Welcome!

Thanks for moving over with me to theprocessoftheproduct.

I'll be keeping you updated here from now on.

Thanks for reading!

Blog Changes Coming

Think of this as a P.S.A.

In a weeks time, I will be changing the web address that this blog is posted to. Currently you read me at aplusdequalsm.blogspot.com but in a push to give myself a unified web presence under the PeterMartinHall. banner I will be changing this site to more reflect how I use this blog as a sounding board and an update medium on my projects and less as my base on the web. I hope to have my digital portfolio site umich.edu/~petemh be my professional web home base. I will continute to use my flickr and my Facebook as my social and less professional web base. If you'd like to be Facebook friends with me, search me (Pete Hall, see I'm less professional there, I drop the r and the Martin!) and send me a message your a follower of this blog. Make sure you send me the message, other wise I might now know who you are!

So, since this site is about how I work through design issues and projects, the site will be changing to theprocessoftheproduct.blogspot.com in one weeks time. So next week Thursday, March 12, the site will be switching over. Make a note and preemptively bookmark the site, it won't be live yet, but you'll be prepared!

Thanks for reading, I hope you all make the jump with me! And no, I will not be jumping on the Twitter bandwagon anytime soon. I don't have that much to say!

Ant Farm

I presented the ant farm today in CFC, it went over quite well, I'm pretty happy with it.

The ants are doing great so far, and for only being in the sand for 3 days, they've started to tunnel a bit even. I only seem to have lost one or two ants so far (that's lost as in they've died, not gotten out), I assume they died when Kara and I put them in.

The piece was presented on a pedestal with my placard on the front explaining the piece. Shiva seemed to like it, and people kept coming back over to see it throughout the course of the class. Which I'm taking as a huge compliment. I think this may be my first cfc project that everyone likes, professor, class and me! Normally, I like it and the prof likes it but the class doesn't, or (more common) I like it kinda, but am unhappy overall, and no one else likes it either, so everyone liking a cfc piece of mine is a nice change.

The placard read,

Ant Farm

I aim to explore the harnessing of the environment by humans for our own benefit, be it frivolous, harmless uses like an ant farm or more serious uses, both in implementation and effects, such as disposal of pollutants. We dramatically change our environment and are thus limited by it, as we use our resources inefficiently we change the physical properties of what makes our environment, our environment. I aim to show this through ants constricted in an ant farm. Much the same as humans, the ants are constrained by their environment and they change their environment as they move the dirt but they are ultimately constrained by it and they changes they make. There is only so much space to move dirt in the ant farm, just as we only have so many resources.

Similarly, if we pollute a freshwater lake and abuse its ecosystem, we lose the lake as a source of drinking water and food. The ants only have a limited food supply; they must efficiently use what food is supplied to them to keep their colony alive. When their food supply runs out, they die. When we ruin our environment, we face the same pressures and consequences.

Pete Hall







The actual ant farm itself is made out of laser cut 1/4" clear cast arylic and an acid that melts arcylic and then lets it harden again to create a seemless bond where two pieces of acrylic meet whose name I can't remember.
The ants are harvester ants (who can apparently bite!) and have a limited food supply of seeds and other foliage and are living in simple sand substrate. I got them from antsalive.com.

Thanks for reading!

Ants!

I bought ants a while back. Their still in the mail, I hope they make it here by Wednesday for my CFC Ecology project (I'm making an ant colony!). I bought it from one of those sites you never knew existed, but when you need them, hey! there is a site that sells ants and ant food! AntsAlive.com!

Thanks for reading!

Conceptually Unfinished

Ah, CFC, how I dislike you.

So, the unnatural project for CFC III. I find it so hard to spend time on CFC classes in general, I'm more interested in my other courses, that my CFC projects really end up suffering. Case in point, the unnatural project.

My idea was to do something with a little Hindu girl named Laskshmi in India born with 8 limbs (4 legs, 4 arms) because of being born with a parasitic twin attached to her at the hips (no extra head). She was revered in India as a goddess, specifically the goddess Lakshmi, who she is named after. The rest of the world did not. So I was going to picture the little girl coming out of a lotus flower (which the goddess is normally pictured coming out of), thing is, I waited till last Monday to start. It was of course due Wednesday! So my lotus came out nicely, but I didn't give myself enough time to make the girl work, so I left it out. Big mistake.

Alone the lotus flower was nice, but had not one bit of concept. Opps.

The frame was made out of some nice stiff jewelry wire and lots of masking tape.

Then I wrapped it in pink tissue paper.

Added some green leaves and viola! a lotus with no concept!

Oh well, it's over now. I'll do better from now on and actually give myself time to work on CFC, no matter how uninteresting it is.

Thanks for reading, and Shiva (my cfc prof) if your reading this, sorry for coming to class with such a poor project.

826 Michigan Window Robot

I can not believe I never posted the finished 826 Michigan robot! I just realized that my header image here at A plus D equals Me and my welcome image at my website, umich.edu/~petemh, both use the robot and I've never really shown him here! So, here goes!

Well it's pretty simple all together actually, the robot was made as an incandescent window dressing model to attract attention night and day to the 826 Michigan robot storefront. 826 Michigan is a "non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write." After tutoring there a few times for CFC II, I did the robot as way to give back.

Why a robot? Well the original 826 tutoring location in San Fransisco had a clause in it's building lease that they needed to have a store front, so they put up a pirate supply store, kinda as a joke. Except now the store is very profitable and helps to drive the free tutoring programs for the kids. It is now a tradition for all 826 locations around the nation to have a store front, Michigan chose a robot supply store and called it Liberty Street Robot Supply & Repair. How awesome is that for kids, get tutoring at the robot store! If you want to visit, it's here in Ann Arbor at 115 East Liberty Street a few blocks away from campus towards Main St.

826 Michigan Storefront

The robot himself (if it was a real robot, it would be programed to be a guy I've decided, a guy robot who waves hi!), was designed in Adobe Illustrator, and made out of 1/4" amber acrylic which was laser cut and then stacked and fastened together. His eyes light up when he is plugged in and his whole head glows! Which, of course, is awesome!





Hope you like him, it's one of my favorite things I've done at Michigan. I mean a light up robot? Please.

Thanks for reading!

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!