Winter term of 2018 has officially ended. I am happily on break. My hardest course this term was most definitely the product-design course I took. Art311 was a major time commitment, but there are a couple things I learned from taking just this one course. There were the concrete programs that I learned, such as Adobe Illustrator and Rhinoceros. However, something I admire most about this class was my teacher’s effort to run the class as “real-world” as possible, meaning he tried to imitate a workspace environment, similar to that of his architecture firm. The following is perhaps a memorandum.
- Making things takes times. I know in some classes, I can get away with forgetting to do a reading one night, or forgetting to do a problem on a math assignment and still manage to succeed. Something Mr. Lawson really emphasized in this class is that designing and making things takes time. While in certain high school classes it is possible to get away with dropping certain assignments and work, in Mr. Lawson’s product-design course, it was virtually impossible to get away with spending minimal time. To create a product, a lot of time outside of class had to be spent. There was simply no getting around this. This forced all of my classmates and me to truly dedicate ourselves to the process.
- There will be lots of drafts/redos and that’s okay. All four project I made had to be redesigned at least three times, whether that be physically printing things, or redesigning products on Rhino. I remember for my first project I was designing a pencil holder. Since I was just being introduced to Rhino, I was still unfamiliar with the various tools. Thus, I ended up redesigning my pencil holder at least four times, before finally laser cutting the pieces out for assemblage. This happened with my tea tray as well as my final lantern (pics below).
- The power of self problem solving. My teacher believes in self-problem-solving. In the real world, my teacher mentions how there will not be someone who will guide us through every step like teachers in grade school do. In fact, this may be one of the biggest flaws in the educational system: when a teacher tells their students exactly what to do and offers the student no freedom in trying out their own ideas with trial and error. Mr. Lawson says that in the real world, we must rely upon ourselves to figure out problems, not follow a strict guideline of one person. Thus, in Art311, Mr. Lawson challenged us as students to find our own flaws in design and to find ways to work around them by ourselves with minimal guidance from an experienced person.
This term, I spent approximately 1 hour per night on my various art projects, whether that be designing on Rhino, 3D printing, laser cutting, or assembling my pieces. It was a very time consuming class, but reflecting back today, I wouldn’t take back one minute of it.
PROJECTS
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| First draft of lantern |
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| Final draft of lantern (altered the shades) |
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| Final draft of pencil holder |
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First draft of tea tray
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| Revised draft of tea tray |
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