The Rise Of Design Thinking In Meetings And Events

Portfolio Progress #2

What a time to be alive, a worldwide virus has put most of the world on hold at this time but that doesn’t mean we’re any less busy. We’re finishing this term remotely and it looks like my part-time job will be unavailable for the time being so I guess the silver lining here is more time to work on my portfolio?

Accomplished:

Figured out the Nav bar

Have got a footer going

more pages have been made

a hover feature has been added

project pages are slowly being built

To Do:

nav photoshoot with the latest issue

bilk out project pages

reduce image file sizes

about me page

lightboxes for photography and sketch page

The Core Values of Place

If you build it, they will come.

Together we can do so much.

Do something today that benefits tomorrow.

You have power, do good.

A hearth should always be warm.

We share this Place with everyone.

Unfortunately, I still have a lot to do on my portfolio but I’m not really mad about it. I chose to work with Semplice which is a plugin for WordPress. This meant I had to learn a whole new system! while it’s been a learning curve, I don’t have any regrets. While not very intuitive, it’s a beautiful, clean system. I’m pleased so far with what I have and also feel comfortable taking my time.

Things to do:

design the footer + what I want in it -> eg, contact info?

about page (or just put it on our main page.)

grid layout separate for each page?

photoshoot for new nav once newest issue launches?

More sketches exported for my little joys page

create asset library

reevaluate my case study and redraft. 

remember to keep it minimal and stretch from there.

Competitor Analysis

My main competitor for Place is the Nanaimo Entertainment Centre. This is the only sort of location downtown that serves a similar purpose to what I’m going for with Place, even then, it isn’t quite the same. The Entertainment Centre is an old movie theatre that offers the use of the entire building for $500/24 hrs.

Unfortunately for me, the centre does not seem to have any actual branding and is sadly, a building that seems to be in disuse. When I walked through it, I felt this vast feeling inside me, nostalgia for a past I didn’t participate in and awe at the high ceilings. The place is a gem in the downtown core that gets overlooked because the building itself is in disrepair and it is not much to look at from the outside. With some proper branding and some money poured into it, I think it could be a good competitor for what I want Place to be. Still, the goal of the entertainment centre is to offer a rental location for various events in the community for a relatively cheap cost. 

Unfortunately, the competitor analysis for the group that I was in for class was far too different to be of use to me. My group was dealing with tour companies, a museum and a water taxi service so costs and branding were all over the place. My audience is also different as they are not tourists, but members of the community who I want to be tourists in their own city.

Learning about the Entertainment Centre only cemented my feeling that Place would be a good fit for Nanaimo.

Day Seven - Blog Post #8

Today we had our prototypes ready for other students to look at and discover. I got some really cool information and feedback about my package just by watching my students pick my package up and open it. The reaction I received from the students who looked at my package was exactly what I’d hoped for. It helped though that the class that came in was made up of international students, many of those being from Japan.  I had two Japanese students and a student from China who had been to Japan many times look at my package.

They were delighted with it and told me that the package was really similar to what you would actually see on the shelf in Japan to hold a good knife. They told me that the packaging style felt expensive and luxurious. I also got many good tips on how to make it even more authentic, such as possibly carving a pattern, making sure to give it a smooth finish and adding the Sun from the Japanese flag to directly behind the brand name on the paper slip.

Watching students interact and open my package made me really excited to work on my package further. It was great to see people’s reaction as they opened the box. No one had trouble opening it and they also told me that they liked how simple it was. They also told me that they would definitely keep the box and use it to hold other items or even just display it in their home.

I have a lot of work ahead of me, but I am excited to keep going.

Brand Statement

Hi, my name is Sara. I am a graphic design graduate. When I’m not designing, I’m running my small enamel pin business or slinging coffee at White rabbit Coffee Co. No matter what the task, I put my all into it with gusto. I work bright and fast. I want to create real, positive change through my work, no matter how small. 

Brand Promise

I’ll always do better than before. (WIP)

Pushing the limits on every project. (possibility?)

Day Four - Blog Post #5

Today was the end of activity two! 

Although I’m not 100% happy with my outcome, I’m proud of the work I’ve done. I learned a lot about packaging through this activity. The biggest thing was having the proper measurements to work with and having the original package and mock-up made by my partner to show me what was important. 

Every little thing about a package has to be considered. For example, my package had little cut-outs on the bottom flap, and a cut-out on the top flap to make it easier to open. Two of my folded in flaps were also shorter than the other two by a mere millimetre! It was cool to understand this and figure out the best way to adjust for this.

My takeaway from this project is that it’s important to look at the small stuff and to sweat it when it comes to designing a package!

We were asked to think about where we’d be in 5-10 years and what we’d like to be doing. This is a good tool for portfolio work because it can help guide what you want others to get out of it.

My Vision:

I want to be changing the world in a positive way through design.

Steps:

Work full time at Common Foundry and develop my design skills.

Create work for clients and passion projects for myself that is effective.

Involve myself in the community and take initiative.

Create every single day and travel often, meet new people, learn, grow, adapt and problem solve as best I can. 

PROJECT ONE RATIONALE - BLOG POST #9

Project 1 - Environmental Redesign Rationale

ARTG371 - Sara Holmes

Product: Tsubazo Pairing Knife

Project Description: For this project, the goal was to find an overly packaged item and redesign it to create something more environmentally friendly. We were allowed to choose anything we deemed to be overpackaged, even if the packaging seemed alright. My goal was to create a package that could be used again, either as individual components or as one piece. I wanted to make sure that any waste from the project was one hundred percent recyclable. I also wanted to create a package that turned a simple pairing knife into a beautiful gift to be opened.

Environmental Considerations: When walking down the aisle of any store, it is unlikely that you will see more than a couple of packages with no plastic involved. Since the invention of plastic, it has been involved in packaging whether that has been as a plastic sleeve, bubble wrap, slips of plastic, etc. Even if it is made reusable (hard plastic), most of it ends up at the dump where it will take hundreds of years to break down completely. 

I wanted to create a simple enough package that could be completely reused, and if the person has no interest in reusing it, it could decompose naturally. For this project, I used the following:

Scrap Wood - 13 years to decompose.

Wood Glue - 1-3 years. Breaks down over a period of time when exposed to moisture. 

Cloth - 1-5 months to decompose.

Thread - 3-4 months to decompose.

Tracing paper - 1-4 weeks to decompose, could also be reused to wrap a gift, jot down notes, or even as tracing paper!

Recycled paper - 2-6 weeks to decompose. 

While a bit more effort is put into the packaging because of this, my audience could comfortably buy this product without worry of what to do with the package upon opening. The box could be reused to hold paint brushes, pencils, another gift, or even the knife. 

Design Concept and Solutions: 

My goal was to create a package for the product that could do a better job of representing the product inside. I wanted to completely eradicate the use of plastic, make a package that created less of an impact on the environment and was beautiful for the user to look at as well as. The original package that was cardboard and plastic and I did not think that it matched the quality of the product inside, a Japanese pairing knife.

The purpose of the item inside is to be used as an everyday knife for cutting up vegetables and fruit. My goal was to create a package that reflected the rich culture and heritage of the country that it was made in. I wanted to wow the user and make something that they would be inclined to reuse and if not, know with certainty that they could recycle it.

I began by looking at Japanese knives, the beautiful simplicity to the hilt matched with the rich texture of the blade. So much beauty deserved something more. I remembered reading about Japanese joinery a while ago and after reading up about it again, the idea came to me that I should make a box for the blade and use no nails. It would be better for the environment and would reflect Japan. 

I decided that I wanted my audience to be a culinary student or a professional in the industry. I wanted to create something that would give that person absolute joy to open. The idea was that I wanted the person opening it to have the same emotion a design student down when opening their MacBook packaging up for the first time. That feeling of excitement while opening up the layers of the box to reveal the item inside is what I wanted to promote.

Considerations:

Heritage - Japan has a very rich heritage and I wanted to make sure that the design was to that standard.

Environmental - The package should be simple but elegant, easily recycled.

Colour - Japan’s flag is a beautiful shade of red and the initial packaging makes attempts at that.

Typography - Japanese design loves geometrical sans-serifs.

Experience - This should be an exceptional experience for a culinary student.

Using these considerations, I applied myself to this redesign and my goal, which never changed during the entirety of this redesign.

I was planning to seal the box closed with a wax seal to give a sense of elegance. However, someone pointed out to me that this would leave a stain on the box. I also realized as I stood there with it in my hands, that a wax seal was too much, which is why I decided to wrap it in tracing paper instead. A great thing about the tracing paper is the auditory sensation of unwrapping it and the relation it has to actually receive a gift from someone. Suddenly, without me having to nudge anyone into thinking so, the package actually did look like a gift while keeping the box below visible. 

I also considered placing a seal anyway on the paper wrap but decided I loved the simple elegance of the wrap alone. Sometimes, even if you think you have a concrete plan, when it comes to the creation side they fall to the wayside. That is why creating a prototype is so important.  

Initially, I also had lofty plans for painting a beautiful scene on the lid of the box. However, during our feedback week, I had a lot of the students tell me that they loved how simple the box was, that the concept even reminded them of home. One of the girls told me that she was studying in Canada because she wanted to buy and sell products and she would definitely want to sell my product in Japan!

I was pretty attached to the idea of painting, but you learn a lot in design as you go through and build products, that sometimes it’s best to kill your darlings. Getting attached to one concept is a bad idea.

I found instead that I could create a colour pop by taking the wine red from the Japanese flag on the paper wrap and matching it to a fabric, which I then sewed into a handkerchief with the help of my mother and sister. I proudly did the inside seam and ironed it, but when the time came to sew the top, my sister, with her costuming diploma, stepped in for me. 

The end result is a beautiful, simple yet elegant gift. When opening, the user has to first slide off the paper wrap, open the tracing paper, slide back the lid and then finally unfold the handkerchief to reveal the blade inside, safely nestled within the fabric to keep it from moving while in transit.

Design Thinking  - Tim Brown

‘Design Thinking’ by Tim Brown is an article about the development of design thinking in the ideation stage of a project and how it has led to new ideas that have flourished due to the consideration of the human element.

It’s always interesting to discover a new facet of the design process and while I believe that Design Thinking is something that we have been integrating into our learning for the past couple years, it’s nice to take a more in-depth look at it and this article is an easy introduction.

Here are my key takeaways:

Innovation = design thinking. One follows the other, you can invent on your own but it won’t ever get far without other’s input and without thinking of the human element.

The design process has been reimagined in the sense that designers no longer come in late to the project but are involved from the beginning and are often even asked to help with the design of the actual product/program.

Design Thinking is only growing as a ‘trade’ as economies shift from physical products to knowledge-based outcomes.

Succesful design thinkers are empathetic, integrative thinkers, optimistic, experimental and collaborative.

I found this case study for a portable incubator called Embrace. Embrace was developed with the idea of keeping premature babies alive by offering a portable incubator to families that live far from the hospital. What I like about this piece is the objective behind it, and a key message in the article.

“Empathy is at the heart of design. Without the understanding of what others see, feel, and experience, design is a pointless task.”

This project really focuses in on the people using it and went through a couple iterations before being finalized. It took feedback from users in the areas it was wanting to help seriously and that’s what made it successful. If they’d only designed something and sent it out to people without consideration, the project would have failed. This article does a good job of showing that.