A Copper Coil

Designers and their Websites

2009-02-14T22:19:00.000-08:00

Here is a list of a few designers and their websites that I found. I think they are really thoughtful and inviting websites that promote both the artist and their work. I will post pictures of their websites shortly.

Eliana R. Arenas - This jewelry artist has a black background and white lettering for her font. The pictures are in color and display a range of her one of a kind pieces, as well as her production line. Her biography is simply her resume. Her artist statement is short and I really like the picture she chose to introduce us to her home page.

Jan Harrell - I liked how there were a variety of images and how almost everything you might want to know about her was available in the top bar above her photo.

Lisa Vershbow - This artist uses a simple bio as her intro web page with an interesting piece of jewelry that invites the viewer to explore her website further.

Georg Jensen - This is a web page for a large jewelry store. I really like how there are high quality, and interesting rings on the intro page to his website. I also like the black background because it makes the jewelry really pop off of the page.

Biba Schutz - She has an interesting intro to her website; her handwritten signature introduces the viewer to her website. She also informs the viewer which shows she is participating in with links that create another pop up window. Disappointingly, there is not a gallery of her work on her website.

I had a great Christmas!

2009-02-10T18:54:00.000-08:00

Yes, I had a wonderful Christmas, and even though it is almost Valentine's Day, I just wanted to post a pictures of my beautiful jeweler's bench. It has a familiar Ugly Duckling story arc to it. I found it on Craig's list, and drove about 2 hours north to get it. I bought it (no haggling) for $30 dollars, and it is really too bad I didn't take a "before" picture because the entire thing was rusty and warped from being left in a barn or outside in the rain.

I started to repair the wooden desk by prying the wooden slats apart and planing the hard wood, but school started and I didn't have the time or access to the tools. Lo and behold, my dad and my brother in law Brian stepped in and finished the project for me. And it was my big Christmas surprise.

I have no idea how old the piece is, but it is definitely missing the catch tray that came with it. It was made by William Dixon, Inc. in Newark, NJ. I did a little research online, and I think the company was bought out by Grobet U.S.A. in 1964. To make the gift even sweeter we went to Harbor Freight and bought a light with a built in magnifier to go with it for another 30 dollars. A little money and a lot of elbow grease looks pretty good.

Branding? Moo.com has me covered!

2008-12-17T22:10:00.000-08:00

Here is a picture of one of the wool brooches I am selling, after designing a line of jewelry in Jan Baum's design and production class this past fall. I am pleased that a few of them have sold, so I am getting postcards and mini-cards printed from http://www.moo.com/ to go with them, and help me advertise more of my pieces. This website, based in the U.K., prints business cards. They have lots of different options for ways you might want to advertise yourself. I want to learn how to take a good picture and manipulate it in photoshop before I buy any more cards, but the plethora of options definately excites me.

For my business card format I used Arthur Hash's mini card as my template, and included my name, blog, email, and phone number.

I ordered them today, and the website said they would be sent by the 23rd, so I guess I will see them in early January. I can't wait!!!

New Mexico Pictures - the inspiration for my ring project

2008-12-16T20:06:00.000-08:00

This is a picture of me and my little sister Tara in Las Cruces, NM in 1986. The relevant part of this picture is behind me. I had to walk about half a block to reach the desert, and an unobstructed view of the Organ mountains. As part of my ring project I have decided to use the New Mexico desert as my inspiration for making my pieces.

On a different note, this picture was taken for the local newspaper in 1996. I was a senior in high school. These outfits were heavier than you might think. It really was a lot of fun to play and sing in this group; we were called the Mariachi Diamante, I think. Go ahead and try to find me.

Second Life - progress shots

2008-12-13T23:00:00.000-08:00

Here are a few pictures of the progress of my pop up space in Second Life:
An aerial view of my space.

I really liked the command ctrl D. It was fun to make them all in a row.

A first draft of my space. I edited out the eggs on the corners and made a different texture on the wall of pictures.

Everything got faster and faster with a little practice. My avatar had to rest though. :)

Another picture of the beginning drafts. The table has the first pieces of wearable brooches. I want to figure out how to give them away to the other avatars in class.

The gray and pink brooch. The colors may have to be tweaked before I upload the image as a texture.

The orange egg brooch.

Two acrylic chick brooches.

The pink and gray egg brooch.

The yellow acrylic chick brooch.

Arthur Hash; Another guest lecturer at Towson this semester

2008-12-11T20:29:00.000-08:00

That's him: Arthur Hash. This picture of him and more of his exploits and adventures can be found at his blog, The Art Escape Plan.

Arthur Hash was another lecturer that came to Towson to speak with us and show us some slides of his work this past semester. Jan was super excited to have him come and talk to us, and it was so clear why she had so much enthusiasm for him. He is a regular, down-to-earth, easy going guy who makes really cool pieces of jewelry, and knows his way around metal.

During his slide lecture, I was really impressed with his CAD abilities. He definitely knows his way around Rhino, and has made some really neat organic forms with his computer designs.

I was also impressed with the slide of his beautifully raised silver teapot, which he promptly cast in resin and sliced into cross sections during his years in grad school.

I liked seeing the slides of his work that showcased his traditional goldsmith and silversmith skills. I also liked the way he takes easy, ready-made objects and made them into unexpected wearable art. The orange cone brooch, made from a real rubber orange cone, is a great example of this. The steel coffee stain brooches are pretty neat too.

Arthur also told us about Moo.com, where he had a bunch of little half sized business cards made that advertised his name, website, email and phone number. (I almost forgot about this, but I am glad I remembered. I loved his business cards, and I want to go to Moo and get some cards done too.)

He has pieces on Etsy, and he is represented in a gallery or two. He seemed like a really nice guy who is immensely talented and didn't really have a gigantic ego. He was the perfect person to listen to from our tiny little art jewelry community.

Marcia Lausen: She wrote the book on ballot and election design

2008-12-11T19:35:00.000-08:00

I attended the lecture Marcia Lausen gave at Towson University on Election Design this past semester, and while researching her name later, I came across Design for Democracy: Ballot and Election Design, a book that she had written about election reform. I have yet to read it, but it looks interesting, and I enjoyed her lecture for a couple really important reasons:

1) It was not a partisan lecture, which I was expecting. It was about how to communicate to the public before and during an election in a visually concise way. The Florida debacle did come up, but it was about the poor design of the butterfly ballot, and how she and her students came up with clearer solutions for ballot design.

2) I learned about how reading a piece of paper with ALL CAPS, and lots of subtitles can be visually difficult to decipher.
for example:

JOHN SMITH
LIBERTARIAN
LAWYER

MARY WHITE
GREEN
TRUCK DRIVER

She decluttered a ballot by placing only the first and last name of the person on a top row (first letter of first and last name is in caps, the rest of the letters in the name are lower case) and then only their party fell beneath their name with nothing extra, like their occupation.

John Smith
Libertarian

Mary White
Green

It was interesting that the psychology of color played a role in her redesign of ballots and election signs. Blue is associated with calming feelings and red is associated with excited feelings. Blue was the color that she preferred as a complimentary color in an example she showed us of an election sign her class had created, with no red in it, because she wanted to instill a feeling of calm in the voters going to in to a precinct marked by her redesigned voting posters. The city government for whom they had designed the poster threw out the blue only color and opted for their own shade of red, and made a red only election poster instead.

For the sake of politics and an election, Blue = Democratic party and Red = Republican party. I don't think you can get around this fact and creating posters with only one color or the other gives the opposing political party the idea you are trying to subliminally communicate a message about one party or the other. It would be nice to see redesigned election posters with both red and blue harmonized, (the U.S. flag comes to mind as a design with both colors in recognizable harmony).

IDEO and the Art of Innovation, and another book I bought instead

2008-12-11T18:15:00.000-08:00

Last semester, when we were given our book list, Jan required The Art of Innovation, by Tom Kelly for all of the classes I had with her. Being a little short on cash, I declined this one, and read various chapters here and there. I confess I shied away from actually purchasing it after reading some of the reviews on Amazon. However, I was able to download it from my local library, and now I listen to it (ten CDs, total) in the car when I am not listening to NPR, stories meant for children (I am a mom), or Christmas music ('tis the season, right?).

So, I keep coming back to a couple of chapters again and again, and one of them is Chapter Six, Prototyping is the Short Hand of Innovation. This chapter deals specifically with prototyping. I guess the biggest point in this chapter is that prototyping isn't just model-making to Ideo. It is sketching, doodling, drawing, making and testing the model until their team is confident the product is ready to for production. It seems that all of the prep work before the product comes out is prototyping. Everything has to be checked to see what is right and what is not right for the product. The author likes to point out that constantly getting thoughts out on paper is the way they are able to work out solutions to problems, and essentially have the tools to innovate.

I also liked the story about the steering wheel that could only be prototyped in a red plastic to show the client in time for their scheduled deadline and meeting. The client loved the color so much it inspired a wide range of colorful steering wheels that were manufactured as components to video games.

The chapter also focused on the variety of extremes their company has gone to test a prototype - it has to be tested in the real world under real conditions.

I suppose the other chapter I really enjoyed is chapter four, The Perfect Brainstorm - Really, all of us need to get over feeling like an idea is embarrassing or not applicable and just get out the first things that come to mind when we sit down to actually do a brainstorm as a class. I can honestly say I have enjoyed brainstorming with everyone in our metals classes much more this semester than last semester. That is because I have been very forward and direct with my thoughts and ideas during our brainstorming sessions, without really caring if everyone liked or disliked what I said. The idea was to let every crazy inconceivable notion come out into the open in the beginning, and sorting the better ideas would come later.

Brainstorms that were memorable this semester were on the "Definition of Hollow Form" and our somewhat informal "Iconic Form". I was pretty sad to miss our "What is a Ring?" brainstorm, especially since the Walters Museum in Baltimore really set me in the mood for challenging what a ring form and purpose has traditionally meant and translating that to a modern form today.

Things we are missing to make our brainstorms like Ideo's:

1) tell the boss to leave the room...is Jan the boss? Do we feel pressure because we don't want to come up with an idea that she doesn't like? Or are we more fearful of blurting out ideas in front of our peers?

2)chocolate chip cookies. Yes, the book recommends chocolate chip cookies to get the ball rolling.

Fun Facts: Ideo came up with the Coinstar machine. I haven't used one yet, but now I want to, just to get more of the Ideo experience, without buying a heart stream defibrillator, for example.

So I bought another book instead: IDEO: Eyes Open New York. It was passed around on the bus we took to New York City this year. I only bought it because I saw who the authors were (Ideo) and the reviews on Amazon were good. This book reads like a little guide into the speakeasies and not so well known places in New York that might interest hip tourists. Hey, I'm hip. I like off the beaten path places. And I especially like the small size of the guide with color pictures.

I have yet to visit one of those places, but I think Rice to Riches may be my first stop - the restaurant featured on page 23 has a sign on their window, "Eat all you want...you're already fat."

Felt Brooches!

2008-12-09T18:21:00.000-08:00

Branding and Tim Gunn

2008-12-09T17:31:00.000-08:00

Is there anything Tim Gunn says to which we shouldn't listen? Here is his quote from an nymag.com article about the advice he gave to fashion graduates that had just finished at Parsons in 2004:

Now, when seniors tell Tim Gunn, the director of the Parsons fashion program, that they’re considering a summer in Europe or some lazy days at the beach, he tells them no. “They’ve got to get out there and brand themselves now,” he says. “The industry likes its talent fresh. You’re like a new car, and they want to still be able to smell the vinyl.”

The article also goes into a little bit of depth into four designer's aesthetics, and the markets to whom they are planning on selling their clothes. I am the most impressed with Natalia Allen's effort at branding herself. Her webpage looks phenomenal, and she seems to be an all around smart, innovative thinker. She has also done a lot of work since her graduation from Parsons in 2004. I think I am going to start following her blog.

Packaging and Branding

2008-11-19T16:04:00.001-08:00

I don't remember how old I was when I saw this ad for the first time, but I have been an admirer of Benetton's ads for a long time. This company has always promoted diversity through its ads and with the color palettes of its textiles it makes available to consumers. The ads themselves can be studied as innovative social design.

Light My Fire is a camping equipment company that I just ran into one day while I was shopping at Wal-mart. Not only does this ultra cool line of sporks (also has a serrated edge like a knife) come in a neat concise package, it is made with PP friendly plastic, and has other matching accessories in its line that look pretty cool too.

Just the design of the box of Godiva chocolates is a thing of beauty. Recognizable from a distance, and the chocolate inside the box is desirable as well.

I really respond to the different colors on display in the clear glass bottles of Jones Sodas, and the variety of colors and flavors of these juices and sodas. I really love the blue one (Raspberry lemonade?) Yum.

A Hershey Kiss. Small. Concise. To the point. Delightful.

Marimekko is a Finnish textile company that sells fabrics and textiles as well as coordinating home accessories. I love this store, and I love the way they have their colors speak, and the store itself is the the blank white palette with which it contrasts.

Neutrogena is a company whose line of hygiene products have been effectively marketed using a plain package with a limited color palette, and a distinctive orange-yellow color of soap as their product.

The Rubik's Cube isn't a company with lots of good designs, but a single high note as a product that can be universally agreed upon as good design. This piece pretty much markets itself because the design is universal.

Tiffany and Co., a chain of jewelry stores, uses the same blue box for packaging its jewelry. In fact, it has successfully copyrighted this shade of blue in shade of blue in some parts of the U.S. As an upscale jewelry store, this method of branding is similar to that of the Godiva company: the packaging itself reflects good taste, no matter what is inside.

Toblerone is a Swiss chocolate company that has a really cool triangle shape as its packaging concept. The distinctive large red font with the picture of the mountain on the box contrasts with the buttery yellow background and the shape of the pieces themselves reflect the picture of the Swiss Alps on the box.

Some PostSecrets I wanted to post

2008-11-19T15:17:00.001-08:00

Postsecret

A Designer's Workspace

2008-11-19T15:14:00.001-08:00

Ponoko!!!

2008-11-18T20:15:00.001-08:00

Elation doesn't even begin to describe it!

Store fronts in NYC

2008-11-18T19:33:00.000-08:00

40+ ring maquettes

2008-11-18T18:43:00.000-08:00

I missed everyone today, and I really did miss you. I was at home cleaning up after my stomach flu infested family. Everyone has had it except for me...knock on wood.
In the mean time, playing with the possiblilties of using sheet, wire, stock and tubing to make our rings has really got me thinking about the whats and hows of that task. I also think I might need to come up with 40 more maquettes, now that I can see my work in one glance.

Creative Business Cards, or how to effectively brand yourself

2008-11-17T16:27:00.001-08:00

I found a French design blog called fubiz, and they had some pretty amazing examples of business cards published on their blog. You can look here and here to see more examples. I just picked a few of my favorites to share:

Cooper Hewitt Exhibition - Fashioning Felt

2008-10-15T22:53:00.000-07:00

More Felt!!

There will be an exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum in DC called Fashioning Felt that will run from March 6 to September 7, 2009. Apparently this show is going to run the full monty of felt, from historical examples to current innovations, from wearables to architecture. This is going to be so cool.

Josh Jakus and his kick ass line of purses

2008-10-15T21:39:00.000-07:00

I love this line by Josh Jakus. Super cool. And the unzipped version looks so easy and simple too.

The Trashcanulator 2000!!

2008-10-14T18:52:00.001-07:00

Check this out! This IKEA hack is a great little light box for only $10 to $15! Tanya Brown had this on her blog, but it has found its way all over the web. I found it here at Tacky Living. I think I'm going to make one this Christmas.

Egg Bibliography

2008-10-13T20:23:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of websites I have perused over the past few weeks while I have been researching eggs:

Egg: Biology article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_(biology)
Egg: Food Article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_(food)
Egg Shell Energy Article, http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/eggpower.htm
1,000 Rings, http://books.google.com/books?id=NtXwT05_RU4C,
Peter Carl Faberge, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faberg%C3%A9_egg
Thomas Gentille, http://www.klimt02.net/exhibitions/index.php?item_id=4911
Seo Yoon Choi, Desire 1999
Sigurd Bronger, Egg ring
D-Vision, http://www.d-vision.co.il/151263, Motherbird
Lily Yung, http://www.lilyyung.com/, Necklace, 2005
Josh Jakus, http://www.joshjakus.com/, Eggflat
Paul Outerbridge, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Outerbridge,
Triumph of the Egg, 1932
Felt Artist Links, http://members.peak.org/~spark/feltlistFAQ.html
Egg spoons, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_spoon

d-vision

2008-10-10T17:57:00.001-07:00

Whoa! Go check out this really cool Israeli design collective called d-vision. They take recent undergraduates and place them in their design collective as interns for two years. This piece is called motherbird. They have many other cool projects and their 'inspiration page' is really neat too. Go check it out!

Creative Caffeine: EGG-centered phrases

2008-10-07T20:55:00.000-07:00

I decided to make a list of Egg-centered phrases and cliches, (which morphed in to recipe names and other bird centered phrases, idioms and lyrics), that we use in our everyday lexicon. If you have more feel free to add them in the comment section. :)

* Egg (someone) on
* Egg on (someone's) face
* A goose egg
* All your eggs in one basket
* Walking on egg shells
* Egg-head
* Bacon and eggs
* Sunny side up
* Playing chicken
* Why did the chicken cross the road?
* Chicken feed
* Chicken coop
* Fly the coop
* Chicken Little
* Chicken Nuggets
* Chicken wing
* S'matter? You Chicken?
* Chicken scratchings
* Hen and Chicks
* Chick peas
* Egg salad sandwich
* Chicken shit
* Chicken Little
* Spring Chicken
* Which came first? The chicken or the Egg?
* Scrambled eggs
* Eggs Benedict
* (Last one there is a) Rotten Egg
* A bird in the hand is worth two in a bush
* Duck, duck, goose
* Goose step
* Little Red Hen
* Henny Penny, and the rest...
* Eggo's
* Kentucky Fried Chicken; Churches Chicken
* Chicken a la king
* egging a house
* oeuf
* qui vole un oeuf vole un boeuf
* Omelette
* eats like a bird
* duck a l'orange
* goose is cooked
* christmas goose
* christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat...
* Which came first? The chicken or the egg?
* ducks in a row

ReadyMade and Wired

2008-10-07T20:00:00.000-07:00

In September of 2004 Wired published an article about two Irish scientists who had isolated a particular species of bacteria that "detoxif[ied] styrene and return[ed] it ... as a green plastic." This green plastic could then be used as an elastic polymer, which has a wide range of uses such as plastic coating on cardboard.

The article mentioned how the scientists worked their bacteria experiment on a small scale, but hoped to recreate it on a much larger scale, possibly for the use of commerical and industrial businesses. I am unsure if they have been able to achieve this goal since the article was published, four years ago. According to the University College Dublin website, this research is one of their key research interests.

Currently I am planning on making some of my production line with styrene, and I am planning on outsourcing it to a laser cutting service: Ponoko, ("Pinnochio," as a friend just called it). Which brings me to the current issue of ReadyMade. I will bring it to class, so let me know if you want to look at it.

The issue has an article specifically about Ponoko: the background of the company and PhotoMake, the new application it just launched two weeks ago which enables users to submit a picture instead of using graphic design software for laser cutting. This application is supposed to bring the user from cocktail napkin drawing to finished product without so many steps in the middle.

They always find the coolest models for their covers.

Graffiti in New York

2008-09-29T19:06:00.000-07:00

Here are pictures of the bits and pieces of street art around SoHo I took this past Saturday.