The Thirtiest Year...

And a very very special piece for me which had taken a little bit of my time away from my research...

A new wedding ring designed for my mum. My dad commissioned me to make a new wedding band for my mum for their 30th Wedding Anniversary today, so this is what I made.

Traditionally the 30th wedding anniversary's gem of choice is a pearl. My mum's not keen on cultured pearls and I have to admit I'm not either, so I was very happy to find out that the modern equivelant has become diamond jewellery...though the modern equivelant for most anniversary stones has become diamond therefore rendering the diamond wedding anniverary a bit of a let down.

Anyway, the band is made of 1.5 mm Stirling silver, 18 carat gold and a diamond which I forget the specifications for...but it was more or less colourless, had few inclusions (flaws) and was the first diamond I've ever bought or set. So I'm really chuffed with the outcome and the fact that not only does my mum love it, but it fits perfectly...and I never got to size it properly!

Reset...

I'm not a big traveller - my friends are often shocked to hear that not only have I not been out of the UK, but I also don't own a passport...shock horror! This isn't because I don't want to gho abroad or that I'm scared of flying or a growing carbon footprint. It's more that as a kid I was in a family of 5 and holidays abroad are expensive and when I go to the wonderful places around the world, I want to go somewhere special, when it can be special and not a moonlight flit where you come home more exhausted than when you left. Is it any wonder people always say they need a holiday to get over the holiday?

Anyway, researchers in Australian have been developing a set of glasses to help combat the trouble that more frequent flyings that I have with jetlag and other people have with insomnia by re-calibrating our biological clock with LED lights. By beaming light directly into the eye of the wearer the battery powered glasses helps to reset the body clock or circadian rhythm which is our bodies response to the sun, moon and seasonal changes which is what makes us wake up and become alert in the morning and feel sleepy at night.

They have also been used in the treatment of S.A.D. (Seasonal Affective Disorder) which normally involves the use of a light box or lamp which the sufferer sits in front of with their eyes open - though not staring directly at the light - for a prescribed period. The glasses allow the user to stop being inhibited by the stationary nature of the light box and the ability to

Re-Time glasses are still in development for commercial use by Flinders Meditech and I just thought that the use of LEDs was really interesting. For more information on the use of light for resetting the body clock see Flinders University: School of Psychology who did extensive research into their use.

Strangled by Words

Made of laser cut suede, these scarves come in black, grey & white, upper case, lowercase and numerical and could be a good way to made distortions into something tangible.

Designed by The Little Factory.com

(I want one!)

Word Games...

Scrabble based seating area, designed by industrial designers Stephen Reed and Alistair Willmott for the Bloomberg offices in London. The cushions printed with the traditionally point laden letters all the office workers to leave one another messages in a playful, relaxing means.

The end tables also act as double and triple word scores which can be used - as with the smaller more traditional game - to gain higher word scores.

I'm bad at word games, but I love the idea of making things playful, trying to work games into design work. A trend which started in 1st year and dominated my final year.

Sound Advice...

I came across this project today called The Sound Advice Project, which is a project which attempts to deter teenagers from drug use through the use of jewellery.

By recording an anti drug use message or any positive affirmation or frequently reiterated statement, a sound wave is created and then translated into a three dimensional form using varying sizes of beads. This allows the parents to give their child a message which they can keep with them without it being blazoned across their chests. The parents gains piece of mind and the child gets an interesting piece of jewellery which actually means something to them.

Designed by David Bizer, while there is no high tech software or sound within the piece itself, the ideas of using sound waves is actually quite intriguing to me, especially as the one visualisation I would always use on Media Player (before the dawn of iTunes) was the simple sound wave. It's simple, it's personal, but it's not overtly preaching or nagging.

For example, a few years ago my parents bought me a simple little bracelet with a strip of silver stamped with the word 'create' suspended on an orange chord. It was their way of giving me a quiet nudge of encouragement when I was in a period of 'designers block' and was particularly low. Needless to say, I've replaced the chord time and again, but whenever I'm really needing a little bit of encouragement I put on my bracelet and it helps.

Ridiculous...

Possibly the most ridiculous glasses related invention I've ever seen and this is coming from someone who hates having her picture taken.

A'N'D

These are possibly the silliest and weirdest design for eye wear I've seen over the entire length of my product research this year.

Designed by Azumi & David (A'N'D), fashion graduates from Central Saint Martins, the couple have designed an extensive range of packing tape 'things to wear' (preferring this term to fashion accessories) including watches, bracelets, belts, ties and the above glasses. The proviso with these products being that you avoid direct contact with the skin. 

A funny little twist, but who's never put pieces of sellotape on their skin over the years just to see the pattern that comes off your skin or to torture a sibling? 

Among their other designs they sell necklaces which stamp watches and repetitive jewellery patterns on the skin, which is reminiscent of Tiffany Parbs 'Rash Stamps' and necklaces which use enlarged clasps as the focal point, in a similar styles as jewellery Laura Potter, who uses enlarged catches and earring backs (butterflies) to create her contemporary jewellery.

Despite their proviso and the serious doubt that these products actually give any sun protection in the slightest, I actually really love the concept of a lot of their designs. I admit to not liking a lot of conceptual jewellery, I'm really quite traditional - or possibly just overly safe - however, A'N'D's quirky style has actually begun to grow on me and the more I look into their other designs, the more I think this sort of product could fit into the consumerist, throw-away culture that exists.

Stick on...peel of...throw away...or...print on...wash off...

http://www.azumianddavid.com/

Representation

Jumi used this photo I took as a representation of her trying to get playfulness into her design project. I'm using it as the next iteration in my representation of our mindful design project, which we initially started designing on balloons.

Stage 1: White Balloons

Stage 2: Typed out

Stage 3: Bates the maniacal bunny letting go of my balloons in an illustration

Stage 4: Origami Water Balloons

Stage 5: Jumi and the Magical Balloon (as a little book)

...fun

Live Scribe

‘Live Scribe’ is a product intended to alleviate the pressure of note taking & facilitate the process by recording sound bites as you write.

I found this online recently after wondering about using sound recording devices as part of my design work...or at least looking at it as a possibility. If anything I’d just like one for myself as half the time my notes make sense to a point and then I’ll miss a vital piece of information because I haven’t quite kept up or I’ve only written down half a comment.

The fact that the Live Scribe Pen records what is said as you write and you’re able to access specific parts of the recording by tapping on the Live Scribe Dot Paper pad provided is brilliant! The Pad acts as a control panel and because of the arrangement of dots on the surfaces allows an infrared camera on the pens tip to record everything your right or draw, you can even print your own, so I think, would really appeal to dyslexics, or even people who’s hand-writing strays (much like mine) half way through their notes because it can act as a back up.

Laser Dance...

Lights, Camera, Jellyfish...

Jelly-lights are light sculptures designed by Dirk Rutten & Jeroen Kascha (for NXT Designs), they are made of transparent rubber, laced with fiber optic strands throughout its structure. They range from 1.5 - 3 meters in diameter, produce little to no heat, have no electricity passing directly through them and by fitting an optical colour wheel programmed with a range of colours, they can, 'create a huge assortment of dynamic colour schemes, a lightshow hanging from your ceiling'.

They can alter their environment , the mood of an environments theoretically the people within it through subtle colour changes.

I love them, for two reasons, one, they remind me so much of one of my favourite designers work, Dale Chihuly's Persian series. In particular his epic piece in which he places hundreds of pieces of glass sea forms onto a false glass ceiling above the exhibition space. In one image I've seen (though could not find) he ceiling has been suspended so close low in the exhibition that although people were able to walk around beneath, most lay on the ground and viewed Chihuly's work that way.

Two is the slightly sad fact that I absolutely love fibre optics. There's just something about the iridescence that kind of shimmer that dim glow of colour that I just love. In third year I did a project based on tidal water current maps which I made this large neck piece out of them. But I never got as far as adding a light source which I always regretted. Eventually I hope to manage incorporating fibre optics and LEDs elegantly into my jewellery (so it doesn't become ridiculously fragile or look like a bottle brush)...that or maybe I should just start trying to design ambient lighting?

Elexia...

The Elexia Keyboard has been developed by BabelTech Ltd, the purpose of this product is to try and help ease the discomfort caused to some dyslexics when looking at the traditional black and white lettering on keyboards.

Elexia has been designed with a transluscent, back lit keyboard which, can produce up to '1.6 million colour' variables. The colours can be altered and blended via the red, green and blue dials at the side of the keyboard, even dimmed and brightened to change intensity and have been modelled on those defined by the treatment of Irlen Syndrome. As with the treatments of Irlen Syndrome (which includes dyslexia, visual difficulties and to help prevent migraines or headaches) using coloured glasses and overlays, the keyboards colour can be taylored to the individual sufferers needs and is designed to help help them percieve the letters more easily.

Although this product is not actually avaliable until 2009, I do think that it's a really interesting design, it could eventually be encorporated into computers as a standard given that so many already have backlit keyboards. I've never really looked at my keyboard as a dyslexic. I can touch type relatively efficiently and I am from a generation who grew up using computers from relatively early age (the first computer class I took at school which have been in Primary 4, 15 years ago, but it does flicker the way text does in books and on a computer screen for me. It does blur a little, but perhaps because the lettering is actually very far apart I'd never considered it. Either way the Elexia Keyboards has really intreged me, I would really like to see how it aids people.