CyCle. An Everyday Solution to an Everyday City.

I presented my commuter bicycle concept to my Sketching Ideas class yesterday. It went really well. I'll let my images speak for my design and the target consumer. 

This project was conceived, rendered and presented in a little over 3 weeks.

Oh, the presentation went perfectly. I was told I had a great idea and certainly the best delivery of the idea. One classmate commented, that my presentation convinced him that he needed one too! Which, is good!

Thanks for reading!

Two Weeks.

Phew, only 2 weeks left this semester. Everything is happening all at once, each studio has a project due in the next week and then I've got a week to really pull my sophomore review together.

I realized looking back through my posts this semester that the only class I'm really blogging about is CFC 3 and Designer Bootcamp (to a lesser extent). That's really a shame, because all my classes have been really interesting and challenging.

I don't think I've really said much about the myPod since the first model, but I'm finished with it now. I don't have any pictures of the finished model, it went into a display case pretty quick. So I'm waiting to get it out and take some pictures. You can check it out at my website, umich.edu/~petemh. I'll probably end up posting the finished images there first.

I'll just get you up to speed on Dimensional Languages (a design semiotics course) and Sketching Ideas here quick.

For dimensional Lang., we spent the first half of the semester working on buttons. I felt we were kind of spinning our wheels, the project should have lasted half as long, but I believe now that I felt that way because I was never really engaged with the project and never completely understood what Jan Hendrick (the prof) was trying to teach us. For the last month we've been working on salt and pepper shakers, or grinders in my case, that are inspired by prose, poetry and factual text on salt and pepper. It's been one of the most challenging project I've ever worked on, but I am really learning allot about the intimacy and language of form.

I spent most of the project trying to encompass both a salt and pepper grinder in one form, but really got stuck and never really moved past something that looked like a finger. So, I completely reworked the design this past week, working on grinders that for one, separated salt and pepper like normal, and worked on a squeezing motion. You squeeze the lever, it turns the grinder. I'm ironing out the form details this weekend and I'm going to have the most promising forms printed on the rapid prototyping machines from Rhino and pick my final model from there. I'm really excited about this project.

My first sketch model.

The creepy finger version. The whole thing rotated about the cut lines. Salt came from the top, pepper the bottom. The grand failure of this model is that I have to explain that to you.

Even if the idea did suck, I didn't let it go. Here are Rhino models I pretty much wasted my time on. Oh well, learn from your mistakes!

Early squeeze versions.

In Sketching Ideas, we've spent the whole semester drawing. Not still life or figure drawing, but drawing out ideas so as to effectively portray your concepts. It's pretty much an industrial design sketching course. Which is just perfect. It's taught by a designer for Ford, Chiwei Lee, who is pretty awesome himself. I've never had as much work for a course as I have for this one, but I am certainly getting better at sketching.

I'm working on my final design project for Sketching Ideas, we got to define our own project. I'm working on designing a commuter bicycle for people in the city and am trying to look at the bicycle and it's accessories as a system, integrating everything together to work as one perfect machine. Of course, being a biker, I am in love with this project. It's a hell of a lot of drawing though.

Oh and for our final project in Designer Bootcamp, we are all working on a few different projects as a class, I picked redesigning a pooper scooper. I'm not as invested in this project as I am in the bike, but they can't all be the coolest project ever.

Oh, and of course, there's always sophomore review to think about right now too. I've got the basis of it together, my theme is Simple Problems Are Incredibly Complicated. I'm focusing my presentation, which is pretty much a summing up of the past two years of A&D, on the myPod, salt and pepper grinders, ant farm from CFC III, commuter bicycle, and my branded baby puzzle from CFC II. I've still got some planning and to do for the presentation, which is April 24th for me.

Oh, my digital portfolio has been updated. umich.edu/~petemh Tell me what you think!

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!