I will start as I usually do after having a break from blogging by saying that I have been meaning to write this post since May, it is now July! This year is flying by at an extreme pace, quite scary! Since my last blog post featuring my final press images, the degree show is sadly over, I am now a graduate (really not liking this status at the moment!) and I am blogging from London, my home for the next week as I exhibit ‘Reassure’ for possibly the last time!

Degree show review

The degree show was a mixture of feelings, after months of being in the workshop and finishing projects, by the time degree show preview night arrived, I was really pleased with how my space looked but was also really tired! Laurie, my classmate, was kind enough to donated his spare fridge. As for my cartons, I was (and still am) a little disappointed with the light sensor, as the fridge door requires a swift movement for sensor to work properly and for the twin carton to react and change colour. During the degree show I watched people having two/ three goes at opening the fridge before any colour change happens. What’s more annoying is that I think it’s a coding error that needs work on. I’m also worried that because I haven’t changed the code since the degree show I will find my self with the same problem at new designers.

Reaction

From the people I spoke to about my project a lot seemed genuinely interested and had a story to tell about how they could see the product working in their family, one comment questioned if the older relative would confuse the carton for a real one and dispose of it, but in this case, which I’m presuming is full dementia, the project would have to be completely different as I am designing for people with early signs of dementia. I received lots of nice comments in my book from people in various sectors from design to medicine to architecture. Online I didn’t receive a lot of coverage but I did had a lovely write up from ‘The Future Perfect Company’ blog. I would also just like to say in this post how supportive Phillipa has been from ‘The Future Perfect Company’! One of the most amazing comments I received was from a man called Dev Patnaik. Back in October time when I was starting my project, we were asked to bring in an a5 sheet of paper describing your role model. This was quite an easy choice for me, by that time I was deep in dissertation writing and referencing Patnaik’s book ‘Wired to Care’ which writes about designing with empathy. When the project was over I tweeted Patnaik with my project link and received this tweet

“@Fiona_Harper Reassure is beautiful and moving! You’ve tapped into a deep cultural narrative by choosing a milk carton. Nice job.”

He then tweeted his followers:

“Beautiful project called Reassure by @Fiona_Harper. Taps into the deep cultural narrative of the milk carton.”

And the icing on the cake…… I was in my local newspaper!

Id like to round up my degree show reflection post by giving a shout out to the following people for helping me through 4th year and for all their support (in no particular order) : Ro, Ali Napier, Sean Kingsley, Christine Kingsley, Polly Duplock and Graham Pullin.

So that was degree show over with and now I am here in London ready for the next week to commence, I am not gearing myself up too much or naive in thinking it will kick start my career (I wish!) but I do hope I get to speak to lots of interesting people and do a bit of networking! I also hope it might help me think about where to go next!

Here is my ‘one great image’ as you can see from the photograph I wanted to do 3 mains things, have my user, the product and the environment captured in one shot. In order to show the carton in its best state the light was dulled. I like how it showed the silhouette of my user in the shot and clearly shows the fridge glowing in the background. I tried to make it as ‘in context’ as possible, and tried to make it come across as natural as possible.

I thought I would write a post to jusitfy my reasoning for using ceramic. When I came up with the idea of using the fridge to work with the light sensor in my project I knew that the final material used for my product would have to be transparent. In my earlier prototypes I had made the sensor show through the cardboard. I had to think of other materials to use to develop my prototype, yes it would have been very easy leaving it cardboard like food packaging but for my honours project I wanted my end product to be more valuble that this in a financial and commercial sense. Although carboard would have been a simple choice, I want my product to be as real as I can make it in a exhibition environment, I want a material that will last and that can hold the electronics well, as well as being transparent enough to allow the electronics to work. I did research online and seen examples of simple ceramics that were made to look like packaging and thought this would be a good idea for the products to look in keeping with their surrounding.

The process of making ceramics hasnt been an easy on, it has been good and bad, I didn’t quite prepare myself for the lenghty process, I have made two moulds overall, one smaller carton, one large, on top of moulding various parts to alter the shapes and look I was going for, I have smashed moulds right at the end of the process, I have try different ways of  adding details to the ceramics, and made sure the size of the hole was the same for each mold. I have spent 2 months in the cold ceramics room experiencing a different side to the art school, working along side jewellers, illustrators and fine artists in one place.

Although the ceramics have been difficult to work with at times I am pleased with some of the details for instance the cap and the laser cutting of ‘reassure’ on the side. I wanted to make the letters as subtle as possible, I didn’t want to ‘over do’ details, I thought about making a sleeve to go over it and using transfers but I had to think about their main purpose to show light change and I feel that leaving them quite bare meant that there is no details obstructing the lights.

Here is some printmaking of my products name, I wanted to use a printmaking technique on the side of the cartons because I like the rough finish it leaves, it shows that the milk cartons arent completely perfect but they arent meant to be, ceramics do have air bubbles and grooves from the kiln. Another reason for choosing a printed look for my font/ brand indenity is because all this semester I have been a voluntary artist in a printmaking class, every fortnight for Headways Dundee, I have really enjoyed helping and feel that I want show what I had learnt.