Branding myself ...

Ive decided to brand myself and design myself a logo, seeing as we will be having to do business cards etc for the degree show and also because I thought it was about time I went about doing so.

I have decided to stick simply with my name as after all I am who I am and that says everything I want it to. I have also gone on to purchase myself some domain names, www.laurenstrachan.co.uk and www.laurenstrachan.com which will soon become a live website and will be creating a website to go along with my blog and also to put on my business cards for something possibly to use later on in my career. This will be getting done either during the easter break in the next few weeks or the few weeks after the easter break. I thought this would be the best time to do this before I get busy busy busy with the rest of my project. You will see my final choice on my business cards etc at a later date as I don't want to give away to much just now!

Social Work Logo Design Project

During the end of last week we had 3 girls from the social work course come up and ask if anyone could spare a few hours to help them design a logo and a sign for the side of a van for one of their projects. I decided to take on the task of this on top of my studio work as it would give me a break from my project and allow me to do something different for a day or two. The brief was for an activity van/bus that would travel around local community centres and nursing homes offering the older generation an opportunity to learn new skills or rekindle old ones that they have not been able to do, such as learning to play an instrument, flower aranging or even taking part in a small play or production. The logo also had to be easy to read as the target market was the elderly and had to be bright and colourful with the ability to stand out. And it also had to include the words 'Time of our lives' in the logo.

Below is the logo and the van side I have designed for them.

Project Logos

These are just a few editions of my project image or logo. I was thinking of using one of these as a book cover for my book of research etc for the degree show.

Household Waste Amounts

This visual is the different amounts and types of household waste that an average person would produce. As you can see the larger amounts are household & garden waste and paper & cardboard. Coming in a close third are plastic followed by glass and metals. Therefore I am looking more specifically at paper & cardboard, plastics, metals and glass for the seperation process with in my concepts.

Reach Capabilities

This illustration shows the two common types of reach capabilities between an able bodied person and a less able bodied person such as a wheelchair user. These three capabilities are comfortable common reach (shown in green) maximum common reach (shown in red) and minimum common reach (shown in blue) which are shown in the illustration above. This dagram helps me depict which height(s) are suitable when it comes to deciding on the heigh of my concepts at a later stage. When it comes to making my product inclusive, this could mean that I could include many heights with in all three spectrums of the reach capability, thus making it inclusive to all users able bodied or not.

Reuse the recyclable

This product takes the reuse of a heavily disgarded object, in this case the everyday plastic bag, and reuses it to store other recyclable materials. The simple design of the prongs on the top of each side of the container allows the plastic bags to be hung over them in a draping fashion at each side, which in turn keeps the plastic bag upright and taught for the storage of other recyclable materials. This concept is very simple in terms of thought but this is the kind of thing I think I need to think of. Something simple but more aesthitically pleasing.

Next steps ...

After our Interim Show we are now coming to the end of the research stage of the project and are now entering the concept and modelling stages of the project timeline. The area I am now concentrating on is household recycling and how this is stored and kept with in the home. I am looking at this in terms of my project objective:

“Trying to bridge the gap between design and the community in the respect to recycling, and of how design can help create awareness and change attitudes towards this. Addressing the perceptions people have against recycling and the problems that surface from this, via the use of good design”.

I propose to look at this through creating a product that is inclusively designed to meet the needs and constraints of everyone from wheelchair users and the elderly to the able bodied consumer.

The two main areas I have found that are a problem with consumers are the portability and storage of the containers and also of the recyclable materials. Within my concepts I hope to combine these issues to create a product that will hopefully make the storing and portability of household recycling an easier task to do before it goes out to the kerb side on collection day.

From this I am looking in to modular systems and ways of using un-used areas/spaces of the house mainly the kitchen or the utility room.

4th Year Interm Exhibition

Here are just a few images my interm exhibition. My boards showed an outline of my project to date and also included key images and words that best described what my project was about. We also had three smaller tiles that were arranged on a wall with everyone elses. My film was also shown.