Form Follows Function

I thought i’d take the time to express my personal music habits, in the form of the personal music systems which I divulged in since my childhood. In the past 15 years or so I have had four portable music systems. I think the small amount of different players is due to a few reasons. I tend to take care of anything I own, looking after it and making sure I use it properly actually ensures that they all still work. I also like to think that I make well-informed decisions about my purchases.

So let’s have a look at those four personal players:
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I’ve often thought about how interesting it would be to be taught how to do something from a professional and recently, as a previous subscriber to practical photography magazine, i received email detailing new features at a website called Photo Answers. They have created a brand new feel to a website which offers some decent videos on the subject of photography.

Here’s an example:

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A few palettes I have created at Colour Lovers, a website dedicated to colours. Create your own palettes, colours and patterns for display within the community. It’s a great way to find colours which work together and compliment each other. Whether website design, product design or graphic design.

They also have a rather neat piece of online software (webware i guess) which allows you to upload a picture for colour picking and use within a palette. It also shows complimentary colours to that colour in a variety of ways through the use of shapes overlaying a colour wheel.

A few palettes:

The idea of using a photograph which one has taken to provide the source for a palette of colours is amazing. Check out their blog for more examples of loads of colours from picture sources, or my own page for some of the colours and palettes I have created!

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Trevor Baylis himself showing us how the wind-up media player works. Not quite sure that the view of the product in the first video does it any justice at all, or whether it’s an actual reflection of how it can be used outdoors.

And a review from CNET. It sounds pretty interesting, and could be something useful to have around for long journeys:

Maybe an increase in screen quality could get a few more people interested, even though it would significantly reduce the performance of the battery.

(more…)

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IMG_0957

We waited for an hour to get a Tom Dixon Glow light (7th in the queue) and then Tom arrived to give the lights away. He didn’t really seem to know what he was there for or what he had to say. Nice day, almost rained!

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cockfosters tube station

Every weekday this is hopefully the view i see, but rarely the view i feel like looking at. Traveling for 1 hour and 10 mins to work and 1 hour 10 mins back is hard work but with a good book, a bit of music or the Nintendo DS it gets a little shorter!

I am currently reading the second ‘Teach Yourself’ book i have ever read, this one about a little of Sigmund Freuds life. It’s a fairly interesting book and because the subject is completely new it’s quite intriguing.

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I’ve been thinking for a little while about putting something together to recommend the books which i have been reading. A kind of catalogue within which i can put all of those design books which I think are great and everyone should read!!!

Introducing the The Design Book Store

The front page includes some of the best books I have read, the latest reads and something which i find interesting at the moment. The rest of the store is divided up into categories surrounding industrial design, product design, design engineering and general design.

Anything added to the shopping basket will be taken through to the amazon website for final payment. So it’s completely secure!!

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On the rather chilly morning of the 12th of December 2006, the final of the lamp post climbing robot competition was to commence.

Just twelve weeks previous to the event, 18 members of the unsuspecting design world joined into the fast track system to begin understanding more about becoming a design engineer through an MSc Design Engineering postgraduate degree at Middlesex University in North London.

The degree’s main aim is to take designers and convert them to “the way of the engineer.” Not so much as to create an engineer, but a hybrid between desgners and engineers… the Design Engineer. (more…)

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After a few months of hard work, the first semester has come to an end. I finally have a bit of time to catch up and get my breath back. So over the next little while I’ll be uploading snippets from the course.

Here’s the first: A video of the first working prototype we created

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Shopping Trolleys

Down at the local Morrisons supermarket at the weekend, we located this rather interesting sign. Unfortunately we couldn’t find any signs displaying the opening hours!

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A quick time out whilst nearing the end of a report. As a part of this report on Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and Mechanism Design we have to use mechanism design software to analyse the forces on a connecting rod within a reciprocating compressor. We then use this force result and apply it to the connecting rod within a Finite Element Analysis software program.

Extremely interesting stuff. Here’s a video of my mechanism in motion:

Solidworks COSMOS Motion at work.

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So, the major project for my MSc in Design Engineering turns out to be a climbing robot.

Tomorrow is the deadline for submitting 100 ideas. There are six teams of three people and every one of them will probably have around 100 pretty excellent ideas and maybe one bad one out of the whole bunch. I’m pretty confident about the ability of my team. I am pretty confident too about the techniques behind some of the robots although by tonights decision and three robot finalists to narrow down to a winner, i am sure it will be a fun project.

A book on the subject, detailing every one of the 600 robots, could be quite interesting to the average book reader.

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Heltaskelta

These are the new slides at the Tate Modern. They are a part of the new Unilever series which will be on for about 6 months.

Just a little word of advice if you are planning to go, get there early and reserve a ticket to come back and have a go loter on. We wanted to have a go but we would have had to wait about 7 hours to get a chance on the big one!

They sure do look impressive though!

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Topshop London

Simple usability advice here, from a casual observer.

I was sitting down in the shoes section while the girlfriend dissapeared and found herself some comfy plimsoles and notices people using the staff area door on the left here. The access panel (click through image to see notes) is about 1/2 a foot lower than the average height that a keycard hangs around an employees neck. Definately cause for RSI.

Someone should have a word about that with them!

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IKEA Project 01

Check this out.

This is my IKEA Project. We had to use two existing products within the IKEA range and combine them into a brand new product with a function and under the value of £10.

After two weeks i have spent about 16 hours in IKEA (more than unhealthy) and come up with this little product. It measures out exactly 62.5g / 75cl of rice, exactly one portion. I call it the KONCIS RARIS.

Although at the beginning it sounded like a great project to get into, i think it was a lot harder than i originally thought. Visiting IKEA makes you realise just how much they sell, and taking a closer look also made me realise exactly how cheaply their products are put together.

So here it is… The KONCIS RARIS.

We also got news of the teams we will be in and the design brief for the next project. I’ll update some more about that soon, but in the next 9 weeks we have to build a semi-autonomous robot to climb a lamp post with on-board video surveillence and monitoring equipment.

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