critique

The picture is a mini cooper advertisement taken from www.gushmagazine.com. The poster which was cut out into the shape of a mini cooper was placed at the top of the entrance of a subway station. The image was captured with people exiting or entering the subway station. With one side of its doors open, it gives the illuion that the car can fit many people at a time. I like the part where they contrast this idea with its small physical appearance. The word "SIZE" printed on the side door might have helped me direct my attention to this contrast.

Reflection item for lecture 03

For this lecture, I think the most important thing to take home is that we have to decide early on the resolution and size of the image before we start working on it. It would be disasterous to find out otherwise. I certainly don't want to redo my projects no matter how interesting they may be.

Burgers will be the theme for my first project.

This is the combined picture from the previous two sketches on procrastination. I thought of working on this initally but decided against it because it still did not quite represent the idea of procrastination. One could interpret this as me going to take a break from mugging. I did some research on the same theme and found the following picture to best describe a procrastinator. What I like about this picture is that the message is spelled out clearly even with the purposeful omission of the last few letters. ( one could still make out what that word is ) It makes me, as the viewer, think that he could have easily finished writing it but decided to put it aside for another day to do, which is what a procrastinator does!

4 rough sketches to Me, Myself and I

These are the 4 sketches I drew up for the first project. The first one ( top extreme left ) was inspired by past experience as a kendo-ka. Kendo means "the way of the sword."

I chose to sketch this because kendo is a very mentally and physically taxing sport and though I left it 2 years ago, the experience had burnt into my memory banks pernamently.

Second one is about my love for swimming. The swimming pool is fashioned into the letter 'g' with the deck chairs positioned to form the letter 'z'; together they form my initals 'gz'. I saw one of the works presented during lecture which had the name written to fit the back of an mp3 player. I thought it didn't quite utilize the form to express the designer's love for music. Perhaps using musical notes to form the name would better show the designer's love for music. This sketch was my attempt to do just that. Hahahaha... but one can also interpret in another way; that I like to hang out at the pool. Hahhahaa

Alright moving on, the next one to the right resembles that of a burger. This burger represents my love for Carls Jr burgers. My intials are written downwards.

The bottom two pictures represent one of my bad habits - procrastination. The table lamp represents the letter 'G' and the book marks represent the letter 'Z'. However, I think that the picture does not really say I'm a procrastinator. Another interpretation can be that I love to sleep given that there's a guy sleeping on the desk.

This is a rough sketch of what I drew during the first lecture. It is a machine that gathers the relevant information instructed by the user, filters them before sending it back to the user. Since designing anything requires prior research into the topic, i think it's best if we can have as much information as possible for us to immerse ourselves into, before digesting it and finally, creating our design.

Lecture 2 Reflection

Creating a piece of art versus designing a product. To an artist, a piece of art is something which he creates withint he boundaries which he sets for himself. This can originate from his life experience, his perspective of things, etc. But to the viewer, he does not have to look at it the same way the artist does. No matter if you appreciate it or dislike it, it is not a question of right or wrong. There is no standard of measurement for a piece of art. A design on the other hand has to adhere to a set of rules; a framework of steps to take and requirements to be met. This framework is called the design process. The idea is first conceptualized in abstract terms before actualizing it through its various forms. I think this is the part where we can inject our creative juices. Since our idea is abstract, there can be multiple representations of it. I think we just need to reflect back on our idea consistently throughout the process so as not to side track.

That being said, it does not mean that designers cannot be artist at the same time. Take for example, the Esplanade has been the subject of scrutiny since its design was made known to the public. Some say it looks like two halves of a durian, others say it looks like a pair of eyes of a housefly. The Marina bay Sands casino is said to resemble three joss sticks. Yet such works of art are feasible to build! Therefore a designer can also be an artist... you just need to know when to be either one.

Introduction

Hi,

I'm Guozheng, a 3rd year student in NUS. This blog is started to facilitate the writing of my reflections on the content covered during my weekly NM2208 lectures.