myPod Docking Station

For Designer Bootcamp we're designing the standard, the everybody makes one at design school, the ubiquitous iPod dock. This is actually the second iPod thing I've designed, the other was a speaker dock back in mech. engineering (link is to some old concept sketches, the actual manufactured one sucked, my group knew nothing about design, they decided on some super boring design that didn't work). This one is much more interesting. I didn't have to rely on engineers!

I had a few criteria for myself on the dock

-easy access
-display iPod
-charge/sync iPod
-easily store ear buds
-keep the aesthetic of Apple and the iPod
-good design semantics (simple to understand how to use it)

My basic original idea. (out of many, we all had to have several concepts worked out).

The initial foam model, ear buds stored in lower compartment.

The iPod lays down over it all covering up the unsightly ear bud cords, just displaying the sleek lines of the iPod.

Prototype #1 was built with Rhino (the Mac beta! it works well) and Adobe Illustrator, then made with laser cut 1/4"MDF board stacked, spray painted, and then vacuum formed with clear polystyrene over it. The clear material really gives a beautiful shine on top of the red coat on the base.

I learned with the foam model that the ear buds need a deeper cavity to store them with out pushing up the iPod, so, I made it deeper and wider by cutting the back supports for the iPod body into pillars, acquired almost 1.5 square inches!

Of course, it's got syncing/charging ability!

The red color doesn't really hold the Apple aesthetic (unless you look back at those old colorful iMacs!). The next iteration will be white. Also, I want to round out those hard edges on the inside of the dock, give them a small radius as hard corners are rare on Apple products.
I'm also concerned with the bulk of dock, I'm going to look into slimming it down.

Up next, refinement of the current prototype #1.

Thanks for reading!

Laser Cutting 101

Yes, I've had lots of experience with the laser cutter before, but for Designer Bootcamp we're getting some more! Shaun wanted to see where we stood on our thinking in 3-d, so we made 4"x4" cubes and 4" diameter spheres on the laser cutter out of foam core. They had to fit together with friction. It was pretty fun actually, easy assignments are always appreciated!

I tried to make my cube feel like a building with a friction held pillar system.




My sphere, nothing to amazing really. It's a sphere!




We're working on iPod charging stations currently. I'll post my ideas on that soon.

Thanks for reading!

A couple of things first.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Were does the time go?

I haven't posted. Sorry. It's been a bit hectic this semester has (that sounded like Yoda).

When I get free time, I end up doing nothing, resting, not thinking (watching Battlestar Gallactica recently! I know, nerd. Bears, Beets, Battlestar Gallactica).

All I'm doing currently is taking a break from sketching my robot's nemisis. I'll take a picture later. (How many times have I said that?)

On a side note, I sketched dinosaurs and their bones in the Michigan Natural History Museum today. I loved it, felt like a kid again drawing T-Rex in my room. There was a little boy with his mom there who was super cute, he saw some underwater dinosaur and exclaimed, "Mom! It's like a dolphin, a shark, a shar...A DOLPHIN SHARK MOM! WOW!" I can only hope my kids like dinosaurs that much.

Anyway, I'm going to go back to work and leave you with this, take it for what you will, I liked it. It's from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
Thanks for reading!

Gonna kill me or make me strong (like Super Man strong).

This is going to be one tough semester. One and a half weeks in and I'm tired like we've been going for a month.

The culprit is chiefly Sketching Ideas. I'm certainly going to get better at drawing, of which my skills are admittedly, at best, weak. Over the long weekend we have 13 hours of drawing. A good amount of time, the majority of it on 40 concepts for a new R2-D2. That's actually pretty cool, robots are sweet. Oh and we have to go to the Detroit Auto Show this weekend to take pictures. Fun (not really). I have little interest in cars, but hopefully the interesting concepts will make it bearable.

Designer Bootcamp and Dimensional Languages are going well, I'm enjoying both, neither is a huge amount of work, yet. I'm sure I'll get some really busy times when those two get going.

Either way, I've got to get to class. We start the Penny Stamps lecture series tonight, a U of M A&D prof is talking, Nick Tobier, I had him for ADP II, and really like him. Really cool guy.

Thanks for reading, I'll post some images later, maybe some of my concepts for R2-D2.

All New Semester, All New Problems, All New Issues

Well, I had three glorious weeks at home, but all good things must come down, or all objects must end? Who the hell knows? Either way classes start on Wednesday and I'm a bit nervous. This is my first semester taking pure product design classes (Designer Bootcamp, Sketching Ideas, Dimensional Languages). I'm a bit intimidated by my profs, I think because I don't know them really that well at all yet, and it's the first time I've heard about my profs before the class starts.

I am excited however for classes. I switched schools to take product design classes. I'm looking forward to them. I'm decidedly not looking forward to CFC III. Worst. Series of classes. Ever.

Wish me luck! Thanks for reading!

Branded Puzzle. Finished?

The mock marketing poster for the Big Boy Brands Puzzle.

The Brand Puzzle for my CFC II final project was finished last week. I'm pretty happy with it. I'd like to redo it and use the CNC router instead of a hand held jig saw to make it, it would look more professional then. Also, paint the logos or at least cut the paper out better and cover them with a clear epoxy.

Either way, here it is. Artist statement first. You can see the mock marketing poster above.

My First Puzzle™

Big Boy Brands Edition

Baby puzzle created with the images of American business icons
to teach toddlers the correct brands early in life to
ensure social acceptance in adulthood.

The Big Boy Brands puzzle is a reaction to the American obsession with brands. We start kids young on brands as image and culture. Gerber, Toys R’ Us, Mattel, Fisher Price, Barbie, Lego.

As we get older, our obsession with brands only grows as we move to more grown up types of brands. Nike, Apple, Coca-Cola for example. The Big Boy Brands puzzle is a reaction to the move to grown up brands from the icons of our youth.

I designed the Big Boy Brands puzzle by My First Puzzle TM with the idea of the marketing campaign behind the piece appealing to overly concerned parents. The ad campaign poster reads “Parents! Help your toddler grow up right with the Big Boy Brands puzzle from My First PuzzleTM,” and “practically ensures social acceptance in your child’s future!” No parent would not want his or her child to fit in, and the Big Boy Brands puzzle imprints popular brands and images of the older demographic on child minds, only guaranteeing the child would dress and act similarly to the rest of the majority; fitting in as a shell only. Our obsession with brands and their images creates our popular culture and dictates its course. All the Big Boy Brands puzzle does is make sure your child grows up on the same course as countless other children.
-Pete Hall

Materials:
• Birch Plywood
• ½” Dowel Rod
• Print materials (paper, ink) for logos and advertising
• Puritan Pine Wood Stain
• Wood Glue
• Super 77 Glue

Resources:
• www.walmart.com/catalog
• brands.babycatalog.com
• news.cnet.com
• Shopping, A Century of Art and Consumer Culture. Ed. Gruenberg and Hollein. Hatje Cantz Publishers, London. 2002.
• U of M Wood Shop and Fabrication Studio Tools









Thanks for reading!

Winter' 09

Originally I was supposed to be raking in the dough as a mechanical engineer one semester removed from U of M. Then I switched to industrial design. And added 3 years of school. Thank God. I am so much happier now. I would have made a crappy engineer anyway!

So, it's winter break. 3 weeks to decompress. I needed it. Grades are starting to roll in, doing well so far. Two A's and one C (I hate you CFC. Die already!).

Looking forward to next semester, I've got some interesting classes.

- 300.1 Dimensional Languages: A Study of Form & Language TTh 8:30-11:30am 2147
Andersen, Jan-Henrik
The focus of this course is on understanding how dimensions of form languages communicate and structure meaning and function of designed objects in rapidly changing socio-cultural systems. Instruction will cover design semiotics and semantics and experimental exercises in three-dimensional design with a keen eye on form and color literacy. The course will provide students with portfolio quality projects with emphasis on design processes and experimental form development including rapid prototyping technologies.
Prerequisite: Experience with 3-D modeling, visual communication, and manual fabrication.

- 300.29 Sketching Ideas MW 6:30-9:30pm 2058
Lee, Chiwei
This course focuses on generating ideas, ways of augmenting the interest and complexity of those ideas, and building a structure to house and let ideas live. The course encourages sharing thoughts about the creative processes of working, and about using multiple media for particular expressive aims. Students gain experience in ways of working out and presenting ideas, in the near-term, for your senior projects, and in the long term in your professional life. Students develop and sketch out a comprehensive creative project, realizing at least part of it, so as to be able to present an idea in a convincing way, much as one needs to when applying for a grant, an
exhibition, a performance, or proposing a senior project.

- 231 Concept Form and Context III
Ahmadi, Shiva
One of a sereies of three required freshman/sophomore studio courses that focuses on problem identification, problem investigation and refrenceing, and subsequent development of creative reponses. Each exercise and project incorporates reading, reasearch and writing components. By integration of critical thinking and language skills, the students are challenged to develop personal expressins through both analytical and intuitive approaces. The course focuses on structrued projects that encourage the development of transferable perceptive and formal skills in a world-view conceptual response.
(I hate these classes, this is the last one I have to take.)

- 300.40 Desinger Bootcamp
Jackson, Shawn

Couldn't find an official description of this course anywhere and I must have deleted the email with the info in it. Anyway, it's all about product design. I am beyond excited. Shawn Jackson is supposed to be Mr. Product Design. Check out his A&D faculty page from the link on his name. He's even got his own design firm. Bitchen.

Oh and the Penny Stamps Thursday Night Lecture series that all A&D students have to go to of course. This can be really interesting, like when Theo Jansen came and talked to us. That was amazing. They even got Michael Moore this year (his talk actually was boring and rambling, I've seen him talk before, he should stick with movies, he can edit his rambling then into a cohesive idea). But sometimes...we had the major of Bogota, Columbia. He taught us how to hold down street gangs and sounded and looked like a serious Borat. No idea why he talked to the art school.

What classes are all you Michigan A&D kids taking? Or any art kids who might read this?

Thanks for reading!

No laser cutter even? Wow.

I had mentioned a month or so back that I was looking into the Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD) as an option to transfer to from Michigan. I was unhappy but more than anything just unsure about the quality of the education I was receiving in industrial design. Chiefly I was concerned about the perceived lack of product design experience and basic design skills at Michigan because of the openness of the A&D curriculum (after our core courses, there are a whole selection of advanced studios we can take, some offered regularly, some not).

This was until I got a closer look at the advanced studios pertaining to I.D. and had talked closer with professors. But just to be safe, and make sure I was making the correct choice, I visited CCAD, which was my top alternative to Michigan. They have a pretty well known ID group, but after visiting today, I have no clue why.

I was unimpressed with the facilities for industrial design for one, paltry and small at best. Also, after coming from a school like Michigan, where things can be hectic and unorganized, this school was a bit off (it was a college day type event, I was impressed by how poor everything was set up, tours before information sessions, not showing you any work spaces in the tour only showing you what some students have done). I was able to talk with the head of the industrial design department there for a bit and came away underwhelmed about the school. It seemed that while there was definitely a course structure set up for you, it seemed very rigid, with little opportunity to try different techniques. Also, being a small private art school, they had no possibility of minoring in anything other than art history or fine arts. I'm interested in a psych minor focusing on how people interact with objects to complement my B.F.A in industrial design I'm getting and my 3 year concentration on mechanical engineering. That's out the window at CCAD.

Oh and the kicker, here I am worried that Michigan won't be able to teach me the technical skills of design and model making and CCAD doesn't even have a freaking laser cutter, M has two. Or vacuum former, M has 2, one large one smaller. Or 3-d mill, M has 2 I think. Or rapid prototyping, M has one. I was amazed. How can you make really intricate designs look really really professionally cutting all by hand? Those CCAD ID grads must be wizards with a good ol' exacto knife!

Plus I'd lose a year in transferring schools, so it would take me 8 years to graduate. Nope, now way at all.

So yeah, I'm staying put at Michigan. If looking at other schools has shown me anything about M A&D, it's that we have some pretty cool technologies available to us and to be thankful for all the extra interesting opportunities that Michigan gives you.
Oh and I love Michigan football so that's a big plus. Columbus is kinda a sucky city anyway. Ann Arbor rules.

Thanks for reading! Go Blue!

Branded Baby Puzzle

I worked long and hard last night on the start of the brand baby puzzle. It was great to work with wood, I enjoy like it.


The board is fabricated from two separate pieces of wood. The base is solid and glued on top is the piece with the holes for the brand pieces.




I still have to sand the board down nice and smooth to varnish it. I've picked out a nice walnut stain for it. Should be really nice.

Thanks for reading!

My website!

umich.edu/~petemh

Check it out! I've got my website up. It's my digital portfolio and home base on the web. I've uploaded most of my old work (the good stuff anyway!) and will keep uploading recent work. I'm also working on adding a selected works tab to highlight work I'm particularly proud of which will include descriptions of the project, my process of design, and project reflections. Pretty much, it will be like my blog posts, but polished.

Thanks for reading!

Balloon Harp Realized

The balloon harp came together nicely this week. I'm really quite happy with it.






The harp was designed for looks instead of quality of sound. It still makes noise, but how good can stretched balloons sound? Kind of a buzzing sound, not horrible, it's interesting actually.
I love how the neon colors of the balloons look against the rich stain of the wood. The balloon tops along the top of the harp are beautiful, almost like a dinosaurs back spikes. Almost.

For more pictures, check out my website/digital portfolio that I just put up. umich.edu/~petemh
I need to update the site with more recent work but you can see my robot and the balloon harp, as well as some old work. The harp is under industrial design.

Thanks for reading!

Culture for Babies

I've changed my idea for my final culture project for CFC II, we've had 1.5 months to work on it, and I change my idea 5 days before it's due. I was never really to happy with my old project idea, the Norman Rockwell print appropriation one, and having wanted to work with iconic brands at first but never figuring out a good way to do that, I had stuck with Rockwell.

Well, it hit me like ton of ACME bricks yesterday (I'm ok since nothing made by ACME really does any damage). I was interested in the creation of brand cultures and how they get started, and in thinking about not getting to see my little cousins at Christmas this year, I thought of how we start kids young on brands. Gerber, Toys R' Us, Mattel, Barbie. Giving them a subconscious idea of what is good in the market, and what is good thus for them. My grand inspiration was simple puzzles for babies and todlers. The ones with trucks and dogs on them.

Baby Puzzle

I've decided to do this with iconic "grown up" brands. That's iconic in the sense of most Americans would recognize the logo quickly. I made a list of iconic brands.

Nike

McDonalds
NBC
Coca-Cola

Best Buy

Apple

I'm using their logos as puzzle pieces. Does anyone else find it funny that I labeled these 'iconic' brands? Do they really need labels?

Screen Shot of Logo Layout

Shouldn't be to terribly tough to make, wood, jigsaw, sandpaper and woodglue for the pieces and maybe screen printing for the logos. Course, I've said that before. Could be tough. Especially since I have a exam on Monday and won't be around this weekend to work on it. hmmm. Wish me luck!

Thanks for reading!

The Angelic Sound of the Balloon Harp?

For TMP III we are working with our hands now, which is a nice change. I've really quite enjoyed the video, audio and website work this semester, but I love making things with my hands.

We are creating musical instruments of sorts. Some people are remaking real instruments out of materials not normally used for musical instruments, while others are making up entirely new instruments.

I fall under the remake with new materials category. I'm making a harp, using stretched balloons for the strings. It's going to be pretty sweet, I've prepared the frame, made out of varnished wood and I'm stringing/ballooning it today. It's not going to be a real instrument, not even close, but it should be cool!


I'm also working on a final piece for my CFC II culture class, it's going to appropriate a Norman Rockwell print from the Saturday Evening Post covers. I'm dealing with idolization of the American way and contentment versus desire. Should be interesting.















Thanks for reading!

Reasearch Paper...

There is little I dislike more than writing research papers. I am researching for one currently. Something or another on race and civil rights relating three different pieces.

I really don't like papers.

Michelen Man Sculpture

So over the course of the second half of my semester I've been working on a sculpture in one of the classes I'm taking that I rarely mention here. TMP I Construction (the other being the super boring, waste of time A(rt)D(esign)P(erspectives) I The Creators). I've not oft mentioned it because while I really enjoy working with my hands, I've found sculpture not to be my favorite hands on activity. Especially when we've been working with clay and plaster the entire semester (o.k. a tiny bit of cardboard was in there too).

The sections are also supposed to have a wood project. Other sections of the course have made some really cool bench's that I was really jealous they got to do. My prof likes clay, allot. So we've done it, allot. I hate how dry it makes my hands, takes a solid day of moisturizer to get them not feeling like cotton balls. But that is besides the point.

I've made the Michelin Tire Man! I decided to do him because then I wouldn't have to do muscles or clothing! It took while to make him, but it was ultimately not that hard, just time consuming (like everything else in art school). He's pretty cool.




























Our next step is to ruin the clay model. We're casting them out of plaster, by covering them in plaster. Not sure how that is going to work, but OK.

First we've added our shim walls made from aluminum (Arizona Juice) cans. These give us section splits to take the plaster molds off in.
I did the Michelin Mans head first and it looked like he had a halo.









Next we covered the suckers in plaster. Something was wrong with one of the layers of plaster I put on the top half of his back. Not good. Not good at all. I've made it work through extensive patching with more good plaster over it to give it strength, but oh boy do I handle it gingerly. I've got that section off here and was working on the bottom half of his backside. All the coils I used for his tires came off with the mold.










The bottom half removed. All the coils were cut by the aluminum shim walls so it's interesting to see the core of his leg surrounded like that.















The mold for the lower section of his back, i.e. legs and the base.












It was actually quite fun to pull that stupid clay Michelin Man apart. I spent so much time on him, it was like sweet revenge.
As you can see, he had a foam and wire armature that we put clay over for initial forming, which of course, stay in. Until this of course.











The front half of the mold was one large piece as we didn't have to worry about the armature pipe. This is pretty cool looking I think, but I may just know how many stinking hours it took me to get here!

Tomorrow we do the casting part. We'll see.













Thanks for reading!