Graphic Vs Product design

"product designers can do better graphics than graphic designers" claimed one faculty.

i say no comments.

Three weeks after struggling to make some graphics on a Boeing 737, all i know is there is one thing i find very difficult in graphic design and that is making something that everyone will like. the biggest problem is generation gap and cultural block. what faculty likes you wont like. what you like, they won't like. its like ctrl + I in photoshop. yes i been using a lot of that software as thats the awesomest thing that can happen to designers. After the course my respect for graphic designers have gone up even more. Working with almost no constraints and yet creating something that will be loved by everyone, now that's a huge task. and its awesome how they do it. But what i think is graphics which work with almost everyone are usually with humor or sarcasm. something serious does not work as well as the funny one. so when you make aircraft graphics for president, people love the concept which says political waste as graphic on the aircraft but they might not like something you spent 20 hours in front of photoshop trying to get the right graphics. FACT: graphic design is not easy. the difficult part is no constraints, more freedom you have, difficult it is to get things together. where as for us in product design it is much easy to work, wanna make things move? put a hinge or pivot. its like connecting the dots. and after you are done with connecting the dots your final picture looks good, you might even get rich. but that's a rare case. we shall never get 32 lakhs per year as starting salary..

And people are still confused if i am doing graphic design or product design. :\

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Where will this design institute take us?

"boss this is not a college this is an institute" said the big daddy once in foundation. we wondered whats the difference? i googled. INSTITUTE is established, organized and founded. COLLEGE is A collection, body, or society of persons engaged in common pursuits, or having common duties and interests. OK so we are organised than others we are here as we have a goal in life. work keeps happening, one assignment after the other. what makes us different from any other colleges? MAEER's MIT Institute Of Design. long name. but we call it MIT design and on campus we are trouble making brats from design. trouble? we? no! we are as innocent as kids in gurukul who throw Marlboro boxes out of window of their hostel during inspections maybe. the blame comes on design. but its fine we have earned that reputation of victims. may it be walking on lawns or being teased by howling MANET guys. its all our fault. We ARE trouble makers after all. if we cant create problem then we will become the problem. and try to make sure everyone notices us. that might include going against the rules and wearing shorts to having huge afro over our head. We do it all. after all we are the trouble makers. We go out and we come late, we go for night outs without informing, we do everything we not supposed to do. including cribbing about the college, yes when we crib we call it a college, as it does not let you be like what you would be in a college. but people forget what big daddy has to say, "Boss its not a college, it's an institute for god's sake" he said it second time. he was angry this time.

So why suddenly think of where we going to end up after institute? well, 2 and half years over in this institute that's more than half the education. what i got in these years is lots, from insane ergonomic understanding to people who are scared to talk to me. friends to people who hate me. people who i spoke lots to same people i haven't spoken in days now. How do you manage this? well its a bi product of design. If you are planning to join design then one thing you should keep in mind. do not come with any expectations. designers aren't any god sent people, and neither is the brief given to us by the prof, said one of the big bosses in institute. rules are meant to be broken, said another, that is when you will innovate, said yet another, so go out and let go of yourself, said one another, look for problems and solve them said another, if you cant find problem redefine the situation, some said that. So we do that, we become the problem our self and we create problems. we break rules we innovate, we aren't god sent but we are all budding young designers who believe in one thing and one thing only innovation, we innovate we defy physics, we make things float, we break things to make new things and we do graffiti on things like aircraft for president of India. AND the best part of everything is we get grades for doing this. This is life in design institute. remember its an institute not a college. very few understand the difference. but it is important as being in college and being in an institute makes you look at everything very differently.

One prof said i should go for marketing, after reading this i think many would second that. but i wont know all this if i took my institute as college. what happens, happens for good. I shifted to design in this institute happened for good. lets hope for better after getting out of this institute.

i should have copy pasted the word institute, i would have saved time.

Doctors also have their own way of thinking.

earlier post was about two ways to solve a given problem, engineering and design approach. Then i met the third kind the "doctors".

Recent controversial insect bite/infection/allergy lead me to search of a skin specialist. searching for a skin specialist on a monday morning by not attending your class is not the best thing you can do. you step out and take bike and ride around and then you go the all the skin clinics you see. no doctor is there on monday morning. finally you call up one random doc looking at the clinic board and then she asks you to come in the evening. I asked a simple question is it ok to wait till evening? she asked how long it has been there. I answered 2 days she says then its ok.. if you survive 2 days youll survive few more hours. Impressive.. logical explanation. I went back home and reached the clinic at 17:00 as asked to. the clinic is closed. i thought to myself importance of time is losing its value. but thankfully in 10 minutes a sister arrives opens the clinic.. another 15 mins the doctor shows up. calls me inside. i know i have to pay 150 bucks to her so i know to extract all the info i can. I show it to her and give her my suggestions of what it can be. she listens carefully. then i ask her can it be chicken pox? she says have you ever had it before i say yes. she denies that chicken pox can happen again. i gave her the example of classmate, yet she said its impossible. I was like fine, ignorance is bliss. so i ask her what is that am suffering from? and there is a pause.

then she says.. it CAN be SOMETHING like a VIRAL INFECTION. I asked why does it come? she says there is NO EXPLANATION to that. it comes and goes. take these meds and it will be fine. she gave me one ointment for insect bites, one tab for allergy and one tab for infection. played it safe.

All i could infer from the incident is that doctors are very easy to manipulate. their diagnosis depends on your complaints. So you can manage to get whatever disease you want if you know how the doctor is going to think about your complaints. They have option A B and C. they see which ever you fit in the best you are that. basically you suffer from something that text book says you can suffer from. there are things which are not possible at all.. cancer wont be cured till the textbook says its curable, Chicken pox wont happen again if the textbook says it cant. So design approach is much more different from a doctors approach as the first thing designer will say if some one says not possible is why not? where as doctor has no explanation to things like these. there might be some doctors who might be good enough to think outside the books but its a general PATTERN observed in doctors. same is with the psychiatrist who does counselling to people. he knows only that side of you what you tell him. understanding these patterns is much easy once you are in design as you understand the systems and how they work so as to modify them according to your need. If i come along any new kind of thinking then i shall update this.

Stop, Check, Move on

Is this the same i-cuboid which it was yesterday? yes its the same address and same person writing just the new original identity of i cuboid. its fresh, its colorful and its awesome. everything is set just the problem is making the graphics is much more time consuming. Am sure there is a short cut which i shall know with time. please feel free to tell me what you feel of the identity. kind of excited to get the feedback. This language is in my portfolio too which is under construction and should be done in this week. Now back to cuboid life..

Recent talks with professor made things bit clear. no it wasnt the big boss talking this time.. it was someone people would not take as a great designer but what he spoke makes sense to me. it made things much more simple than what they were. He might be behind people to give their parallel projection sheets but it also has its importance in future when you look back on your life. Anyway, so according to the prof there are 2 types of approaching a problem.

1> Engineering Way

2> Design approach.

Whats the difference in these two approaches? engineering approach is something that is always constraint driven. living in the rule books. not stepping out of the theory. If mechanics says its not possible it is not possible. so you don't think about it. Design approach on other hand is something similar but yet different. same as here too we have to think with constraints in mind. gravity exist. things fall. things don't float in mid air BUT what designer has the freedom to do is add a detail to make it float. add a thin nylon string that wont be visible at certain distance that will make it float. Now if we approach a problem like make something float in engineering approach you'll end up using high energy consuming fans and blah blah to make it float. as one wont abstract the term float to a level where it appears to float and not actually float.

Other difference is that engineering mind solves problem in mind and removes the concept in mind itself before you put it on paper. this happens with me a lot. but if we try the design approach and doodle everything that's coming to mind which might be anything irrelevant or a strange concept which you feel wont work on paper. So if not there then in future when you try to solve some other problem you'll relate this to that and that is where innovation shall happen. design is about innovation the prof said. I was talking to myself, isn't it about invention? but then invention is next step to innovation. if one cant innovate how will he invent.

So when you working on a problem sketch it no matter what it is. STOP, take a look at it, CHECK if it will work, if not MOVE ON. This is not much different than what we do in real life without knowing. You take up something, you cant do good in it, you stop, check why not and then move on to new thing. You break up your relationship, you stop thinking about it for days till you think things are fine. then you check if the things are fine and then you move on. Moving on is essential. Else you shall end up in great trouble where things from past will haunt you forever. MOVE ON you. yes blog is a nice way to communicate to people who read it. others think its too much text and they skip. their fault, i write to get thought across.

There were lot of things i wanted to write about but they just left my mind. i always wonder if its a good thing or bad to have a mind that is so unstable which wanders off from one thought to other in seconds. whats left behind is confused thoughts of thousands of things and no conclusion but good thing is you can see patterns and then connect the dots to make sense in future. CONNECT THE DOTS. that will explain the smile on your face when you hold a chocolate drink close to you and talk to others after dinner. connect the dots and it will explain how your assignments makes sense. connect the dots they all fit in a cube. after all entire world is a cube.

OH! someone reached my blog searching for " which man thought world is a cube". destiny.

Blog Action Day 2009

Its about making a difference. they asked me to write about how the climate change affects my blog topic. i thought ill write how my topic, say design has its effect on climate change.

now if you see around us there are 2 types of things. Natural(which are there) and Man made (which weren't there). had a controversial conversation with friend and also a philosopher Mr. George Joseph, i claimed everything that is man made is designed. he refused. Gave examples of music and art. I agreed. So in man made things apart from emotions(not all) and art etc everything is designed. now do you know what we are talking about? we are talking of design as a term in general. where everything that man makes is designed. so design has its root deep in there. So everything man has made intentionally is basically designed in certain way. I don't need to emphasize on causes of global warming and climate change. Most of us know why its happening.(if you don't know then stop reading this and go google it and then come back). so by this line everyone reading knows that man has been using resources and thereby earth losing its balance in resources and then other things adding up and finally leading to global warming and climate change. So it is blamed completely on human that we misused the resources we had. true. we did. why? because we had to. Why did we have to? as things were made which required resources and which created bi-products. who made these things? man did. so these were the second category the man made things category. hence also the design category. so you see design has to do a lot with climate change.

If only we industrial designers knew what our products are going to result in future, or if we had the vision to know what is the result of our design, would world be a different place? well now we do know what we did was wrong. but how much of effort are we putting to make a change? some people are thinking of things like green design, while for others it is just a mere topic for making fancy posters to win over other entries in a poster competition organised by a local design foundation which probably thinks green design is making your logo and poster green in color and printing it over a flex which will last on earth of years to come unable to decompose or recycle itself.

A friend doing ecology was wondering to take it as her profession. i suggest, you don't need to be an environmentalist to make a difference. you just need to make sure what you do has minimum change in nature. No its not stopping one from progress its just about changing the definition of what real progress is.

Maybe i should change the font colour to green for them to understand.

Its not just United states that's causing pollution. its everyone. Think about it and at least be guilty when adding up to it. Someday you might just stop.

Title goes here, Gone..

This is going to be bad.
a) people are annoying.

b) everyone has things to prove.

c) They all use others.

d) Definitions are made by us to suit our mind set.

e) Definitions change from each person to person.

f) The more your definition revolves around yourself (me this me that) more annoying you get.

g) One cant look outside ones perspective.

h) some people do.. they are awesome.

i) These people are rare to find.. no am no where close to them.

j) this world rotates on axis of society. that drives the world, the motor of its rotation. fuel is everyone who is part of it.

k) why am i writing this? as i am annoyed, as i said people are annoying in point (a).

been thinking over somethings recently. something called dependency. how things are related to others.. its the symbiotic relationship between things.

i give you this you give me that. i give you comfort you give me tag as friend, i give you portfolio submission date you work for me and make your portfolio. You need a scanner, HP needs people to buy scanner. You need Photoshop to make portfolio, photoshop needs designers to work on it.

you are dependent on things.. you realize it when you lose things.. thats what i learnt long back then forgot then learnt again till i forgot again. its a cycle.. goes on.. things happen to keep you reminding what you think of things. some friends got kids to play with others got turtles to play with. you? you were left with work on your table next to a window at corridor, playing music and looking at people going away from you. you accept it. move on you say to yourself and start working. result? at least you know what work is to be done.. but then you just realize how dependent your life was getting on others.. and now you know it can be fixed. fix you, i was gonna put that song lyrics in between this post but then i refuse to. it just diverts you from what you wanna talk about. so what am i dependent on now? early morning coffee and singing same song at breakfast which will be playing in head for entire day later. Coffee keeps me going and am loyal to coffee. then am getting dependent on my laptop to do things, watch movies, listen to music etc. thanks to people a have stopped from being dependent on other habits.

Its all connected

When we are in situation we relate our self to movies. If am in a place with 7 feet tall grass around me i feel there are people with guns hiding behind it or some baby trex waiting to eat me up. we relate to movies and we need it as a part of us as if we not then they wont make movies. if they wont make movies you will never know of trex, you dont know of it and it might just be there one day to kill you. you should be prepared. hence movies prepare us for situation and we prepare situations for movies. that does make sense.. read again if it didnt.

how is this to do anything of those points? see.. people demand to know whats on your mind. they annoy you they want to know everything for sake of it or to judge you over it. there making you dependent on them and keeping the cycle moving. If you dont want to talk of something you are forced to.. why? cos i want to know as it has to do something with me. Go get a life. Everything has to do something with everyone. Why one feels they are so important that they can get away with no matter what they do. reality check, you are annoying, thats the truth, deal with it. (this might be bit personal but have to get it out.)

keep yourself out of dependencies and try to take over your own life. it will help you get you what you want from your life. and not others want. why am i giving this suggestion? as am not any different from those points i started with.

how it has to do anything with design? Design plays a big part in society. it stretches the soc to be what it is.. we product designers create products that one day you will look your workmate has and then you will want to get it. you will do things you wont do otherwise. your work mate got that product looking at someone else who had it who got it looking at a graphic in magazine made by a graphic designer who turns out to be product designers class mate who is competing with his work mates to get the best laptop his class mate product designer made.. its a cycle. its all connected. we are all dependent on something or other. Its the way society is and you have to be a part of it to know it better to create your place in it. design a product that will make difference to world they said. anything that is made does make a difference. depends on how my fellow graphic designers will put it forward.

New Face Of Cube

The Shift in identity is coming. its time to change things. The best part is we have professional graphic designers doing it for us this time. This is the sign of change where you know what you good at and what you really meant to do, and getting help for rest. This makes it easy to focus on task you want to do while others help you with things that you once did like cuboid identity. everything is changing and its changing faster than usual this time. new cuboids coming in picture, old ones are gone. new friends, new entertainers with match sticks and new backlogs. model making is done and submitted. Its happening. The shift in everything around. which will lead to change in this cuboid and some people will love it and some wont. But it just happens without warning.

Not only this but there are new INSPIRATIONS. the white board in studio says "Dragonfly missing, New Inspiration Needed." now some will understand what i want to say, rest will be baah stupid. Its not for Them its for us who knows that times are changing. Last year in design learning is not far away. Things have to change and they are changing. Priorities are changing. She called me workaholic. i couldn't stop smiling on that as that is one thing no one has ever called me. No am not a workaholic. I like to work when i work but i don't work all the time.

Adding new people to the mailing list too so they get updates and then it will help them to know whats happening in this cube shaped world of mine.

pri·or·i·ty

Noun
pl -ties
1. the most important thing that must be dealt with first
2. the right to be or go before others



rest is up to you to decide for yourself. You either go back to what you were doing or you analyse and change things so as to do what you are supposed to do. The problem to your not sketching might be due to thoughts of a person sitting miles away. all you need to do is search for patterns and link them to the cause. As i said in one of the earlier posts, the well stated problem is a solution in itself. If your priority is problem analysis then coming up with solution is not that difficult. The Process is about finding the "RIGHT" problems, set them as priorities and they shall be solved.

One thing I Love about MIT Institute Of Design Where I learn design is their philosophy behind the process. "Ensure karman, Leave Phalam" "follow the process right in action, the product will evolve by itself". its only when you go to roots of this philosophy you will understand that your life can be designed though you cant define the term "design" yourself.


George is "design" solving the right problems?

Randomness, result of joblessness...

"but why did you come in here then" -- Bharuch

"I Wanned to complain" -- Miki

"but i Have no money" -- Jackass

"yes you do" -- Mak

"hey jude, dont make it bad" --Mr. Bhandari

"acchha GG today at kaka's" into infinity ---][

"hu?" -- ][

"dude, you got moutheyes" ---bassist

"no you dont" --Mak

"acchhha marker se karu ya brush se" --Mallu

"no no no hold your head like this and go aaaaa" --Bharuch

"stop hitting me" --- Miki

"who wants to talk to you?" -- Bharuch

If that does not make sense then just laugh along.. as the graphic says not everything is done to make sense.. these things which wont make sense will make you laugh. Happiness lies in simple things, most of which wont even make sense.

Signs

When was the last time something inspired you? Something made you jump out of your seat and say am gonna do this. Something that gave a hint of what could/should be done.

It happened today. After watching a movie, suddenly things started hinting. This is a sign to do this. or that's a hint to do that. Yesterday heard this, "man is drowning, a boat comes he says no god will save me, another boat comes he says no god will save me. he dies and questions god, why didn't you save me? god says i sent 2 boats you didn't get in." that was a 5 yr old joking in the movie but it made sense like i said, too many things happen at same time hinting to same thing in short time? take the hint. This has been happening all the time but well ignored as usual.

Let's go back in time... First semester in Design. You learnt isometry drawing. you understood what the professor actually wanted you to learn from the course. Start looking things in isometric grid. grid lines following everywhere.. like the transparency level of the actual world is suddenly reduced to 10% and you see the grid that defines the structure of the object. Increasing confidence in yourself. You know you can do something great but don't know what. till you pick up a dead dragonfly on the way to hostel. On the way back you look at it you don't see the dragonfly the way you see it usually. it has no mass, its just a wire frame in isometric grid. You smile. You just been inspired to do something amazing that will be spoken of for days to come and the thing that will save you in your juries to come. Yes i Sketched a dragonfly in isometry. and then human hand too. could have made human face too but then perspective course happened. but all i did was follow a hint given to me and it saved me.

Recently got one concept from someone. the concept which i thought of when i was a kid. It came back to me through someone else as a suggestion. now is it a hint as at this point i can actually put it on paper and make it happen? is it time to do something that can save me? save many other things? must be. I took the hint. will be working on it.

Swine flu is around. i planned many a things for past 2 weeks but nothing happened. I was supposed to meet people but i don't see that happening either. Things are just not working out. are these signs too? but if they are then to what? i shouldn't be doing what i was planning to? you never know..

Inference: Inspiration plays important role in Design. Great inventors have got their inspirations from random things. Ball pen we use was made by a sculptor and the human arm led to design of anglepoise lamp. I read this in a book: Art of Creative Thinking by John Adair. So there are inspirations all around us, we just need to see. oh i saw "August Rush" trailer today that says same thing about music, wait is this a sign too?

swine flu

Being suspected with Swine flu is not the best thing that can happen to you, specially when there is freshers party you wanted to go for on Saturday,also marker rendering class on Sunday and a lecture by majesty on Monday. Then you wonder how did i land up in this mess? i don't even have any fever, what is wrong with people.

It all started on Friday morning, life in design institute. early morning i got up for breakfast and a brilliant welcome by a dish called POHA. i eat with people. person in front of me having a running nose. i think i got my infection then. later i go back and i don't feel too well.. the feeling before fever. i have my med, and i work. i just ask my mom to postpone the appointment with dentist and next thing i know is that am under house arrest with mask on my face. no i haven't done the test yet. swine flu test costs 18,000 bucks. ill be getting it done if i show more/any symptoms of swine flu. but that also means i am under house arrest till Monday for sure. that means i miss all those things i wanned to attend. all those once in a lifetime opportunity. anyway freshers must be going on right now. I am here writing my blog how i missed it. hope i have something better in store. Oh and you think you are the only one to whom shit happens?

Rust

its time for change.

change in life change in dimension change in many things.

As lot of things that were are going, people leaving, thoughts are depressing, and yes times are changing.

you are there today, tomorrow you might not,

its not you that went away i pushed us apart.

i lost all my feelings, whatever i had,

dragonflies sometimes and then cuboids, all just fad.

but things kept me moving,

hoberman kept happening, time kept running, and people kept going.

You have become mean they claim,

Yes i am not the same.

I changed but so did you,

its just the changing time, nothing new.

Wish you were here

How? Why? What? all these questions been troubling since ages now. There aren't any answers to these things, you live life as it comes. that's what i said on sat, may 19Th 2007. yes that's couple of years back. am bad at remembering things how did i remember this? i found it in my other blog. was reading that blog and was thinking did anything ever change? i still make decisions and i still cant explain why i did so. yes i talk of everything.

So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,

blue skies from pain.

Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?

A smile from a veil?

Do you think you can tell?

been through a lot lately. and took major decisions and could not explain why! nothing new for me. but this time it involved someone else so it is much difficult to explain someone else than to convince yourself. But i did not have any logical explanation to defend myself. so i wrote long text which says yes i am running away from something, no i dont know what and its definitely not that. If someone asks "why?" I'll be, huh? who? you talk in to me?

And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?

Hot ashes for trees?

Hot air for a cool breeze?

Cold comfort for change?

And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?

TRUTH: i miss them, the songs still remind me of them, but things not the same. they have lost all the trust and i have found myself again. the me i was years back. same thoughts, same behaviour, same goals, only one thing is different, they not here.

How I wish, how I wish you were here.

We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,

Running over the same old ground.

I used to write poems, express my feelings through words, it was so me back then, my old blog is all me, one of them said. You said it and i am getting back there. if that explains anything.

Its on your mind all the time.. you cant get rid of these thoughts.. cant sleep, dont eat much anyway but eat even less, why? just trying to explain things. no, not to them but to yourself. you know you are right in your way. only if they would trust you with your decisions. decisions that says yes you need to be you, not happy you, but you. i wish i could change myself to what i want to be. have had long talks on how i cant, all in vain as our life is not controlled just by us. Who thinks otherwise go see movie "run lola run". why do we wish? why do we want something or other? not talking of materialistic things, those days are gone, thanks to friend and our aim. it worked for me to certain extent, he still wants a new bass. What i wish is different. i want me to be myself again!

What have you found? The same old fears.

Wish you were here.

Wonders of design, forget who you are, forget everything. all that matters is today, how to live till you get to tomorrow. and then think of same things again!

bittersweet symphony

'Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, this life
Trying to make ends meet
You're a slave to money then you die
I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down
You know the one that takes you to the places
where all the veins meet yeah

No change, I can't change
I can't change, I can't change
But I'm here in my mind
I am here in my mind
But I'm a million different people
from one day to the next
I can't change my mind
No, no, no, no, no, no, no,no,no,no,no,no(fading away)

Well I never pray
But tonight I'm on my knees yeah
I need to hear some sounds that recognize the pain in me, yeah
I let the melody shine, let it cleanse my mind, I feel free now
But the airways are clean and there's nobody singing to me now

No change, I can't change
I can't change, I can't change
But I'm here in my mind
I am here in my mind
And I'm a million different people
from one day to the next
I can't change my mind
No, no, no, no, no, no, no
I can't change
I can't change it

'Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, this life
Trying to make ends meet
Trying to find some money then you die
I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down
You know the one that takes you to the places
where all the veins meet yeah

You know I can't change, I can't change
I can't change, I can't change
But I'm here in my mind
I am here in my mind
And I'm a million different people
from one day to the next
I can't change my mind
No, no, no, no, no

I can't change my mind
no, no, no, no, no,
I can't change
Can't change my body,
no, no, no

I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down
I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down
Been down
Ever been down
Ever been down
Ever been down
Ever been down
That you've ever been down
That you've ever been down