A Plant to Father Time

About 2 weeks ago, me and the housemates decided to grow some plants in lieu of my guinea pig passing away. We planted some peas, tomatoes and strawberries and i must admit, i was fairly excited about it. I checked them everyday until they finally grew. I was so impressed with this process that i decided to plant some more. They just started sprouting which gave me the idea that maybe i should document this plants life cuz afterall, every plant is a little prayer that fathers time. You can literally see how much time has passed from looking at plants and their growth cycle.

So here it is, our first batch of plants.

Some beautiful peas plants which would hopefully provide some much needed legumes in the house. There is a sad little one in the bottom left corner which i don't think will make it. Those darn slugs just go nuts over these.

These guys are the tomatoes that are just starting to grow. I think we'll have to pluck some of them out because they seem a little close to each other.


Here's a baby pea plant that was just planted about 7 days ago. Its just starting to germinate so we can see the progress of this one a lot better as i post pictures of it growing.
Some more tomatoes, but this time they seem even more clustered together. I think we will definitely have to pluck some of those out. Makes me sad that some of them will have to die just because we didn't read the instructions on how far to plant them in the first place.

The strawberries seem to have gone MIA so i can't say much about them or maybe they've starting sprouting and just look sorta like weeds so i may have plucked them out.

I will be posting new photos of their progress every few days so both you and i can have a look at exactly how much and how fast they're growing. I might leave a camera on them for a day just to see if they grow within that day.

A Little Awkward but Worth It

A bit of procrastination in the right places led me to something pretty interesting. I dunno if i'd like it if i were on the other end of these things but i wouldn't mind being the person who designed it.

This is the Diesel Denim Gallery in Aoyama, Japan. This place was built as Diesels signature store as well as a space for art installations and exhibitions for talented upcoming artists throughout the year.

This year, Makoto Tanijiri and Masaaki Takahashi have created a forest art installation for Diesel's clothing line. This has been named "Nature Factory"

Makoto Tanijiri: Principle of Suppose Design Office has design over 60 residential spaces. Also works with commercial and exhibition spaces.

Masaaki Takahashi: Independant writer and editor, specializes in various fields of design.
Looks pretty cool but i would never walk in a store like this expecting to buy anything at all. Its a lil intimidating and i feel like i could get lost in it. The idea was for it to look like a forest and i guess it succeeded because i wouldn't venture in a forest without my compass or else i probably wouldn't come back out, at least not for a few days.


This has to be one of the most borderline products for the world right now. All this sensitivity towards violence at the moment and somebody decides to come up with this thing. I would've love to be the one getting all the complaints from this one because i bet that there will also be tons of people buying this too so those complaints with just strengthen my bond with this product.

This is the Persuader Bag
This is designed by James Piatt constructed by lasercut leather with absolutely no stitching involved. Features a cellphone compartment as the clip.

I can't help but laugh a little thinking about all the reactions this would get out of people.

Something more to my liking

I was updating on a band that i've been listening to for quite a long while now and i realized that i pretty much love all of their album artwork. That is until their most recent one. I really question their thought process or at least their artist's thought process.

Here's a few of their album covers from oldest to newest. They have waaayyy too many for me to post them all, i still need to collect all their cds.

And finally......BAM!.....what is this?!?!

Why are there so many colours? Why is it so cartoony?
I'm afraid to listen to it because if this is any indication that they've changed their style of music then its definitely not something to look forward to.
They've lost that fierce look, that look for something deeper in their music. Now they just look like a band craving for attention. I'm not jumping the bandwaggon, i'm just saying that their choice of album art is to be questioned, if their music is still the same heavy metal i grew to love then i will continue listening.

Hair

This is an ad by MTV. I don't know what it means and its kinda scary to be honest. I will however give props to the animation done because it looks very cool and is very smooth.
If anyone knows what this is about, please do tell.

To Be or Not To Be

Trying to find a new perspective on things, i decided to see how professional designers are seeing things in our world. How they interpret things within our environment into design that would not only fit into our world, but also stand out in its place. I went on www.ted.com to look up talks from designers to see what they had to share. Most of the talks didn't really stick to me but there was one designer who's opinion or point of view really stuck to me. Unfortunately for that designer, it didn't stick in a good way.

That person is Rob Forbes

Rob Forbes is the founder of the Design company Design Within Reach. Simply put, what he does is he will go out into the city with his camera and take photos of everything that seems the tiniest bit interesting to him whether it be a pattern or a structural marvel, he will take a snap shot of it. He talks about taking over 5000 photos in a year. He will then go through each of these photos later to see if there really is anything he likes in them. He will also look into the meaning of them such as why a flag was hung outside a building, if there were any historical meaning to it. He will also go to the most common of places such as supermarkets and take pictures of the way produce is stacked and why people will go to that stack of oranges to pick one that they like.
Although they do seem interesting, many argue that he is really just stealing other people's design and putting it in a different context. Putting a pattern you found on the side walk onto the surface of a car doesn't justify design enough. His reasoning behind patterns is that they hide bad forms which i agree to a certain extent because i did look at some forms that had patterns on them and realized without that pattern, it would really be nothing.

This picture was pretty cool though because Mr. Forbes rides his scooter to work everyday and parks it here with all the other two wheelers. On this specific day, he looked across as he finished parking his scooter, that all the other bikes were red. That must've been a special day.

He claims that everything looks the same in the modern world which is why there are designers around. His perspective is a way of looking at simple things that appeal to character and personality. I don't think he's really done that because the forms and patterns he took have already done their job in their respective locations, he is making money off people by giving them that exact same impression with nothing added.
I do however like his look on the simpler things in life. We may not look much into it but construction sites are full of interesting wonders both in past and future. Forbes says that he is capturing the art of construction sites because they are a sign of progress and in the end, all we see if the finished piece, we don't see what happened. So he captures this still picture to remember what has been put into it, and the design of it all before the final structure has even been built.

Those were the most interesting points from his talk even though i may disagree with them. There were comments from others that i agreed with such as one person who said he can't believe that Forbes is getting paid the salary that he does for pretty much doing nothing.
But then again, he's well off for doing what he's doing so what can i say about it besides good job.

Book/Wine/DVD/Toys shelf. It can pretty much store anything that will fit into the slots. Made with expanded Polypropylene which is the same material as bike helmets and car bumpers.

Inspiration along the way

Through the research and messing about, i've seen somethings that i kinda thought were interesting. The use of materials is rather interesting and it sorta sparked me to think. If i don't have the money to make the real thing out of the real material, i could always make a cheaper material look like the real thing. Now if only i could find these cheap versatile materials.


This clock is called the Wedge-wall clock. Designed by Linus Berglund. Very interesting recessed clock that plays a bit of trickery on the eyes depending on which angle you look at it from. This product is made with bookbinding fabric yet from a distance it looks like a heavy piece of concrete....at least it does to me.

Now something along the lines of my project right now. This is a bedside table that is combined with lighting made to save space called the Nod Bedside Night Light by IC design. Although the light is clearly not very practical for reading with or doing anything for that matter, it does look good and the simpleness works well. Since we just learned about rotational moulding this past week, i would guess that this is rotomoulded even though i can't inspect it for seems or touch the material. Again, not practical but the form is interesting and its function is also a good idea.

This is the Gubi Bedside table. Interesting used of plastic, i think acrylic which was bent using a strip heater and then the surface was covered with a thin wood veneer. Simple design and interesting use of the material to create space on the actual product. This is also not limited to just being put on the floor, since it's plastic, it is light enough to be wall mounted too.

Saturday in Design - Day trip

A little late to post but simply because my camera seemed to be reluctant to let me have any of these photos for a while.
A very fun day and kinda which it didn't have to end but it did so all i was left with was photos.
This was a very helpful experience as i got to see what was currently being done in the design world and the different explorations of materials designer used to create their products with.
The free food and drinks definitely kept me going and i must say that the best exhibition by far was Argent and not because they were the nicest people there but i was actually very interested in their exploration of different faucet designs.
Heres some of the photos i managed to get but camera ran out of batteries half way into the trip so some may have to wait a little longer til i can get them off somebody else.


These lights looked very simple but they just created the atmosphere wherever they were placed. They cause you to look at them even though they're not the most interesting thing in the room.

A shelving system that plays with the choice of materials used for the outer panels. The smooth white creates a nice contrast with the wooden panel which has raised circled on the surface. I'm still trying to figure out how they did that because it looks like it would've been done by hand.


I'm not entirely sure what this is but the composition of it was kind of cool. They've used ply to create the bottom half of this lazy boy rocker, and on top, its just a sheet of fabric what seems to be a mix of polyester and something else. I'm not too keen about the colours but the way they made this strong enough to withstand a person lying on top of it was good. i just question how durable this is over time.


I reckon is this a pretty good way to make use of all those wasted corks and wrappers from champagne bottles. They even give them a sense of being an upscale product due to the fact that it is so well made and some have the word "chandon" on them.

Miles said that industrial designers are always the ones crawling around the floor looking under tables and chairs to find out what they're made of while architects and interior designers stand back and stare. I took his advice and went on my hands and knees to find out how this was made. Most of these chairs were designed to have a screw that can go through the legs and the seat to hold them together. Many others have an extra piece under the seat that gives it a bit of thickness so a screw can go through it without piercing the user's bottom as they sit
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Apart from having jager shots, K+N city office had a very innovative product which was a portable office. It had a retractable desk that folded upward. It was really hard to get a good photo of this because something other than a video wouldn't do it justice.