Designing a shopping experience

Many store now are creating an overall experience that extends pass the checkout. Victoria secret wraps your underwear up in colored tissue paper and places it in the coordinating bag. Steve Madden now puts purses in reusable shopping bags so you will use them again and think of them often. Upscale purse stores package your purse in a box and put your receipt into a small folder. During the holidays many stores have switched away from plain white gift boxes and create their own specialized boxes. Why are companies spending so much money on these seemly unimportant things? Because executives realize that these designs contribute to an overall feeling. By designing an experience it is more likely to get people to return. The executives have come to understand the value of design from what order they place the merchandise to the moment you exit the store. The field of design is growing daily as a society whose needs are meet we have moved to designing for wants.

designing for the workplace

The process of designing for ones professional life can be very sticky. I find myself faced with this dilemma now. I need to start creating a portfolio of my work for when I begin interviewing in January. One does not want a portfolio that has no personality, just blank white paper. On the other side of the spectrum however, I have seen several girls who have gone before me whose portfolio looked more like a do it yourself scrapbook page than a professional tool. When we are designing these books it is important for us to remember that as recent graduates we need to set forth a more professional appearance in order to be taken seriously. Therefore we need to design these books with the message that we are competent professionals. We must strike a balance between personality and professionalism. In order to do this I think it is a useful tool to look at businesses and the designs they choose. We should do this because many businesses have paid a great deal of money to have someone design something that not only shows they culture of the company but still let the viewer know they are serious.

My design project

My first attempt

Recently I as looking at some wrapping paper I had relieved and there was a very cool flower design on it. I wanted to do something with it but it was a small piece and I wasn’t sure what I could do. I do not have a talent for drawing. But figure it I could draw the flower I could make it the colors I wanted. I combated this by photocopying the paper and then tracing the image with a makeshift light box. I then went and got various other pictures of flowers and followed the same process. I am trying to pick flowers with similar characteristics. This way they will look like they may have gone together even thought they are from random places. After doing a few test runs I decided the marker was not the right medium it ran on the paper ad you could still see some pencil lines underneath the ink. I have now decided that I am going to go down and get a canvas and give it a shot with some acrylic paint.

Blog #9

Don’t design for everyone. It’s impossible. All you end up doing is designing something that makes everyone unhappy.
— Leisa Reichelt
I found this quote to be very appropriate after watching the Maya Lin video. I found it on designwashere.com. It is from Leisa Reichelt, a designer who specializes of User Experience and User Centered Design. I find that often when I am working on a craft project I have people putting in their input as to how I should make something or how I should have done if differently. I understand how frustrating this can be since often the people putting in their input do not know how to knit or crochet. It can be aggravating trying to explain you have to do it a certain way because otherwise the rest of the pattern will not work. Most people became interested in design because they get something out of it. When you start designing for other people it can take the joy out of the process. Though it does not apply to my crafting it can also destroy he message the designer is trying to convey. If you design something that one group likes and you try to change aspects of it to try to please another group you may loose the qualities the first group liked in the first place. I think designers should take a cue from Leisa and design for themselves if someone else likes it great but no one else does at least you can stand behind it.

Can something be mass-produced and still be individualistic?

I would say yes. After my group discussion project I found myself pondering this question. I thought of interior designer. For the most part, they pick a paint color which someone at the paint company designed. They pick furniture that others have designed and built, pictures others have painted and so on. There are many other careers design fields that require people to compile things others have made, such as costume and landscape designers. While they may not themselves have the skills to drawn, paint of sculpt they express their individual opinion through their ability to make a cohesive whole out of many parts. So why is it that if I go to chain stores and purchase pieces of my wardrobe and I thought to be unoriginal? I picked the pieces and designed a way to make them a cohesive whole. I feel this theory can be extended to all consumer products. Does my refrigerator have to match my cabinets? No, but doesn’t the fact that I want it to show my personality?

blog #4

This picture was accompanying an article discussing the environment. I particularly like the way the artist likened the fragility of the balance of people and earth with an egg. The artist took a large scale problem and brought it down into an everyday object that is incredibly accessible. The artist may have chosen to use an egg because there is some debate as to if the Earth is actually egg shaped. I also find it interesting that the artist chose to set the yolk on fire. The spilled yolk within itself could represent a loss of life, the loss of all of our lives if the planet were to become inhospitable. The fact that he set in on fire gives it a more dramatic flare, it is not only the end of life but the total annihilation. I am curious if the artist set the yolk on fire to represent the magma spilling out from the cracked Earth. In this picture the egg does not looked like it has been internationally cracked but more like it was dropped. This shows the how suddenly the end came.

Universal Design

As part of my degree I have been required to take classes on disability, where the issue of universal design has been discussed. In the video “Maya Lin” Maya speaks about how important it was to keep the integrity of her design, perhaps this desire prevents other designers from accepting the idea of universal design. This point was even brought up in the video when some veterans complained the original design would prevent those veterans in wheelchairs from being able to access the site. Maya spoke a lot about creating the site for the veterans so it seemed odd to me that it would not be accessible for some of them, especially since I’m sure the topic of assessable buildings and the ADA act must have been covered in the Harvard architecture classes. While it is understandable that older buildings are not accessible it is surprising to see newer buildings still are not. While a building may have a ramp or elevators it is still not enough for some people. In the increasingly poplar shows about little people we see the difficultly they encounter on a daily basis trying to interact with the world around them. Take something like a water fountain for example there are usually two, a “regular” height and a “wheelchair” height. If there was to be a third “little people” height it would also be accessible to children. Many accommodations benefit “able” bodied people as well so perhaps it would behoove designers to begin embracing some of these elements.