hydrant market research

So for design and production I'm planning on using the fire hydrant to base a line off of. So I decided to look and see what products are already out there. If you don't already know, I love fire hydrants, and after this search, I really want to buy some of these products. A lot.

This is a lifesize hydrant "toy" - plastic, can be an outdoor or indoor addition to your space.

There were a bunch of products for dogs, which I definately don't want, but they had some cute enameled dog tags I thought I would include here.

A hydrant drink dispenser!! I so want this, so I can throw a hydrant themed party. That would be awesome.

Kid's hydrant sippie cup. I want one.

Lego hydrant. Love the color.

This was just a sculpture, I would put it in my room.

Hydrant cookie cutter. I guess that idea is out.

Love this. It's a hydrant wall decal. They said it was like the perfect addition to your pet's area, but I would totally just put it in my room. I want one so bad.

Ok so I think this one is my favorite. Pillows are great, but the scribbly hydrant? How great is that? It's like me. In a nutshell. Someone buy me one.

Ok, while I am terrified of birds, this is a hydrant birdhouse. If I were to buy this I would not put birdfeed in it, in fear of birds flocking to my outdoor space. Birds are such horrible creatures....

Ok I guess that's it. For now. I love that there is so much hydrant stuff out there. I'm weird, I know.

blu dot.

good design is good.

such an awesome website. http://www.bludot.com/

I was looking at some of their storage/shelving that was made from sheet metal and folded up into a form with dotted/dashed lines etched into the sheet. Fold up on the dotted lines. When you look at their products they show you varying images showing detail shots of the products, but also a line drawing showing the dimensions of the peice. Very nice.

They have a whole section "good design is good" with little pictures of things in our world that are designed well. Good stuff.

They have a store in Baltimore and I want to go.

After Action Review: Project Green Object

• Sustains
What did I do well? Which actions and strategies led to success that you will continue to pursue?

I think my concept was clever. My blanket-bag is definitely an object I would find very useful. I really like the 2-in-1 idea and would like to continue to pursue. Maybe jewelry/wearable objects that can also do something else.
I think my execution was done well; I kept myself organized throughout the course of the project and made decisions in an effort to keep things simple and sellable.

• Improves
Which things did not work so well?

I am not that great at sewing, and was frustrated with the results in my stitching. Also the product did not turn out as “cute” as I envisioned it. I think my efforts to maintain simplicity, cut out any extra patterning/decoration that could have made the blanket-bag more desirable. Perhaps the use of patterned fabric, or incorporating a pattern with stitching would have given my product a more unique and individual personality.
I agreed with Ann’s suggestion in class that reclaimed zippers would help create a more solid blanket when the bag is unfolded. I love my buttons, but I think incorporating zippers as well would help.

• What Ifs
How could the project be more successful? What are the best incarnations of the project?

I think the use of zippers along with the buttons would not only make it easier to make the bag into a blanket, but would make the blanket stronger. The use of different materials other than felt might be more comfortable, more sellable. I liked the idea of creating a summer and winter versions of the blanket-bag. Summer bags made out of organic cotton and winter bags out of a heavy micro-suede. These more widely accepted fabrics would be more successful.

current skills.

Metal

-silver soldering

-piercing sheet and formed sheet with jeweler’s saw

-riveting – tube and wire

-dapping

-chain making

-tumbling

-filing, sanding, finishing

-hydraulic die forming

-hinge making

-stone setting – bezel, tube, prong

-welding – steel and copper

-hammering – forming and texturing

-tube making

-hollow sheet fabrication

-wax working – hard, soft, and sheet wax

-investing

-casting – bronze

-etching – ferric chloride

-electroforming – copper

-patinas – heat, liver of sulfur, and prismacolor colored pencils

Glass

-cutting and grinding

-copper foiling

-lead soldering

-tinning

-glass bead making

Enameling

-sifted opaque and transparent

-liquid opaque and transparent

-stenciling and sgraffito

-graphite pencil

-cloisonné

-baisse taille

-micron pen as binder

-kiln and torch fired

Fibers

-crocheting

-knitting

-basket weaving

-coiling

-embroidery

-felt making

-dying wool

-hand sewing

-beginner machine sewing

Painting and Drawing

-oil and acrylic

-charcoal, pencil, pen

-rendering with prismacolor pencils and markers

Wood

-hand carving

-rotary tool carving

-filing, sanding, finishing

Printmaking

-gocco on paper and fabric

-screen printing with acrylic ink onto paper

Mold making

-plaster molds

-2 part rubber molds

Alternative materials

-casting concrete, paper, coffee, make-up, chapstick, tobacco

CAD

-Rhino modeling and rendering

favorites from ACC

Nancy Nicholson

Love love love this artist. She does awesome stained glass work by transferring photography onto glass using silkscreen (using glass paint instead of ink). Her work is awesome. Check out her one-of-a-kind pieces. She is from NYC and her work focuses on the landscapes and images she encounters in the city.
“Nancy’s signature work is an ongoing series of cityscape panels that explores the layering of light, color and dynamic forms of the urban environment.” I love that she depicts these graphic/intricate images through stained glass. So great. She’s going to be at the Philly Craft Show in November! Awesome.

http://nancy-nicholson.com/

Miel Paredes

Her work is mostly vessels/forms made out of copper/bronze. The detail she includes in her designs is awesome. I love her stuff. Her website has tons of great images of everything from helmets and trophies, to tea infusers and pendants. She also includes a lot of interesting studio photos that document her works-in-progress. Great stuff.

http://mielmargarita.com/index.html

Adam Smith

I fell in love with his work at ACC, very eclectic mixed media assemblages. Fun to look at and figure out what each piece included. Along with his sculptures, he makes some really interesting one of a kind jewelry incorporating the use of antique photographs. I think what I remember most was his awesome display at the show.

http://www.adamsmitharticulations.com/

Biba Schutz

I almost worked for Biba at ACC, but she ended up not needing me. Her website doesn’t have a ton of photos. She makes extremely intricate jewelry. Really nice stuff.

http://www.bibaschutz.com/

new blog.

I started a new blog that will be dedicated to my departmental honors thesis project. So far all I have up are some sketches I did for my proposal. I'm going to try my best to keep it updated throughout this year. Check it out.
www.karenshonorsthesis.blogspot.com

arthur hash.

Arthur Hash is coming to lecture on Thursday, so I decided to check out his recent work. The pingpong ring and the safety cone brooches caught my eye. They fit so well into our greenobject project. Reclaiming these everyday objects into wearable and really cool looking jewelry is awesome. I'm really excited about him coming to speak. I love his lazer cut work, the coffee stain brooch is wonderful. Check it out. http://www.arthurhash.com/

What is Product Design Reading Response

What is Product Design?
-Laura Slack
pg. 6-61

What a beautiful book! Such a great resource for what we are pursuing in design and production this semester. The “Flo Creator Model” on page 31 is so exactly what we’re doing, and is such a great model to follow. I kept thinking of the examples in the IDEO book and how their innovations followed this mode of production so precisely.
“Now that we have a plethora of product choices, how can designers improve an existing product or offer something new? What is a new product?”
-page6
This reminded me of our fieldtrip to bluehouse. We were shoved into this place, shown a bunch of great, innovative designs and products and then told to make something completely new and great ourselves. It’s overwhelming to think we could come up with something entirely new and great, let alone to think how these designers came up with these insanely cool products.
“Ambiguity and challenging the traditional norms of form and function are the mainstays for today.”
-page20
I think that is what stood out to me the most in bluehouse and in the designs found in this book. Everything was so beautiful, but also easily questioned. What is that? What does it do? Ultimately every question is answered with a statement: I want one.

I think my favorite part of this reading was the Grenade Oil Lamps by Piet Houtenbos. I remembered them from last year. I want one so bad. The whole section is about design as a statement. Whether it is political, social, or cultural, an idea is expressed through a product. These oil lamps, however, were simply the use of a beautiful form without any reinterpreted meaning, even though they have been interpreted in that way. I love that.

memories.

Dorothy Imagire”Dorothy Imagire was born in Japan and grew up all over America and the rest of the world. Her work reflects the myriad memories she developed growing up, drawing on images of artifacts as well as her own identity. She is a mixed media artist whose exhibitions range from the New Museum and Parsons in New York City to the Long Beach Museum of Art in California. She has won numerous awards for her art since graduating from RISD in 1990 with an MFA in photography.”
-uncommongoods.com

I found Dorothy’s Bathroom Waxed Wall art on uncommongoods.com. She has another set of gardening tools called “dig up the past,” and the one i put on here of an old camera, a typewriter, and a globe. It’s so great how an image of an object brings back so many stories, ideas, and experiences. I think that thet same thing can happen in a variety of ways. Just viewing a certain pattern, a certain color, experiencing a specific smell, or the feel of a specific fabric, or how something feels when you hold it in your hand, can bring back experiences or memories. The stories that surround these things. So personal. So universal. Awesome. Love it.

I found some more that she did on figmentsdesign.com. She simply takes a wood block, prints a photograph onto it and seals it with wax. The image ends up looking kind of ghostly. The memory of an old object. So wonderful.

“The ethereal quality of these photo prints by Dorothy Imagire makes them similar to half-forgotten memories: memories of objects and the stories that surround them. Imagire has taken prints of everyday bathroom objects and covered them with wax to give them a distant and timeless look.”
-uncommongoods.com

I couldn’t get the picture of the bathroom items on here, but its under bed and bath on uncommongoods.com. Check it out.

Reminded me of what I’m going to try this year for honors thesis. Memories are so cool.

Design and Production. greenobjectproject.

Yesterday I got to see some great green products from bluehouse. I found pictures of two that I really liked. The first is a handmade cotton napkin, part of the free trade market. The second, a clever felt wine bottle holder. Simple, but awesome.

http://www.bluehouselife.com/

The items they had were not only innovative and well-designed, but so beautiful, it made you want to buy everything. Apparently you can register there.....

So I checked out inhabitat.com (thank you, amy) for some preliminary research on green products. Very cool website.

www.inhabitat.com

Noon Solar makes bags that are durable but also biodegrade. Each bag has a flexible solar panel built in to help charge ipods and cell phones. The bag will charge when the bag is placed in a window. The hardware is meant to be reused and reclaimed for new bags. The fabrics are organic hemp or cotton and are dyed using pomegranate and weld. The simplicity in design I think goes well with the green object project.

http://www.noonsolar.com

Paula Vidal makes some crazy cute stuff out of felt and recycled fabric. She made a line out of felt, and then made a line out of the unwanted pieces of the first felt line. I would wear all of it. Her blog is in Spanish but the images of her work are great. I want to buy all the clutch bags and all the vests.

http://www.idea-lucida.blogspot.com/

The first thing on inhabitat.com was about a shelter made for the people on the gulf coast who were evacuated from their homes. It’s made out of a plastic called polypropylene. Polypropylene is a thermoplastic polymer that is used as a green material since no harmful gases are emitted during its production. It can degrade from exposure to UV radiation. It comes in a variety of colors, is extremely durable, and is 100% recyclable after use. Anoush Waddington uses this material in a variety of wearable objects.
http://www.anoushwaddington.co.uk/

yay for pretty green things.