ID [PNW]

This a sample of 3 projects from Form Function, by Jason Morris and Western Industrial Design students; Erin Yoakum, Justin Lund and Phelan Miller. This purely visual short film shows an industrial design creative process that starts with abstract sculpture and ends with a functional object. Music by Moby. It premiered at The Doctober Documentary Film Festival 2009, Pickford Cinema, Bellingham, WA, US. Creative solutions are rarely found by using conventional methods. This short film shows a design process that begins with abstract form creation without knowledge of the designs purpose. The form creation is done with guidelines made by the instructor, who creates the rules to correspond with the designs objectives. Only after these abstract sculptures are complete is the designs purpose revealed. A selected form study is then evaluated for ideas and inspiration, which is refined applying the realities of the design functions. This film shows the sculpture spinning slowly and tra...

Industrial design has become wider and deeper in scope.  Strategy, environments, innovation, form, branding, emotional, design thinking, product, interaction, vehicle, soft goods, furniture, research, sustainable, it’s getting huge!   And I think that it’s time to evolve. We’re trying to cram so much into a 4 year degree, that it’s taking 5 years or more to do it.  If our students are spending 5 plus years in school anyway, then why not just make it an even six?  Is an engineer expected to study mechanical, aerospace, electrical, fluid dynamics, civil, architectural, industrial production and manufacturing?  No, the engineering community realized that these are all related but distinct focuses of engineering, so they created separate programs. Since we think that we’re so special and are worth a lot of money and we want more respect,  we should require professionals to have a masters degree. Raise the bar of entry.   The base ID education with core courses   in undergrad and ...

2 years ago I wrote about how industrial design will be affected by personal fabrication or desktop manufacturing.   The prediction was that due to the advancement of rapid prototyping technology that products will be manufactured in your own community  and perhaps in your own home with desktop manufacturing machines.   This is an exciting idea because it revolutionizes the traditional product development process,  which is full of waste, management overhead, shipping containers, distribution, and over production.   And it's beginning to happen today, although in a different format than expected.   Web-based companies such as Ponoko , Zazzle, CafePress , Blurb, Lulu are making this a reality.   You design something, upload it, and they display it, sell it, make it on demand, and ship it to the customer.  And you get paid for each sale.   The material limitations that we see now are really just temporary and it's only a matter of time before a company with a FDM machine and a ...

(Since some people asked for a copy, this is the speech that I gave at the IDSA Western District conference, Santa Monica, CA, April 25th, 2009.  This is the first point, the second and third will be on separate posts.) 2 questions were posed as a theme for this conference:  What must designers do to survive today?   And What can we do to thrive internationally? Here are 3 issues that I think are important right now: 1.  D esign for the BOP 2.  D esign for make-on-demand 3.  Encouraging graduate education for designers   1.      Learn how to design for people at the bottom of the pyramid A World of Unreliability One revelation to me in my brief time in Africa that really put my view of the world in a new perspective, was that nothing is reliable in an East Africans world.     Politicians are corrupt and expected to be.   Being bit by the wrong mosquito could means contracting malaria and dying a week later.   Drinking the wrong water could mean a life threatening di...

Somehow, my documentary, Hoima Bicycle,  won Best Documentary Short at the Northwest Projections Film Festival 2009.  It was up against three other very interesting and quite different docs.  Sonic Healing, Hope Art, and The Best Medicine. Thanks to: Thanks to Wilson Large and everyone who organized the festival and gave us an opportunity to show our work.  Thanks to Mark Hardin, who without his presence and camera work, the documentary wouldn't have been possible.  Thanks to my mom, Shirley Morris who planned, scheduled and prepared for the trip to Uganda.  Without her, the whole project wouldn't have been possible.  And thanks to my wife Karen, who was my assistant editor by watching earlier versions and suggesting changes.  She also tolerated me working through the summer, unpaid, editing the movie for hours and hours. Thanks to Western Washington for supporting the project with grants.  And thanks to the members of First Presbyterian church for supporting the project th...

You’re a invited to the a showing of  Hoima Bicycle  (along with other documentaries and local films) at the  Northwest Projections Film Festival . Dates: Friday, April 17 th  at 4:30pm and Saturday, April 18 th  at 4:30pm. Here’s a description of the Festival: NW Projections Film Festival 2009 NW Projections is back!   The  annual film festival  that proves local filmmakers have great stories and the chops to tell them. From the streets of Bellingham and  Seattle  to dirt roads in Africa, there are moments both real and relevant to whimsical and timeless. Come see how NW filmmakers have painted the world on our screen. Tickets:   Unless noted, all films are regular Pickford prices: Regular $8.25/Matinee $6.25/Member $5.25. Documentary  Shorts: 4.17 @ 4:30pm/4.18 @ 4:30pm @ The Pickford The Best Medicine (Lisa Spicer) Follows the work of the Slum  Doctor Program  in Rabour Village and Hama Bay, Kenya and the effects on children's lives left empty by the cruel hands of  AIDS . 16 mi...

HOIMA BICYCLE from NW Projections Film Festival from ENW with Deb Slater on Vimeo . Here's a short promo clip for the Festival.  Be sure to check out the other documentary and narrative clips on Deb Slater's channel.

The Potential of 3D Printing for Industrial Design FDM Perfume bottle by Molly Purdin 2007. Re-mixed industrial design Just as musicians can upload tracks of their music files for the public to download and re-mix, the same could happen for industrial design. In fact it already happens today in the form of modifications to cars. Users buy variations of wheels, bumpers, lights, and other car parts to suit their own style. A future example might be a software program from Motorola that allows one to create a unique mobile phone design. It could provide options for shape, configuration, button layout, size, graphics and color. These options would be displayed as three-dimensional rendering on-screen before one decides to press “print.” FDM Lamp with personal soundwave topology by Michele Kiss Open-source Industrial Design Open-source software, such as the Firefox browser, is being constantly revised and updated by various software coders around the world. These changes a...

The Disadvantages of Personal Fabrication 3D printed graffiti piece by Yale Wolf Abuse What if people use desktop manufacturing to make weapons or products to hurt others? As with any tool, it could be used for malevolent purposes. This capability, combined with the ease of internet file transfer could mean the simple creation of destructive devices. Intellectual property protection problems How does this affect patent protection when a design could be easily copied just as a music file can be copied today? Does it devalue the work of the designer? How can 3D data files be protected, or only allowed to be fabricated a limited number of times? Here is where coordination with software developers and programmers will be necessary. Cost Part cost is much higher than a mass-produced part, so the value of the part must be justified. This is not a process for everyday commodity objects. It only is feasible for applications that utilize its inherent advantages. This gap...

What are the advantages to using desktop manufacturing as a production process? No tooling costs or lead-time Once a design is complete as 3D digital data, it’s ready to be produced. There are no enormous tooling costs of several thousand dollars, and no tooling lead-times of several months. Just upload it to a rapid prototyping service on the Internet, and get it back in a couple of days. On-demand manufacturing This method could completely re-order the sequence of product development and manufacturing. Now one can design it, sell it, and then make it. The common method of product development is to mass manufacture a product and then try to sell them. But if there are no tooling-costs to absorb and each product can be quickly made one at a time, one only then needs to make just enough to satisfy demand. This means less waste, less overstock, and less overproduction. The end of marketing as we know it Marketing is based on the goal of understanding the customer so that only th...

Here's a preview of a paper that I'm working on right now... (note: I have since finished two versions of this paper and it was published in the ICSID/IDSA International Education Conference Proceedings 2007 and the book Shaping the Future? The 9th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education.  You can read the finished paper PDF here. ) A revolution in manufacturing may be coming sooner than we expect, and it could change industrial design dramatically . Eventually, it is predicted one will be able to fabricate a product in the home, just as one can print out a color document today. It’s called personal fabrication1 or desktop manufacturing. How will this affect the profession of industrial design? Does it empower industrial designers or does it make every person a designer? With the creative insights of design students, this paper explores the possibilities and implications of this coming paradigm shift. What is personal fabrication? Rap...