3 Pens in 3 Styles

Our Formgiving assignment (due today) was to come up with 3 pen designs based on the design languages of three different designers (artists, architects, industrial designers, etc.). We have to make our two best designs for a week from this Friday. I choose Joan Miro, David Goines, and Santiago Calatrava. I'm just posting my David Goines design here, because it was my favorite.

Chiaroscuro

This is my first completed project for Art 160. It is a pen drawing based on a photograph I took of a cathedral in Zagreb, Croatia a few years ago.

Design Students in the News

read about some loftees in "print"!

http://www.stanforddaily.com/cgi-bin/?p=2199

Personal Statements Event

The Personal Statements Party is over! In the end it all worked out fine, even though the postcards didn't ship out on time. I hope I never plan another party ever.

Trip to LA

Pink Foam Models

These are (grayscale) pictures of my pink-foam models for the Opposite Forms assignment. The top one is Sacred and Secular, which I simplified a bit from my original marker rendering, and the bottom one is Open and Closed. For that one I modified my original design so that the pair appears to be two states of the same object, which seems to make the contrast between open and closed much more obvious. During the class critique, there was some concern that the form I chose was not "essential" - that it had extra edges and details that made it into a "product" instead of just a fundamental form. But overall I think the opinion was that it was so nice-looking and clear that it didn't matter so much if it wasn't the most essential form.

First Formgiving Assignment

Our first assignment was to render three pairs of opposite forms in marker. The first one here is Secular vs Sacred - contrasting an earthbound, impure, grid-like form with one that is more aspirational, symmetric, and stellated. Next is Emotional vs Rational, which was my least successful one during the class critique. I saw this pair as demonstrating two ways of approaching the problem of spanning from one spot to another - the rational arch vs an intuitive, expressive, emotional leap. And my last one is Open vs Closed.

bike trip to berkeley

Here's my bike on the way to Berkeley to visit Audrey this past weekend - you can just barely see the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.

New Year's Resolution

I have decided to continue posting updates on what I am working on into the new year, even though the ME 313 class is over. So to start out, I'm sharing some photos of my Christmastime project (which I gave to my family). I guess it could be called The Wobbler: it's a toy that waddles down a ramp while waving a feather in the air. These guys grew out of an Art 60 assignment to create something that moved in an engaging way.