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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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!