Design Project # 3

The newest assignment I received in my design foundations class required that I create some sort of container/packaging for my necklace.  The container had to be functional, meaning it had to actually contain the item and be able to open without falling apart.  To those of you who don't already know this, that means I have the daunting task of creating models, actual models of the container I am trying to create. Let me tell you there was a reason as a child I preferred coloring to Legos, I was never able to make any sort of cohesive structure with those darn plastic pieces before I got frustrated and pushed the whole thing over.  I knew those Legos would come back to haunt me, I just didn't realize I would ever be graded on my model making ability.  Now, back to the present challenge at hand, I have to come up with a container the really speaks to the timeless aspect of my necklace.  It needs to be durable enough that it can be handed down from one generation to another, and it cannot speak to a specific era, because the necklace is timeless.  I basically have the challenge of creating a dateless container to hold my necklace.

My initial idea was to create a miniature version of a hat box, with a large silk bow to hold the lid on.  I chose this style because I liked the idea of stacked hat boxes in a closet.  They remind me of something I would have received from my grandma and would keep just for the novelty of the item.  I also geve some serious thought to the companies that have trademarked their packaging in a very effective manner and three companies really came to mind, Hermes, Chanel, and Tiffany.  The packaging for each of those companies is at once iconic of the brand, the luxury, and the classic vibe consumers associate with each one of those brands.

Image from www.luxist.com

Image from www.fififlowers.com

Hermes boxes are associated with the luxurious and uber expensive items that Hermes sells.  Interior designers have used these boxes to accessorize a number of different spaces, from closets to entry ways.  Like Hermes packaging, Tiffany too has managed to create packaging that adds to the iconography of the brand by using their signature Tiffany blue on their packaging.  Now the little blue box generates as much excitement as the item held with in the box.

Image from hatterandhareevents.blogspot.com

While Tiffany blue and Hermes orange boxes are trademarks of their brands, they are still in full color, while Chanel has really cornered the packaging market with their iconic black and white packaging.

Image from www.deluxemall.com

All of these brands have well established packaging for their luxury goods.  They seem all to have in common a simple design schematic.  They are all rectangular or square boxes, with two color combinations.  Their brand lettering is simple, understated, and relatively small in comparison with the size of the boxes.  They all have some sort of ribbon included, which is not very original for packaging, but it is a classic way to say packaging.  I liked the idea of the simple and elegant, and hat box is what spoke to me.  I put together a collage of hat box images that I really liked.

Next I came up with the proportions of the box, which would be a 8 inch diameter circle that was two 3 inches thick, including the lid.  I thought that the profile of a woman in black and white on the lid wearing the necklace in gold would really stand out.  I thought that the box could be white with black piping, and that the ribbon could be black.  

When I presented this idea in class I was told that the idea of a hat box as packaging really dated the object to a specific era (when hat boxes were popular) and didn't speak to the timelessness of the object.  I was also told that I should google minimalism and create a "box" that really disappeared, so that the necklace was the center piece.  I agree that a hat box is a throwback to an older generation and thus is not consistent with my sentiments that the necklace is timeless.  However, because I am not related to Harry Houdini, creating a container that disappears will be very difficult for me.  So for now this grad has to go back to the drawing board.  

First Design Class, First Project

My great grandmother's Irish Luck Locket

For my first design project I was assigned the task of making a 4x6" postcard based on a piece of jewelry.  I chose a family heirloom, my great grandmother's Irish Luck locket.  I choose this item over some of my more contemporary jewelry items because I love the story behind it.  My great  grandmother was from Ireland, as was my grandma.  It has been handed down for a few generations and I am the fourth generation in my family to receive the item.  I love the locket both because it has been in my family for a long time, but also because of the era it was designed and created in, the Edwardian era.  I also like the details the jeweler decided to include on the face of the locket, the image of my great grandma, together with the stereotypical wishbone and shamrocks.  The reason I like the Irish symbols is because their presence here predates their later mass appearance in popular culture, and thus their heavy association with Ireland.  Thus, I have with one piece of jewelry both a family history and a piece of authentic Irish iconography that predates the mass produced Irish symbolism.  On a bit of a less serious note, I also love the fact I can wear this little bit of history around my neck and tell the story to those who ask.  

Now back to the assignment, I was told to use this object to create a postcard to, "... highlight the image that best captures the essence of the object".  The only constraints given were that it must fit on a 4x6" postcard.  After giving this assignment some thought and evaluating what few design tools I had available to me at this point, I decided on simply hand sketching the necklace onto the postcard with graphite, just as the original jeweler who created the item would have done before he/she created the locket.  I chose this option over simply taking a picture and pasting it to a card, and over using a more colorful option, as the simplicity of the grey and white colors I believe spoke the design of the locket and was a throwback to the past I mentioned earlier.  Below is the image of the postcard:

graphite on 4x6 postcard

The backside of the postcard hold the initials of my great grandma that were originally hand engraved (no computer aided engravers in 1910).  I cannot imagine how arduous the engraving must have been for the artist, because just sketching the image of the initials onto the postcard took me a very long time, and I was able to erase the mistakes.

From here our next project was to take the item and create and advertisement/brand for it.  Our final submission had to be 11x17" and could take on either a vertical or horizontal orientation.  After giving this assignment a ton of thought and sketching some ideas I finally settled on advertising the necklace itself, foregoing the other ideas such as advertising for antique jewelry, specialty auction houses that sell antique jewelry, or even specialty insurance companies.  The fact that the necklace told the story of multiple eras held some intrinsic appeal for the locket, but conveying that idea was challenging, should I show the era when the necklace was made, the antique tools it was made with, someone older gifting it to someone younger?  I wasn't really sure. 

Then it hit me that the different generations have all lived through their own history, world war one, world war 2, vietnam, women's suffrage, the civil rights movement, the technological era, and the informational era.  But how to show the necklace moving through all of that history also presented a challenge, do you show a historical timeline with photos and move the necklace through all of them, and if so does that become confusing?  Is it to far removed from the idea of selling the necklace?  I think the answer to that is yes, it looses sight of selling the necklace and focuses too much on the story.  So, then what am I trying to say and who am I saying it to?  Who would buy this necklace and where would they look.  I thought initially of fashion magazines, but then decided they would be too trendy and contemporary of a setting.  Then I thought of where companies like Christie's Auction house or Sotheby's would advertise, magazines like the Robb Report.  I also thought of the online one of a kind retail forum know as 1st Dibs.  More than a specific audience I focused an creating an ad that would appear in either one of those publications, who already had established their book of business with buyers interested in one of a kind historical items.  I also began to think about what my personal favorite thing to do with the necklace is, to wear it.  I wanted to show the necklace as it was meant to be used, as an accessory, but also somehow include the historic value of the item.  The idea occurred to me that women have been wearing this necklace through all of their respective eras and the necklace worked with what ever they were wearing it with because the necklace was timeless.  Below is the final product:

Design Project #2

The women have all decided to wear the same necklace through their respective eras and then passed it on to the next, thus the necklace is timeless.  I printed the photos in black and white and left the necklace in full color so that it stood out and was the thread that tied all of the photos together.  

In hindsight I should have made the word timeless larger, as it was huge when I was an inch from it, but disappeared when I was five feet away.  But overall I was happy with the end result.

 

an open [sketch]book: early to rise

I just wanted to add the link to the cupcakes I referenced before in my first post.  Now you can see what I am talking about! Please see the link below:

an open [sketch]book: early to rise: "It's 8:45 in the morning, and I've already been to a bakery and drawn a page full of cupcakes. The good news is that I didn't EAT the page ..."

Ready. Set. Blog.

To kick off my first blog I thought that I would start with the basics; my dislikes and likes of other's blogs.  However, I cannot take credit for this idea, as it is one of my first assignments for my new interior design grad program.  As a school habit, I will start this blog on the more formal side, until I receive the green light from my professor that I am ok to go with a more informal and conversational tone.  Also, you will have to bare with me as I change the overall appearance of the blog, as I am altogether new with both blogs and computer graphics.  Right now it is really basic, but hopefully as my skills expand in complexity my blog with reflect my growth.

After navigating a few blogs to gain some inspiration and a small morsel of an idea of what I am/should be doing here I finally settled on reviewing the blog titled, "An Open Sketchbook" (www.anopensketchbook.com).  I chose this blog over five others: Edgar Cabrera, Crack Skull Bob, Tommy Kane, Wagonized,  and Andrea Joseph.  While the other blogs were all unique and interesting, they focused on a narrow scope of topics.  Each represented an individual style, but the blogs seemed to display a finished product, rather than the ideas, thoughts, and inspirations behind the finished work.  On the other hand, An Open Sketchbook, displayed a wide variety artwork, including inspirational photos, informal sketches, and final compositions.  The blogger posted images that created a cohesive digital collage.  There is also a myriad of subject matter displayed, from cartoons, to portraits, quick gesture drawings, and even interior renderings.  However, my favorite image is a sketch of a bunch of different cupcakes from a bakery the blogger happened to visit.  Not only  did the image make me want to run directly across the Key Bridge to brave the horribly long line at DC Cupcake, but it started a sort of chain reaction in my brain of all of the different ways the images of those cupcakes could be used.  How would a single cupcake look at the front of a birthday card?  Or, a pattern of all the different cupcakes embroidered onto a pillow, thrown onto a rocking chair in a little girl's nursery look?  Or, even taken just as they are with the name of the cupcake shop at the bottom of an advertisement?  I think all of these applications would be just as spectacular as the other.

I also enjoy the overall tone the blog takes on.  The author is effective at explaining the images added to the blog and even though there is such a wide variety of images, the explanations seem to tie it all together.  Some have personal significance, some are very obviously work related, others are just pretty doodles, but reading the excerpts attached to each and scrolling from the top to the bottom of the blog creates a single, cohesive blog.  The images themselves are also stylistically similar; they are precise, clean, and colorful, yet manage to take on a playful casual twist.  After scrolling from one image to the next it is becomes plain that the artist is the same through most of the images, and the images that are photographs are somehow complimentary to the drawings.  Most importantly I think each image captures something beautiful.  From a little girl on the beach, to a compilation of sketches of birdhouses, to those cupcakes I mentioned earlier, each image adds to the overall aesthetic appeal of the blog.  The information and reasoning the blogger offers for each image posting is also concrete, reasonable, and easy to follow.  The blogger does not follow up a simple image with something like, "I just thought this was pretty", but instead offers more complex statements such as, "One of the things I like best about our neighborhood is the diversity of houses in it.  While all were built in the 1980s, the spectrum of styles and colors is quite broad."  The statements are precise, relevant, and simple, a quality I hope to mirror in my blog in the months to follow.