Eleni's Design Canvas

Unfortunately, this year has come to an end. I say unfortunately because this year truly helped me discover myself, distinguish what I like, understand what I don't like and need to work on, but most importantly, it helped me develop not only my skills but as a person too.  I believe that the progress made is evident in my blogs and website. During the last two terms, my concept  was very similar. I created transformable furniture that I was familiar with. However, this term, I truly tried to push and educate myself. My choice of topic is something I definitely do not regret. I thought of going back in time and educating myself on matters that I am very unfamiliar with in order to challenge myself. I found the research aspect somewhat draining the last terms as I was familiar with it. However, this term, I found the research extremely interesting. I got so drawn and invested into this theme and I wanted to find out as much as possible. I tried to include in-depth analysis and ...

These are my final design boards: I decided to add the orthographic drawings separately because I thought that they took up too much space. Overall, I am very pleased with how these turned out and I think that they represent my designs very well. I think that the introductions for each are well written and clear, ensuring that I get my message across. The design boards are more simple and minimalistic which was the aim I wanted to accomplish. I really like this outcome and I think that it works well with my theme.

 In this post, I will be documenting the changes I make to my website.  First thing I had to do was add another page for the new collection. I clicked on 'add menu item', and I added the 'troglodyte collection'. After I created a new menu item, I clicked on 'add' and then 'strip' and inserted that strip. I copy pasted the 'read more' button from the top and linked it to the troglodyte page. My tutor said that the transparent navigation bar did not work well with the website, therefore I changed it to solid black with white letters that become orange when you hover over them. I think this works much better. Then, I changed the image on the strip and added one of the renders I created.  I added 6 grid galleries into the troglodyte page. The 5 would be used to showcase renders of the design and the large one was there fore the design boards. I started uploading the renders in each and I added titles and description. The description included the view...

 Naming my designs is probably my favourite part of the process as I can be as creative I want. I wouldn't normally create a separate blog post for this but I like the names I came up with and I want to explain the origin of each.  Paleolithic- I will be naming the lamp ' Venus of Willendorf' to reflect on the actual statue that they made. Mesolithic- ' Tree of Light' . The word 'tree' reflects on the fact that the base of the lamp is a tree; however, the style of the lamp is also called a 'tree lamp'. Additionally, I wanted to link this with the 'tree of life' which represents personal development, uniqueness and beauty. The branches grow upwards to the sky to show the growth of the individual who strives for wisdom and new experiences. This title has a much deeper meaning that what you initially expect which is what I like about it. Neolithic- 'Amphora' . Before diving into the meaning, I think the word 'amphora' alone evok...

In my design boards, I have established that I want to include renderings, orthographic views, engineering drawings and mock ups.  For my renders, I used the 'Enscape' render on the sketch up warehouse. This was my first time working with enscape and I found it very easy and convenient. I captured 70 images of my designs in total, however, here is one of each in order to showcase examples.  In terms of quality, I believe these ones are the best I created so far. It was very easy to navigate through the website and I could adjust the setting to my preference. I think these turned out great and I am so happy with the outcome! Moving on to the engineering drawings: First step was to remove the axes from the design. Then, I had to set the projection to parallel as it is on perspective by default. Parallel projection  removes the unnecessary depth which will give you the 2D depth u want. Then, I clicked on edge style and clicked on 'remove profiles' to make it look simple...

Before starting the renderings, exploded views and orthographic views, I wanted to look at some more examples of design boards. However, prior to my research, I want to express some concerns about last terms design boards. Compared to the first term, I believe that this was a massive improvement. I like the attention to detail and the overall layout. However, I consider the engineering drawings (bottom right corner) quite useless. The point of  engineering drawings is to showcase the dimensions of the designs. However, the diagram is so small you can barely see it. Additionally, it takes up space from the renderings which could be bigger. Therefore, I decided that this term, I would create 5 design boards (1 for each design) which do not include orthographic views. However, at the end of the design boards, I will include all the engineering drawings together at one final design board at the end of the gallery. This means that each engineering drawing will be bigger, thus showcasing...

 In class, we were assigned a partner to work with in order to create a customer profile for each other. I was paired up with Paola De Luca. We were supposed to answer questions about shopping habits and describe our strategies when shopping.  I wanted to add a red colourscheme to make the design more powerful. Paola’s answers were very interesting and informative, therefore, I wanted this to be portrayed in the poster. I really like how this design turned out. I wasn’t able to get a picture of Paola so I decided to draw a quick sketch. I really like the device section of this as I prefer visual images over text. I like the layout and colour consistency and I tried my best to sum up the informative answers Paola gave me. I created this on Procreate and it took me about 1.5 hours.  I think this task was beneficial for my design board skills. I took a lot of information and filtered it in order to showcase the important aspects of the conversation. This is exactly my aim wi...

During todays session, we were coupled up with another classmate in order to give each other feedback in order to help improve. I was paired up with Petros. We both tried to present our ideas in a short amount of time so we can receive a bit of feedback. The first thing I expressed is that I feel like I'm running out of time. I have to create 4 design boards and potentially a promotional video. Petros suggested that the promotional video could be perhaps as short as a tik-tok video which I already practiced. However, he also suggested that if I have no time, I could always create 5 design boards showcasing my outcomes. Petros didn't appear to be very concerned which was very helpful as he comforted me.  He also commented on the designs. Particularly the first one. He mentioned that the first design looks very well made and was impressed by it.  He was questioning the second design (tree design) as he could not understand the inspiration behind it, however, once I clarified it,...

In class, we were also given a catch up checklist to ensure that we covered all tasks that were assigned to us. As seen from the grid, I have completed all of them except the customer profile one which I am planning to complete soon. I tried to complete every task at the best of my abilities which I think is reflected throughout my blog posts. I am glad that I am caught up with all the necessary blog posts so I can now focus on creating and perfecting my outcomes. Plan:  The were some comments left by my tutor throughout some posts where he asked me some specific questions for clarification. I am planning on going back to each blog post and adding some more commentary to ensure that everything is clear throughout. 

After a long and frustrating design process, my outcomes are finally ready.  PALEOLITHIC: This design was my 3D piece which was made using clay: This is probably my favourite outcome of the collection. I think it works well with the theme and I had the opportunity to create it myself. I really like the colour scheme and the selection of materials and colours. If I had more time, I would have made the lampshade myself too, but unfortunately it is a very complex and time consuming process. I was planning on doing a promotional video, however, I am not sure if it will look good or if I have sufficient time to complete it. If I do not have enough ideas or time to complete it, then I will create one design board for it.  This was my design for the Mesolithic era: This was one of the challenging designs on the software. However, I think it turned out rather successful. The outcome is a bit different from the one portrayed in the development ideas, however, the concept remains the sa...

In this blog, I will be explaining the process for the two lamp designs.  Mesolithic : This was the first design I created and I forgot to document every part of this process, therefore, I will be explaining it. I downloaded a basic log from the warehouse. Then, I exploded it and started editing branches off and adding more branches. This was a few steps into adding and removing branches. This was a very time consuming process which I was not expecting. Then, I added 'create component' to make the branches one part. I used a light bulb from the warehouse and added it onto the longer branches. I used the circular shape and the push/pull tool to create the lamp shading.  I will not be including wires in this. I think this design ended up being very successful. The process was very time consuming and frustrating as my computer has difficulties processing everything. However, I definitely think that it was worth it. Because of the lack of screenshots in this design, I remembered t...