Ramazzotti Lounge

One of the projects I'm a part of in my semester abroad is designing a lounge for the Italian liquor company Ramazzotti for use in trade fairs, fashion shows, and similar events.  The company will actually produce our final design and hope to have it in use by January, which is very exciting but the whole process seems very rushed.  The class is rather large, and we are only producing one final design in the end.  It will be interesting how this works out...

Sampling Ramazzotti glasses.  No alcohol though :(

I had never heard of Ramazzotti before coming to Europe... According to popular opinion, it seems its a drink for old people, but Ramazzotti wanted our lounge design to tailor to a young professional target market...Perhaps looking for a change in brand image?

They have a very interesting glass design.  It's very heavy and holds deceptively little liquid.  Just what you want for a bar glass I guess.

With a class so large we came up with almost 100 different concepts for various aspects of the lounge from mechanical drink holders to crazy drinking games.

We then split up into smaller groups to work on individual concepts.  A group of 20 is really impossible to work with.

Designer Handwriting?

What does a designer's handwriting look like? Is it all caps? Is it messy? Or clean? Is it different for different purposes? Well I've been thinking about these questions a lot.

Some time ago I changed my writing style to all caps because I thought it was more "design-y" and clearer.  But now I'm finding a lot of my writing (especially large blocks of text) to be hard to read and visually convoluted because its all caps.  Who knew trying to write in lower and upper case again would be so hard? I can barely do it anymore without concentrating hard.  But I'm seriously considering returning lower case letters to my "designer handwriting".

That was a random post.

An Update at KISD

So last week my official first week of KISD projects started.  Currently I'm in one service design project about interventions in public spaces to promote physical activity, and another one about designing a lounge.  I have to say, the atmosphere here overall seems more grown up and intellectual compared to RISD, but RISD has a much more fun and tightly knit vibe. 

EDIT: Picture deleted - that bright orange was bugging the crap outta me.

That's what we spent most of our time doing this week.

EDIT: Picture deleted - so was the orange in this one.

Oh and brainstorming.

The school has a cool cafe type hang out area where most people go between classes.

Our professor for the lounge project.  Funny guy.

Intermot Koeln 2010

Went to a motorcycle convention this weekend in Cologne.  So much ID porn....

The Laws of Simplicity

Today I finished a book I've slowly been reading and absorbing this week: The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda.  Yes, the RISD one.  I found the book sitting on my flat mate's book shelf here in Germany.  I had no idea he was this famous...

Anyway, I found it to be an enjoyable read that was easy to follow.  The book is divided into ten laws, each of which has a small section about it.  Many of the concepts outlined could be applied to industrial design too.  Its strange reading a book by someone you've met and talked to.  You can almost imagine them saying the words.