I’m sitting in Green ITC at the moment while Yuki is photoshopping her last image to go into the presentation and Omari is redoing the sections that he left at home. I have expanded on the PowerPoint presentation and have now done the layout for the wall print. I’m not sure how much it is going to cost but I don’t really care – after today it is all over!
Having said that, the last 2 days have actually been rather enjoyable. I seem to work best when under pressure. yesterday I created a PowerPoint presentation and theme, created the layout for the wall print and also created a garden bean as well as a seat/bike rack. Images below.
I might post once more after the presentation to reflect on how it went. We are scheduled for 1.50pm
Salutations.
Today is the last day we have before our summative assessment and I have tried to participate as much as I can but really the only thing I can do is layout the final presentation. Only thing is I’m relying to Yuki and Omari to provide the detailed drawing as 3D models so we can put them into a wall presentation.
Our presentation will consist of a horizontal wall print with imagery about the problem and design solution with the text and movies being projected onto the wall next to it, both with a consistent theme. I am currently using PowerPoint and Illustrator to try and take the theme from one and apply it to the other.
I am confident we will have things to show tomorrow, I am confident our presentation will be cohesive and look good. We just need to decide on and practice what we’re going to say.
There will probably be one more post tomorrow before this blog comes to an end…I must say it has been very therapeutic.
Here is a redesign of the initial kiosk concept I did, using the form of the bean that the rest of the Platz will be using. I have swapped the colours for in use and not in use as people associate red with unavailable, I suppose the blue should really be green to symbolise available but on a colour gamut blue is opposite red meaning they go best together. The new design fits better with the overall design but I’m not really a big fan of it, I think the initial concept is better in overall design but then I’m not designing for me, I’m designing for the Platz. Oh well, one more sheet for my sketchbook.
Today we had a meeting with Flo and Greg and while I arrived late for it, I caught the tail end. The result was that Will was still single-minded and even Greg seemed to be frustrated by his conversation with Will about communicating. So the only option was for the tutors to declare all bets off. The group has been officially split into two, it really is them and us now. We’ll see how it turns out, I just can’t wait to get this out of the way as it’s making me thoroughly miserable.
Shanice turned up today and was working on the touch interface for my info kisok (which needs redesigning to resemble more of a bean shape) and all credit to her she did come all the way into college…but seriously…the work wasn’t exactly up to scratch. I don’t mean to belittle her small contribution but I really hope we’re not at the point where I have to use it. The thing is I am struggling to tell her how bad her work is. Unless she’s reading this in which case…sorry but its true. Its not very good.
The plan for Wednesday is to put it all into a cohesive wall presentation, and then cross everything that can be crossed and hope its over quickly. It seems most people are feeling the pressure but for all the wrong reasons. I have no doubt this project will be scrapped next year.
Today was spent in Illustrator again, not such a bad thing as I’m really quite good at it now. Anyway Omari was working on some sketches of the final idea. I’m not really bothered what it is as long as its done! It seems as though our group is now not the only one fractured, people don’t seem to be able to let go of their ideas and let other people improve them. HELLO! Its called compromise?
Regardless here is the result of a few hours Illustrator work:
So I have been working in Illustrator on the connecting points within the main structure. Lets call them pods. It’s been very difficult to get the perspective right and for some reason I just can’t use gradients in Illustrator, so I had to switch over to Photoshop to create some lighting effects.
Anyway, here is the result of a few hours work:
Off to bed now as I have a personal tutorial tomorrow where I get to say what I have learnt from this project…does Illustrator count?
Today I had a brief meeting with Omari and Yuki, only for about half an hour but we cleared a lot of things up and we all have stuff to be getting on with. I will be using my new found illustrator skills to mock up a few concepts for various aspects of the confirmed design. Omari will be making a sketch for us to work from.
The main idea is to have 2 large interconnected beans (depicted in my concept) filling the space in the platz. We decided on a preliminary format for the final presentation which will be a large image of the concept in the centre with smaller images depicting different times underneath. Sprouting out from this will be various design solutions and concepts showing the overall feel of the building and the surroundings.
We only have a week to do this but I’m feeling confident we will have something good to present come next week.
Illustrator…here I come.
Today was a little disappointing considering we were supposed to pull it out of the bag. Yuki worked on some 3D modelling and I used illustrator to produce a concept using the bean idea but Omari was unfortunately very ill today and so his Vector Works skills were lacking. Anyway here are the images of our concept that most (I stress MOST) of us have agreed on and so are pursuing with. Not much time left and all that.
So today we had our formative assessment. Yet again we produced two distinct presentations – paper printouts and PowerPoint. Not that it mattered, we knew we were incredibly unprepared for it considering that we had no sketches…no ideas until 5pm last night and that was only thanks to a 10 minute meeting with Latent.
So we all agreed we were fractured as a group, with me; Omari and Yuki on one ‘team’ and Will and Ash on the other. I spoke to Ash this morning about the bean idea (I will see if I can find an image to post) and he seemed very enthusiastic about it. I hoped that it was the end of all the squabbling and bickering but boy was I wrong. After the presentation we
sat in a group for a few hours and discussed where we would go from here, only to be told by Will that he didn’t like the idea. Whilst we listened to a valid argument from him, we all still agreed that it should be a permanent structure Will thought it was best as temporary – speaking from a financial and ‘commission’ based perspective. So instead of moving forward from our presentation, we moved back a stage – SQUARE ONE!
This resulted in a few more hours being dedicated to hearing everyone’s views, opinions and ideas, to which Will was unreceptive. We were going round and round in circles and as much as I tried to keep everyone calm, I myself found it hard to control my frustration with Will for not even entertaining the ideas that we had all (excluding him because he was ‘building the model’ which wasn’t even completed as he said it was) previously agreed upon.
Here are some images we used in the presentation – we had little time to correctly convey the ideas.
The end result of all this was that I just got up and walked out of the room after we started again for the fifth time. I had certainly had enough of not moving forwards and people (Will) arguing about a concept and simply suggesting “a market”. So to conclude today’s post: Myself, Omari and Yuki have decided to progress the ideas we presented today without Will. Ash is a laid back guy and was willing to support most things suggested so I am sure we will ask him to participate. As for Will, he is more than welcome to be a part of the group, but we have NO MORE TIME to argue. We have taken a creative lead and are going to stick to it. Oh and Shanice has yet to turn up for anything. I even forgot she was in the group again. Oh well.
Anyway…back to Illustrator.
After an interesting meeting with Ruth and (insert name here) yesterday about PPD, we were told that we should firstly have an online presence as interaction designers and secondly that we should have a blog to show our thoughts and design process about our current project.
A little late considering our formative assessment is tomorrow but hey, I thought I’d give it ago. So here is a project blog about the Alexanderplatz project.
Currently I am in Purple Cave writing this… surprise… but I am also doing very little to do with the project. The group agreed I would Photoshop some images of greenery on walls which I found by a guy called Patrick Blanc. Take an image of that, and transfer it to an image of The Galleria in Alexanderplatz… challenging. Then again, there really isn’t much I can do.
For our presentation of initial research (Future City) the group fractured and we did not present as a group. It was full of “I did this…” and “I did that…”, very unprofessional. What was also unprofessional is that Omari took so much time talking about his segment, that it left 2 people unable to talk about their area of research – including me! The cultural probe was drop kicked into the shit-heap but that wasn’t really surprising considering it wasn’t discussed and the only resaon we had anything is because I made it (with help from Yuki cutting out the circles).
We did then decide on a new approach but it wasn’t liked by the tutors saying “You’re designers yet you’re getting the people to design for you.” Bollocks to that. I was fed up of getting contradicting information from the tutors from each discipline.
Goto http://www.newalexanderplatz.co.uk to see the results of our probe.
I bought cameras that weren’t used, made flyers for the website THAT I MADE. At this point, I was confused as to what everyone else was doing – except Omari…who seems to love research and pinning things on a board.
Today:
- The model is being completed (so Ash and Will say yet we have seen no evidence of anything from them)
- We decided on a slide show presentation with handouts for detailed work (to be compiled tomorrow morning… the morning of the formative assessment) with a timer so that each person knew when they’re 2mins was up and had to shut up.
- Omari and Yuki are working on sketches and ‘context’ because to date we have ONE sketch which was a quick drawing done by Yuki and that is the concept we are working from.
- I am writing this blog… which seems to be me voicing my ‘concerns’ about the project
I need to do some Photoshop work now…
