In this project I have learnt how to use a heat press machine, something that is a good skill to have for a designer. I really enjoyed learning to use the heat press and I found it really interesting to see what i could create with it. I particularly enjoyed creating different shapes by melting part of empty water bottle.

I think that time management was the main area that needed improvement in this project as I had to move on from research and begin designing quite quickly and therefore my research and influences are lacking. I would like to go back and make the links from my research and my final outcome clearer to ensure that it is clear how my research came into my final accessory.