Tuesday, January 25, 2011

IDcreatures Official Launch

Yesterday, January 24th 2011, me and Karla Soria decided to officially launch the website idcreatures.com, a website dedicated to helping designers improve their visual communication skills.  We've been working hard at the content, and I spent most of yesterday visually tweaking the website so it looks pretty damn good I gotta say.  So check it out, watch some videos, read some articles, and subscribe to our RSS feed!

Sunday, January 23, 2011

I'll be moving soon!

I'm developing a new website for myself and I'll be integrating this blog into it, so sometime in the next week or so perhaps I'll be moving the content from this blog to there.  Blogger was starting to tire me anyway, and I thought it might be better to build the blog just how I wanted it from the ground up.  I've been developing it on the Wordpress.org platform.  Its been a week of hair pulling frustration due to my initial lack of understanding of css coding, but I'm getting there.  Here's a little preview of what it'll look like! 


Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Cologne IMM Furniture Fair - Presenting the Ramazzotti Lounge

As a continuation of our Ramazzotti lounge design project, a few students fine tuned the designs, made new models, and also an exhibit to display at the IMM Cologne Furniture Fair.  This was a great opportunity for us to display our work, and contrary to my previous feelings about the design, I think it looks pretty nice (except the towering "visual center".  Today was my shift to stand at the exhibit and talk to people, so I took the chance to take some pictures...

Oh, and I just noticed that my camera captures reds horrendously...yuck.

Our little stand, with the models both 1:1 and 1:10 and the exhibit behind it.  And the bar, of course.

Sitting.

Looks nice eh?

Our professor inspecting the results.

Me being a human billboard.

Getting drunk on the job? I think not...

Group sitting!

One great thing about working there today was that I was right next to the Dezeen Talks, which were quite interesting.

Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs.

Mr. Fairs speaking with Stefan Diez, a German designer who had some very worldly things to say.  Maybe I'll do a post on the Dezeen talks later on...

Monday, January 17, 2011

Doodles on Cheap Paper

I've been sketching a lot the past few days, trying to consciously improve my skills, and also just doodling a lot.  I have a lot of these sheets of crappy brown greyish paper that I just draw and draw and draw on.  They're too big to scan, so I took some pictures!  I've been drawing mostly cars these few days.  I really really cannot draw cars well, but I've always wanted to and they're great for practicing elipses!  I didn't grow up in a culture of cars, so I barely know what a car looks like from heart.  I copied a lot of car sketches from various places like IDsketching, before actually trying my own.

Doodlin'

Vroom vroom!

Phone / TV remote..?

This car was actually traced.  I needed to understand the shape of real cars first.

Check this guy out.

IDCreatures.com tutorials up!

Today my friend Karla put up my first set of tutorials for IDCreatures.com.  They're pretty simple tutorials, more like demos actually because I don't get into any specific techniques or workflows.  Just sketching some bottle objects.  I really need more practice drawing on camera, it makes me pretty nervous.  And since I can't bend over my sketch I have a hard time seeing what I'm drawing sometimes.  You can tell there is a slight difference between the quality of the sketches there and the ones shown in the previous post.  With more practice on camera, hopefully I can be just as comfortable.  Anyway, check out my tutorials at IDcreatures.com!


Sunday, January 16, 2011

Sketches

I've been leafing through some of my old sketches.  Some of them aren't bad, but some of them I cringe to look at now.  I wonder if I've improved or uh....de-proved?








Thursday, January 13, 2011

Daily Sketch Practice + Tutorial Fail

Was meant to be a video tutorial for idcreatures, but the camera stopped recording 3/4 the way through my demo because it ran out of space.  Oh well, try again tomorrow.  Here's the first part of it anyway, no sound though.

Recording during the day gives me much, much better lighting since I have no professional lighting setup.  However, it seems like I turned the exposure up too high so its a little bit too bright.  Also, I seem to maneuver off camera a lot.  You can tell I need to get used to this drawing while being filmed business....  Oh yeah, superfluous arrows just in case you didn't know how a squirt bottle works.



Wednesday, January 12, 2011

IDcreatures, visual communication, sketching tutorials website

Recently I've started collaborating with my friend Karla Soria on her website idcreatures.com.  Basically its a site with both free tutorials and paid content that helps designers develop their visual communication techniques.  So far I have done two videos for idcreatures, and expect to be doing more in the future.  Here is the first one I did, basically doing a rough sketch of a men's body wash bottle.  Now, I don't claim my sketching to be great, but I'm sure this will help some people out.  Check out idcreatures.com for more awesome tutorials by Karla.  I expect the site to become a useful resource for design students and hobbyists alike.






Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Design Museums - Nuremberg, Frankfurt

In the course of my holiday travels around Germany, I got to visit two design museums.  One is the New Museum in Nuremberg.  Another one is the Museum of Applied Art in Frankfurt.  While many of the exhibits were cool, I found the information to be a bit disconnected.  In the New Museum, the information was often very small, and away from the actual pieces and also of course, in German mostly (though that is my fault that I can't understand it well enough).  In the Museum of Appleid Art, the information was in English, but the pieces were nothing I hadn't seen before.  Mostly design "classics" that everyone has seen and read about a million times like the Wassily Chair, Juicy Salif, etc.  Anyway, here are some highlights.

Cool stacking chairs.  Didn't find any information..

A portable TV designed by Philippe Starck.  It looks like its made of...cork..?

Droog Design chair.  Droog is usually too artsy fartsy for my taste.  Pretty cool chair though.

Uhh....I can only assume more Droog, since there was no information.

The nobody chair.  This is really cool.  It's by Danish design company Komplot and it is made entirely of recycled plastic bottles made into PET felt.

Displays showing how the chair was made.  Let me see if I can get a youtube link...

Really awesome display of the process.  It looks kinda like a manta ray flying down and turning into a chair.



Giant shoes by Zaha Hadid.

Concrete...chair?  Must be cold.

A display of chairs by Ron Arad.  Many iconic designs I've seen in books but never in person before. 

Oh art, how you puzzle me.

We're at the Museum of Applied Art in Frankfurt now.  This was part of a display of work by Argentinian designers.  Those hanging lamps are pretty nice.  I like now the "hook" is built into the form.

Too....crowded.....chairs...no...room...to...breathe..


Braun classics.  Never seen an actual one before. Beautiful.

Braun radio.  Cool.

The era of translucent plastics.  *shudder*

At least Apple does it right.

I've noticed a device like this at least once more on my trip.  What is it? A richter scale? Someone enlighten me?
EDIT: I've been informed by one of my German friends that it is a measuring device for the properties of air such as humidity, so they can keep it constant throughout the year.  Really makes sense that I've seen these a lot in museums then!

Can't remember who this is by.  Looks like a zeppelin.

Swatch case.  mmm....Swiss cheese...