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!