Week 01 - 3D

Class Format

This unit of the course, BSBDES303A: Explore and apply the creative design process to 3D forms shares contact time with BSBDES302A: Explore and apply the creative design process to 2D forms. Thus, each week in this blog must include entries for both 3D and 2D. The unit information reads pretty much the same as that for 2D, replacing 2D for 3D as evidenced by the unit titles. This weeks class consisted of group discussion and research followed by a critical analysis of the gathered data.

Group Discussion

While discussing various elements of 2D and 3D design, Steven drew our attention to the machines sitting in front of us. The iMac was put forward as a good example of 3D design, here is a picture of mine at home...

The design follows most obviously John Maeda's first law of simplicity, the law of reduction. Over the years Apple have continued to simplify the look of their flagship machine. I came accross an iMac from around 2009 the other day which made me take a second look, here is an image of one.

Aside from the obvious ratio change of the screen, it took me a moment to pick the aluminium edge around the screen. Unnecessary and even a little distracting once noticed this is now gone from the current models. The base also has a slimmer front facing profile and the back is now all aluminium, bringing its overall appearance more in line with Apple's entire product range. These changes were subtle and simply subtracted the unnecessary.

Research

Video

While this is not strictly speaking a video or an actual 3 dimensional thing, I like it and it does not really fit anywhere else. It is in fact an animated gif, an under-rated and often abused file format. This is a logo I designed for a friends framing business. I created it in Blender, an open source cross platform 3D creation tool with an extremely steep learning curve. His initials are M & M and framing is mostly about making square-ish things, so he thought he was very clever when he came up with the name. I deliberately left the skin off the back of the piece so that when it rotated the underlying framework could be seen, so I also thought I was very clever

Images

Thinking about what to make in 3 dimensions, this is an initial sketch for a clip on table leg system. the idea being that any flat surface could turned into a small table. Construction could either be in timber with a metal clip at the top or my preference one length of bent metal dowel about 5 mm in diameter.

Problem is, I think it may have been done and sure enough with a little research...

Here, they have not only done it , they did it better. This design simplifies things so that two legs are one clip. However, this is the type of thing I would like to design for this element of the course. A simple elegant solution. I just need to come up with a different problem.

Reflection

Being the first week, I am sure the class will find its feet a bit more next week. In the absense of a task outline for this blog I have followed the same format that I have used for Exhibition (CUVCOR04B & BSBCRT402A). I would describe my strength when working 3 dimensionally as having the ability to pull things apart and then reconstruct them differently. Mostly though, I like to pull things apart.