Design is Dangerous: Smartphones

Do we control them…or are they controlling us?! There are so many smartphones available in the market right now that can almost do anything and everything; most popular ones are the iPhones, Blackberries and Droids. It used to be so simple, I still remember the days of my old brick like phone where all I can do with it is call, text, and more importantly play that addicting game “Snake”.  Nowadays, these utility knife phones let us email, face time, play music, and plenty of other tech related activities. Sometimes it seems that instead of helping us be more productive, smart phones tend to take us away from our reality, removing us from the moment. Everywhere you look, you can see somebody with that glazed over look in their eye, staring at their phone swiping, pressing, and texting the time away. We seize the phone rather than seizing the day. Smartphones are a necessity today but they do exist as unintentional dangers to society, instead of the community growing through social communication, smart phones tend to remove and hinder the human element of interaction.  Smartphones do get the job done when it comes to productivity and networking, it just happens that with all the new technology advancing, the form of interaction is reduced. Instead of taking away from it, we as a society should not let smart phones be the main focus of our daily life but as a peripheral, a way to enhance human interaction.

Design in Society: Electric Cars

                                                   

           During a time of a suffering economy and high oil prices just around the corner, the concept of electric cars used by everybody in the near future is a Utopian in its design. Electric cars started in the 1900s and its level of mass interest slowly increased due to a focused interest in environment friendly emission vehicles. With current technological advances, the design of the electric car has been refined and is truly an efficient environment friendly and eases the pain of gas price hikes. The true beauty to this Utopian design is that they run 100% on electricity only, removing our dependency on depleting fossil fuels.  With such an innovative and environmentally friendly design meant to improve society, why don’t we see more electric cars out there on our roads today? It’s a combination of many factors, pressure from gas companies, recharge times, and electric cars are pretty expensive. Even with those factors against them, electric cars were designed to remove our unhealthy dependency on fossil fuels. It’s sad to see this Utopian design go unused and underutilized since it can really have a positive impact on our everyday lives. So why not just unplug your cars from the outlet and roll out.

Color Transforms: Google

     Blue, red, yellow, and green; known for reliable and fast web searches, Google’s logo and icon shows complete interaction of primary colors in their design that more often than not would not work if used on another logo. There would be too many colors clashing with each other but in Google’s case, it is a sure fit. Starting with the main logo, each letter of the word is a separated and is colored in one of the primary colors. The colors do not particularly blend or distract from one another but the separation of the solid colors gives it a simplistic feel. The lack of direct physical interaction between the primary colors makes the logo more distinct and straight to the point. You would easily and automatically recognize the logo, which is why when Google comes out with their “themed” logos usually based on a holiday or a pop culture reference, it is always a hit. Just playing around with the letters and incorporating the main colors allows the logo’s identity to remain prominent. Similarly designed to the main logo, Google’s smaller icon design combines the primary colors in a more unified puzzle piece like image. Abstract cut outs of the primary colors are placed close to their complementary color creating a design that flows and seem more incorporated than the original logo.

                                   

Elements of Ergonomics: Mazda RX-8

  

        When it first came out in 2004, the Mazda RX-8’s design was unconventional at the time. Aesthetically designed differently from sports cars at the time, the Mazda RX-8 dared expand their market by reaching new heights of innovation with their new line.

Safety: As its main function as a vehicle, safety is one of the most important features of the car. It achieves this with the “I” beam frame that runs through the middle of the car that strengthens the frame of car. Coupes usually seat 5 people, but since the I beam runs through the car, you have 4 sectioned off seats, providing solidity through the overall car. With safety as its prominent feature, the RX-8 fulfills its priority by focusing on the safety first and letting it influence the car’s design.

Comfort: Designed as a sports car, the RX-8 has bucket style racing seats. Usually just used as the front seats, the bucket seats were also used in the two back seats, this was because of the I beam construction. The regular three person back seat was removed and they installed racing seats just like the front seats because of the construction of the car.

Ease of use: Compared to other sports cars, the RX-8 can hold its own in its class, with some tricks up its sleeve. Designed as a coupe, which normally has two doors, Mazda incorporated freestyle doors to its design. Meant to allow easy access to the back seats, the RX-8 turns into a sedan disguised as a sports car. The RX-8 rotary engine is the lightest factory made engine, only drawback is that needs higher revolutions that decrease gas efficiency.

Performance (productivity): One of the most used forms of transportation, cars are as reliable as it can get, but it depends on the model and make of the car. The problem with this car is that the rotary engine that the overall design was based on needs to be carefully watched and maintained. The rotary engine with its spinning triangle design is completely different from piston engines. Instead of recycling its oil, the rotary burns it up, that means that a constant maintenance of engine oil levels.   

Aesthetics: From one look at the car, the first thing that stands out are the flared out front and back fenders, it’s a very distinctive look that is a real eye catcher on the road. Usually, the salient characteristics that can distinguish brands from one another are displayed on the face of the car, usually by the makeup of the grill, headlights, and hood design. Some people find the aggressive lines mixed with curved fender design a bit too much and over designed, but it is that certain blend that adds to the car’s appeal.

     The Mazda RX-8 displays the gestalt principle with a complete unity of its design working together to further enhance the overall product. Every aspect of the car had a point and reason to its design, fulfilling the categories of the elements of ergonomics for designers.    

Wanderlust Singapore Hotel

Tucked away in the heart of Singapore’s little India, the Wanderlust Hotel takes a fun and quirky approach on hotel room design. Instead of having one single room theme or design for the whole hotel, the Wanderlust hired 4 different agencies to design each of the 4 floors of the hotel. The end result was that the hotel guests are able to choose from 4 different stories, each one designed as separate worlds. The first floor contains small rooms that are coordinated by one single color and the theme of each room is artists and song titles, simply placed on the wall by neon signs. Contrastingly, the second floor has a black and white theme. The third floor houses origami and pop up style rooms. The origami room mostly made up of many corners that give the impression that its “folded” or creased. The most interesting part of this floor are the pop up rooms, stark white room with “furniture” popping up from the walls and ceilings, an effect made stronger by  being lit up with a yellow glow from behind. Lastly, the top floor has loft style rooms with its theme “creature comforts”, designed as if it came straight out of a child’s imagination.

It’s not advertised as the biggest, most upscale, and classy hotel, but it gives travelers and tourists and fresh change from lavish hotels that they can check into at any time. The hotel’s appeal is directed to those who would like to try something new and out of the ordinary. Designed to give its patrons a varied selection of rooms, the hotel wisely uses the designs of these 4 agencies to hook patrons into trying out their brand, even if it is slightly unconventional. 

http://wanderlusthotel.com/

Word & Image: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

     Pretty much stumped searching for a word & image topic for my blog, I turned to movies to give me an inspiration. I remembered watching the movie adaptation of the Scott Pilgrim comic series called Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. The plot of the movie revolves around Scott Pilgrim who falls in love with a girl named Ramona, in order to “win” over Ramona, he has to fight the league of seven evil exes. Ramona’s seven exes who are ready to finish off anybody who dares to date Ramona. 

     The movie loosely follows the comic series but the main parts are still present. The action revolves around the comic stylized fights between Scott and the evil exes. The movie did a great job in inserting comic devices into each scene, a THUD, CLANK, SWISHHH aptly pops up during the epic fight scenes, sticking to the comic book style. The movie cleverly uses lines and full phrases from the comic and blends them into the scene along with the actors. In another movie, this would be out of place but in Scott Pilgrim, word and image have a synergistic relationship, the words and motion graphics playfully interact with one another.

Word & Image: Brian Fies, Mom’s Cancer

           During Brian Fies’ presentation in last Thursday’s class, the concept of word and image came up plenty of times. Separately, word and image are different kinds of forms that relay a certain message. If combined together in a cohesive and unified way, that message becomes stronger and supported.  In the book Mom’s Cancer, Brian Fies was able to tell the story of his family’s tough journey battling cancer through a comic. The serious and emotional theme of the book was carried strongly by the combination of word and image in most of the panels of the comic. For example, the part where his mother was unable to keep up with the medical terminology of everything, Fies illustrates his mother “drowning” in the terminology by having his mother on the foreground, floating above a background with plenty of small bold faced medical terminology repeating over and over. In another scene, Brian Fies said that his mother’s therapy was like walking on a tightrope, a dangerous balancing act. He reinforces those words by illustrating his mother on a balancing on a tightrope, showing that each different therapy was like balancing an elephant on one side of the pole, showing the delicate and risky predicament that his mother was going through. The combination of both word and image was able to create a deeper impact to the readers, solidifying the message that the author was trying to convey. 

Lebron Rise

One of the world’s most famous athletes, Lebron James, publicly announced his decision last summer that he is going to another team, making him public enemy number one in the eyes of every NBA fan.  Now seen as the villain and a traitor, Nike had to protect their multimillion dollar investment by quickly launching a new ad with Lebron asking the viewers…”What should I do?” Nike’s commercial is designed to change the current state of Lebron’s tarnished image. He does this by asking the viewers in the beginning of the commercial if he should admit that he made a mistake. Touching upon all areas where Lebron had an influence in, like his former team the Cleveland Cavaliers, shoe deal, and more importantly the message that he is NOT a role model. The ad is designed to remind the viewers that even if Lebron’s decision was a very bad one, it is made to humanize him as much as possible. That famous superstars like him are not perfect and are not prone to make mistakes. By breaking the fourth wall, the ad feels more organic, more emotional and vulnerable, a perfect recipe to what Nike has been doing really good of lately which is resuscitating the images of their tarnished stars.