I was looking for some inspiration and found a pretty crazy storyboard on Massive Black's site. It's got a great graphic novel feel and includes camera directions- looking through it feels almost exactly like watching a movie- check it out here! http://massiveblack.com/mbNew/html/concept13.shtml

Here's the final render- I modeled these in Alias and rendered them in Imagestudio. The white table portion of the background was part of the render scene, and after the image was rendered, I took it into photoshop and imported a picture that I took of a table in the DAAP cafe. I set the render on multiply to let the texture of the table show through. I whited out the areas behind the USB sticks and put a semi-transparent layer of white for the table surface to lighten it up. You can also import an image into a render scene with Imagestudio, which is an awesome feature, but in this case, I wanted the table to be relatively white in order to make the USBs pop. And since the tables in the cafe are similar in color to the USBs, it was more convenient to lighten up the surface the way I did it.

Here are the orthos for some families of USBs I designed. I chose the brand Oakley mainly because of their instantly recognizable brand identity. Personally, I think Oakley sunglasses can be a bit over the top, to the extent that I would feel ridiculous wearing them, but all the swoops, curves, and angles make for some fun USB-ing.

This is my first round of teasers. I'm showing a lot of work in it- maybe I'm giving it away too easily?

Check out my portfolio!

With this new portfolio, I've been trying to cut out the unnessesary in order to concisely get my point across. Here's the new page- instead of labling each page PROBLEM STATEMENT or whatever other intelligence-insulting title I used to have, I gave each project a definite name -even though I hate naming things- and try to explain a bit about what I was trying to accomplish or explore with each stage of development. I replaced the image of the guy with a cicada. Locust-why Locust? In my quest for a design that an adrenaline-pumped metal-grinding dude would want I inevitably came up with something that looked kind of aggressive, otherworldly, insectlike, weird... snivelyesque as people have called it. It had a certain cicadalike quality about it. Which I realized along the way, but really, it was pretty fitting. Metal grinders and cicadas both have that shrill chirping hum, and in the case of this project where the grinder can attach onto the user's arm- the image of the bug hanging upside down from the branch ties in metaphorically on several levels. Enough about bugs though. I think I get across the same basic message with the two and a half short lines of call-outs as I did with the entire essay in the first one. That felt good.

Portfolio-ing

So this is the first project page from the power tool project in my old portfolio. There was way too much text- I have no idea what I was thinking. The call-outs were only a little more noticeable than the rest of the text, being about the same size and same color. I wanted to give an intro to the project and provide some background as to who the user was and why the project wound up the way it did, but I got way too wordy. The image of the guy doesn't do a whole lot for me either. I don't see much of a point in showing a picture of the user unless the photograph really embodies the spirit of the product. I guess that's kind of the case with any inspirational image though. For the first portfolio we had to make back in sophmore year, I remember having a page preceding each project that was jam packed with images. I wanted the people viewing my portfolio to be able to see every single thing that inspired me, to see how my mind got to where it did for each project. Looking back though, those pages were heinous. I definitely do see value in showing my mental process as well as the development of the project, but I'm becoming more aware of the need to refine it. I go back and forth as to whether it is a waste of space to show pretty pictures you stole from the internet before your work, and right now i'm leaning slightly toward yes. Mainly because the method of using a few inspirational images can get the user excited and visually highlight certain metaphors, providing insight into the designs. Of course part of me believes that if the metaphor is there, I should just trust that the viewer will recognize and be able to understand it with even less explanation. Maybe I'll try that next time I update my portfolio.

It begins…

I’m a junior in Industrial Design at the University of Cincinnati, and I’ve been introduced to blogging as a useful tool to get ideas out there and show some of the work I’ve done. We are constantly being an active part of the design process- brainstorming, sketching, modelmaking- but don’t necessarily spend a lot of time talking about it. So this is a great opportunity and I hope to gain experience discussing design this quarter.
I also really want to improve in the area of storytelling in order to be more concise when visually communicating ideas and trying to sell them to people. I hope to apply this to my studio project as well as my updated portfolio.
I need to improve with time management so I can quit getting so ridiculously down to the wire with projects. The gant chart we are required to do will hopefully help me stay on track by keeping me mindful of how much time I spend on different parts of the creative process, so maybe I can get less bogged down.
I would like to improve my sketching skills/speed and increase my productivity. I want to really focus on thinking through and flushing out every idea I can think of for each concept, and come up with as many widely different concepts as possible. Using post-its or quick thumbnail sketches tends to help with this. Any time-saving tricks for Illustrator, Photoshop, or InDesign would help a lot, and even just getting advice on when to use one over the other would come in handy.