For Kim’s Project on Thursday we got into groups and learnt some interesting/unusual facts about each other. I learnt that my partner loved to travel. I decided to brainstorm and research ideal gifts that would be perfect for a frequent traveller to have and utilise. As seen in my sketches, I played around with mostly items you can take with you as you travel such as a backpack, a scrapbook, a sleep mask and more. I then looked at incorporating the second task into my designs which was to find a word from the random word list and see how I can add it into my designs. My first word was aeroplane and I experimented with how it would look and how I could make it fit in. I decided that the best design was the passport holder as I felt I could incorporate a lot into it and it was the best ideal gift out of the ones I had thought about.

Sketching out my passport holder, I decided to draw a simple icon of an airplane which is of course fitting the theme. I decided to look at the second and third random words in which being compass and money. I included the navigations of the compass; north, east, south and west around the airplane in an order to visually mimic the layout of a compass. I then decided I could include the random word money by also illustrating things that can go in the holder along with the passport, which was bank cards and loyalty cards. I also added pound signs to further accentuate the use of the word money.

My partners 3 facts were:

• Enjoys listening to music, favourite artists are Krept & Konan, Headie one, AJ Tracey…
• Likes to watch TV and films a lot. some examples are Brooklyn 99, Power, Fast and Furious…
• Likes technology, using it, watching videos about it…

Below were my initial brain storm of ideas from his facts:

My three random words were:

• Software
• Game
• Bomb

Below, are my concepts shown through the matrix grid. I came up with all these using one of the elements above, and sometimes mixing them.

From there I re-drew my two final ideas for the gift. These were: 1 pair of temple discs and a Smart ring. Can be seen below.

The concept behind the Temple Discs are that when you put them on, they link to your brain. They take you into a different reality, where you can live as a character in you favourite tv show/film. I thought this was a good idea and it is a new experience as instead of just watching you are living it too. I came up with this concept from his love of watching tv and films. But also from the two random words of game and software.

My second final idea is called Smart Ring. It links to your brain again, however this time you control it all. You can speak to it to find out information, can control music, read out a text for you, send texts and make calls for you. Lastly works as a camera by capturing what you see from your own eyes. I got to this idea from the random word of software and my partners love for music and technology.

My partners 3 facts were:

• likes chocolate
• likes R&B
• has a bulldog

my 3 random words were:

• teeth
• treadmill
• sandwich

i decided to focus on 2 topics of R&B and sandwich. This resulted in a final product of a sandwich which was sponsored by a well known R&B singer Drake, and his chosen sandwih choice.

 

Brief

Gather three interesting facts about your partner. Use these three facts to design the ideal gift for them, whilst following the ‘Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver’ method from Design Council.

 

Process

My first three words were cat, travel, food. I started looking into what I could create based on the cat, there is so much cat paraphernalia out there however that this on its own wasn’t proving to be very interesting. So I experimented with incorporating the travel and food elements more. One of my earlier ideas was an app that you could use in the airport to direct you to allergen friendly foods for those on restricted diets. This is because one of my partners said they were gluten intolerant.

On the hour each hour for three hours we had to add a random word into the mix. The first word I was given was bird. When I think of birds I think of birdsong, vibrant colours and flight. Flight fit perfectly with the theme of travel and so I incorporated a birds wing into my Cateye logo. I went for ‘cateye’ as a play on words from red eye flights. My second word was game. I realised that this app could be both functional and playful. By expanding the cat theme to become a Pokemon-go style collection game, I could integrate the second word pretty well. The idea being that when you find and scan your vegan wrap, you unlock the Cheshire Cat avatar to add yo your family of cats, etc. My third and final random word was milkshake. So I expanded the game idea and included treats to be earned for the cats you have collected.

 

Reflection

At first I found it really hard to just scratch out a bunch of ideas freely that related to my initial three words. I found I was trying to think of something, rather than just jot down all the ideas that were coming to mind. It was then made much more difficult when throwing in really random words at different points along the process. However, I really enjoyed stretching myself in the idea forming process. This wasn’t a method I had tried before, and though it was a challenge I really appreciated how it encouraged me to push my ideas further and experiment more.

For todays session we were tasked with making an ‘ideal gift’ for one of our group members. we started the group discussion with three interesting facts about ourselves. the person I chose to focus on responding to liked to travel, painted custom shoes for clients and also owns a bearded dragon. I started by drawing out initial sketches to these three ideas, mainly focussing on the lizard for the subject. I started by drawing sketches that combined all three elements. as the session progressed, we had to pick three words at random. mine had been ‘drink’, ‘Monster’ and ‘post office’. In the end stages of my sketches I decided to finalise my best sketch that was influenced by the word ‘monster’. I decided to respond to this word by making a Godzilla poster using the lizards picture. I got a couple of images of the lizard from the team member and played around with framing within the sketches. once I chose my final one I finalised it in photoshop. I did this by erasing the background of the lizards image through a combination of the section and eraser tool. unfortunately the picture was low quality so I had to resort to using both. I then experimented with increasing the exposure and contrast to create more contrast in shadows as well as soften the edges of the lizard. I then turned it to black and white and added a red circle behind the image and setting the blend option to darken which created a spotlight effect. the circle also represents Japan which is one of the scenes of some of the Godzilla films, also linking back to my team members hobby of traveling. I decided to finalise the image by adding some png logos of the recent film ‘Godzilla, king of the monsters’ to make the message more clear.

Alfred as Godzilla Poster

The person who’s ideal gift I designed had the following 3 facts:

• Born in Pakistan, moved to the UK at age 16
• Love make-up and fashion
• Want to travel

---

At first I came up with various ideas e.g. a suitcase which cleans and folds all the clothes and stops them from getting wrinkles, a make-up kit which never runs out of supplies, etc.

So I developed my ideas and found that the originally most basic idea of a map showing the places they’ve traveled had the most meaning behind it. It shows you where you’ve been and where you’re still going to go.

 

I continued to develop my idea. Turning it into a world scratch map, so only the countries they’ve been and the one they are in stand out.

 

 

Building on that some more the map gained to ability to transport the person to the country they scratch. So when they scratch Italy for example they will automatically be teleported to Italy.

 

---

My 3 random words were as follows:

1. cycle
2. paintbrush
3. vulture

---

In order to incorporate “cycle”  I  gave  the  map it’s own  traveling case, with a button-strap in the  lid so  they can attach their scratching pick. This traveling case also protects the map from all the elements (e.g. water) as well as being the perfect size to fit into a bicycles’ water bottle carrier.

 

 

Having successfully incorporated “cycle” I began to think about how I could incorporate “paintbrush”. I began thinking about what a paintbrush is used for rather the brush itself. This lead me to the idea that this magical gift map could show the person some landmarks in the current country to educate them a bit, as well as look pretty. Hence the back of the map will now show them some of the amazing landmarks in the UK, until they travel abroad in which case it may turn into the Sagrada Famila or the Coluseum, etc.

Short of adding a “vulture” painting on the back or front I soon realised I needed to again not think of the vulture directly in order to incorporate it into the gift design. After a while I got thinking about the ideas of vultures flying, so what’s to say this magical scratch map couldn’t do so as well? Taking a bit of inspiration from the golden snitch as well I turned the map’s wings into feathers. To ensure this magical map couldn’t get lost or stolen it will come to the owner when they want it and only opens for them.

 

Thus came to be the Traveling Map gift idea.

For Kim’s project, we were partnered up with someone from our class and we had to tell each other three interesting facts about ourselves. From that, we then had to come up with an ideal gift for our partner. My partner’s facts about herself were that she plays the piano and loves photography and painting. We then had to pick 3 numbers from 1-210 and these matched up with random words on a list that Kim gave us. My 3 words were, necklace, cup and feather. We had to use these words to help us come up with more ideas for our ideal gift, here were some of my initial ideas.

I ended up going with one of the original ideas that I came up for my final design which you can see at the top of the page. This was a paint by numbers grand piano with cameras fitted on the inside of the piano facing outwards to capture the reactions of her audience. On reflection I think I could have also developed one of my other ideas which was a desk with a small keyboard built into the front of it, a paintbrush put fitted in the desk, a mini easel fitted on top and a lockable camera storage box also fitted on the inside (sketch in the bottom left corner)