Product Design

THE LINE

In this example of product design, there is nothing else to the design besides the lines that comprise the design.  As a computer decoration, having too many extra colors, tones, textures, shapes etc and such might take away from the original design.  The lines is this are, essentially, moving dots, connected so close together that they become continuous.  This design has taken, in the form of lines, the designer's vision and has put it into a palpable reality.  It has a fluid linear quality that is undistracted by other elements (mentioned above).  These lines are tightly and clearly defined, not the kind of lines one would find in a rough sketch.  Because of this design's simplicity in only using lines, the spareness has a dramatic effect.

(Dondis p.42-44)

http://www.webspiderz.us/articles/category/creative-designs/

TONE

This picture depicts a rough sketch of what could potentially turn into a real product- a "transferable golf bag."The intensity of darkness or lightness of anything seen is tone, and here it is portrayed in the varying gradations of the blue, red, yellows colors, and the grey shading.  Being a rough sketch, this figure cannot rely alone on lines to depict the designer's idea to the fullest.  so with the aid of tone, the designer can bring dimension to the product idea he/she wishes to show.  By using tone, the illusion of reality can be captured in a 2-dimensional image.  

(Dondis p.47-50)

http://www.designmyidea.com/design.html

COLOR

This product stands out because of its color. "Color is, in fact, loaded with information and one of the most pervasive visual experiences we all have in common" (Dondis p. 50).  Different colors have different meanings- red for example can mean "danger, and love, and warmth, and life"(50) while yellow can give the impression of being welcoming and cheery.  For this product-- which happens to be a remote control to control electronic devices like the volume of your music or the channel on your television-- the bright green really POPS out at the viewer and catches their attention.  The designer probably intended it to look fresh and bright, as well as give off a feeling of "new"--other things that are bright green include freshly sprouted leaves, for example.  Also, the color is a good way of preventing customers from misplacing it in their house I bet. The hue, or the actual color is green; green is one of the secondary colors (the others being orange and violet).  It is also saturated, meaning the actual color is pure and not diluted.  The combination of it being a saturated secondary hue also gives the impression it is not primary or elementary like the colors red, blue, or yellow- that it is more sophisticated than that.

(Dondis p. 50-55)

http://www.sawse.com/2008/01/10/the-5-most-interesting-product-designs-of-2007/

For this week, I attempted to solve these two puzzles (pictured above) with my roommate Ellery. The first puzzled we tried is the blue one with the stars; the second was the multi-colored hexagon with triangles.

The first puzzle required us to connect all 16 stars without lifting our pencil off the paper, and by only using straight lines to go through the center of each star. Both of us tried looking for patterns in the stars- what kind of pattern could we make with 6 straight lines that would pass through all the stars?  In our mind's eye, we had to fill in mentally what we thought would be a good solution, because to keep tracing and retracing lines on the paper itself would've been confusing.  The process of solving the puzzle also included finding possible solutions through visual reasoning- "if I were to draw this line here, it wouldn't work, but perhaps..." etc.  In addition, we had to work with the available space and try to come up with a method to fill it.  In the end, we couldn't come up with the solution.

In the second puzzle we were asked to find one or more of the triangles that we were able to completely draw all the lines shown in the triangle without lifting our pencil from the paper, and without tracing any lines over.  Ellery got this one right away- she found the upper left hand triangle (the one made up of triangles) could be drawn as the directions instructed. Her reasoning was that she tried to find the simplest triangle first, and see if that would work.  In other words, she visually analyzed the figures she was given first, and then visually induced which one may give her a solution.  Also in this way, she categorized the shapes from easiest to hardest to draw in her mind. For me, I thought the triangle with the circle could somehow be a solution, but realized it would be impossible to not retrace any lines.  I also tried to categorize the shapes by what I thought would be easiest to draw, and I sought patterns within each shape.  There was actually another "solution triangle"--the one with the square in the middle.  But we didn't try finding it because we didn't realize there was more than one answer.

The field of design I am hoping to go into is product design, and one of the kinds of products I hope to be able to design is furniture.  This picture shows a kid's bunk-bed design by Zalf. Its yellow color sets it apart from the rest of the room and shows that it is spatially grouped together, although the adjoining desk is physically separate from the bed.  The shape and size of the bed make it easy to discern that it is the dominant feature in the collection; that it is the main focus and the other things that go along with it are accessories.  The way the desk is oriented to the bed (it's facing it) shows the relationship between both pieces of furniture (showing they are together).  This set is very simplistic and has nice, clean edges.  Overall, the dominating element is the color- it pops out at the viewer first, and manages to hold the viewer's attention throughout the time they are looking at the piece.

picture source:
http://www.trendir.com/interiors/kids-bedroom-from-zalf-rocks-1.html

Visual perception; top-down visual processing

"The goal of information design must be to design displays so that visual queries are processed both rapidly and correctly for every important cognitive task the display is intended to support."

In this example of top-down visual processing, the first and immediate thought the viewer has is that, "this is a table."  Top-down visual processing is viewing an object or a scene with a goal in mind, and although part of the brain's activity is focused on assessing available information, the other part is attention-driven, focusing on a specific goal.  In this case, the viewer may have the goal to use this table for decoration, or as a sturdy place to set something.  The most relevant information to the viewer is one, that this is a table and two, that it's designed to look like an orange.  So the viewer uses the information that they just gathered from initial observation and directing it with whatever focus they are driven by, and what results is a matter of focusing on the relevant bits of the table, and ignoring the irrelevant parts.  For example, the table's legs are under-highlighted and probably would not serve a greater purpose, therefore in top-down processing the legs are likely to be the last thing the person notices.  In contrast, the table top can serve several purposes, and therefore is the focus in top-down visual processing.