dai323-jschmelter

VDL part 14 or abstract/symbolic representationalism

2009-05-13T13:30:00.000-07:00

This image was found on flickr.com and is a black and white photograph of what appears to be an apartment block. The image is an example of the abstract level because of the intensity of the elements seen in the image. All one sees, are the windows and balconies mismatched and seemingly unstable. This viewpoint could just be a photographers trick, using a rakish angle to create the image above, but it does have an almost surreal quality to it. Its elements impact the viewer like an MC Escher print or a dali painting, especially with the void of color.

The image above was found at hexacool.blogspot.com and is of the proposed "Ren" building for the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, China.
I chose this building for the symbolic level because the design of the building is based on a written word, in this case the Chinese character for person, or "ren." The hotel, sports and conference center are actually two buildings that meet at the top, which is the hotel part and the place for living. One building rises from the water and is the sports center and it denotes the body while the other building is a multi use conference center which represents the mind. The building, if built, could also be another example of China's rise as a world powerhouse. In my opinion, it shows some of the "green" steps China would like to take, even if their is a little bit of communist dogma between the lines.

The final image comes from boxvox.net/art and is of a piece of sculpture called Private Passage, by artist Malcolm Cochran.
According to the artist, this is a "distinctive sculpture consisting of a 30'x8'6" wine bottle resting on its side, within which is a representation of an interior stateroom from the ocean liner, Queen Mary." This image is a good example of the representational level, because it is a wine bottle resting on its side and your mind recognizes it as that. Although the artist plays with the concept of size, a sideways bottle is associated with a ship model inside of a bottle, and inside this bottle is the interior of a ship. The sculpture also has elements of scale due to its shear size and the fact that it looks slightly out of place resting on a piece of sidewalk.

VDL part 13 or inspiration

2009-05-06T15:54:00.000-07:00

asymmetry in the front end
unity as a whole
predictability of hatchback design
activeness on side treatment
boldness in front air intake
consistency of lines

balance of design
symmetry
economy of parts to the whole
exaggeration of seat
boldness of design
accent in color usage
juxtaposition of "y" in bicycle design
distortion of main bicycle elements

Both of the preceding designs came from an upstart design firm based in Valencia, Spain. The name of the firm is MinarroGarcia and these images came from their website. The design of the car is predictable with its three box shape but the little details such as the treatment of the front end and how the side windows don't exactly line up makes it an interesting design. This kind of work is what I would like to do in the future. I would love to work for a Spanish design start up, doing small projects for outside clients. The second picture is a much more bold in its design language. It is a bicycle that does not look like any other bicycle I have seen. Innovative is a word that could describe this design. Smaller design firms have little in the way of barriers for unsought ideas, and this is why I would love to work for such a firm.

VDL part12 or SUViewing

2009-04-29T14:02:00.000-07:00

In automotive design, a horrible example of contrast is the photo of the yellow car at the top of this page. The pic is of a SEAT Altea Freetrack, a vehicle produced in Europe by a Spanish manufacturer which I would like to work for at some point in the future. The vehicle is essentially a station wagon that is being marketed as an SUV or crossover. The plastic looking molding around the wheel wells add a sense of off road ability without actually having the ability to go off road like a normal truck. The car is raised higher and has a higher driving position, imitating the feel of a fully grown truck. Why this is a bad example of the use of contrast in design is because due to marketing dictates a station wagon was built and plastic was added to the sides in order to simulate something that it actually can't do. There have been a whole rash of these types vehicles throughout the world. Another example had bull bars affixed to the front end of a compact hatchback and marketed it is as a "lifestyle vehicle."

Speaking of marketing, my favorite and most widely used example of good contrast is in SUV advertising like in the second picture from the top. Since the eighties, SUV's have been advertised traversing wide expanses of pristine wilderness in order capture a sense of adventure or freedom that can be felt from purchasing such a vehicle. Photographing or filming SUV's on virgin landscape is contrast and juxtaposition defined. Most of the SUV's I know of will never reach such untainted spaces and if they did they would do more harm than good, considering their environmental footprint. Only a handful of SUV's, which are actually trucks, have the actual ability to go off road. Check out the adverts for the new Tahoe Hybrid if you think I am off my rocker. Just because the thing can get a few more miles to the gallon and has a small electric motor does not mean that trees will start sprouting in its wake.

VDL part 11A or hyper mantis

2009-04-21T23:19:00.000-07:00

The images above came from autospies.com and are of the Bertone Mantide.
The Mantide is a concept that was completely designed using computer models and was first shown at the Shanghai Auto Show this week. The design is fierce in nature but it is also low slung creating a sense of very fast movement. The car looks like it is going fast without even moving. The blacked out rims add to this sense along with the air diffuser behind the front wheels with its dotted pattern. The way the car seems to lean forward also adds to the sense of quick movement one perceives.

VDL part 11B or cat tease

2009-04-21T23:05:00.000-07:00

The video above is aimed at teasing the consumer with a sneak peak at the next Jaguar XJ. The video aims to wet the appetites of prospective buyers with a look at the highly anticipated model. As far as issues the designer/director had with movement, he/she had to show enough of the vehicle to give you an idea without giving the entire shape away. Jaguar decided to do this by showing you the birds eye view of the car. A view most consumers are not familiar with to begin with. Most manufacturers like to show still photographs of new vehicles close up like the details of the front end or a 3/4's view of the front as a sneak peak. I like that Jag decided to give us this fly on the ceiling view instead. I also like the way the car is moving forwards on the screen any how the still lights reflect over the body to give the viewer an idea of shape and proportion. It seems more dynamic and exiting.

VDL part 10 or Z4 scribbles

2009-04-15T03:25:00.000-07:00

The images above came from the site motorcities.com and the link for the article is: http://www.motorcities.com/vehicle/09DDK165019289.html .

As with the last post, this one deals with BMW and their comissioning of artists to use their cars as a canvas. BMW gives an artist one of their new vehicles and the artist uses it as a blank canvas. In the case above, an artist by the name of Robin Rhode used the new Z4 as the paint brush as opposed to the canvas. He covered the tires of the car with bright colors and began to do 360 spins and other high speed maneuvers that would cause the paint to be applied to an extraordinarily large canvas. What all of this has to do with the subject at hand is the extreme use of relative height. If photographed from above, the canvas would resemble any normal piece of modern art except for the little car on it, which from high enough could look like a scale model. The entire scene messes with our normal depth cues and if it were not for other thing such as buildings we would not be able to tell the size of the canvas from an aerial shot. Another way this is relative to us visually, is the interesting use of color and line to form patterns on the "drawing" surface. Kind of makes you want to do some burnout on normal asphalt doesn't it?

VDL part 9 or the color of electric

2009-04-08T00:10:00.000-07:00

This image was found on carpictures.com, which can be linked here: http://www.motorcities.com/vehicle/09D5I494926585.html

As far as concept vehicles are concerned, most of them are painted according to the vehicles intended purpose. For example, cars that are friendly to the environment are usually a shade of the obvious green or a pleasant shade of blue. Sports or exotic cars are painted a darker hue of red or a really bright color, such as yellow or lime green, something that makes it look fast standing still or screams look at me. Above is a car by a company called Tesla, which is an electric car start-up based out of Silicon Valley. Their first car was a two-seat sports car originally designed by Lotus, and for most of the images I have seen of it, it has been bathed in a nice Ferrari red. For their first mid-size luxury sedan, Tesla decided to coat it in a very serene white as opposed to the usual green or blue. White, in car terms, translates to quiet and refined luxury. On the other hand, that is not what the lines of the vehicle say. The shape and lines on the car scream exotic and vaguely Fiskerish. Henrik Fisker is an automotive designer that worked at Ford, but became famous for penning the better part of the Aston Martin range and is now has his own electric car start-up company that has a similar vehicle with larger proportions and more evocative lines. Something fishy going on in electric car world, but then again this is only my own opinion.

Week 8 blog design exercise; BMW art car

2009-03-25T14:04:00.000-07:00

The images above come from www.carbodydesign.com and are of an art car commissioned by BMW to artist Frank Stella. I keep choosing vehicles for my blog exercises because my primary area of interest is transportation design.

Line:
Dots that are very close together are read as lines but on the second image, the lines are seen from a distance and resemble dots. These lines were used to take advantage of the technical aspects of the car BMW designed to compete on the world stage. The lines symbolize graph paper used in old school industrial design. The darker and thicker lines are the piece of machinery that is being drafted out on the graph paper. With the image on top, one can notice the intricate layout of the lines.

Tone:
From Dondis, "the edges that line is used to represent in a detailed mechanical plan in the environment, for the most part, appear as a juxtaposition of tone, the intensity of" dark to light of what is seen. This concept is clearly represented in the paint scheme that artist Frank Stella created for this BMW art car. The black lines of varying thicknesses against the white base of the car create the perfect example of tone. From a distance, like in the second image, the thinner lines mix with the white to create a sense of grey that only the eye perceives.

Texture:
Texture is the visual element that frequently stands in for the sense of touch. The lines of graph paper painted on the vehicle give the paint scheme a visual sense of texture that cannot be touched unlike the intricate pattern of the BBS wheels which can be felt by the human hand. The quality of the lines is not tactile, but optical, like crosshatching on a drawing. The vehicle also has very pronounced surfaces which look sharp to the eye, such as the rear wing that aids with aerodynamics, but to the human hand the surface would be smooth to the touch because of the materials used in building it.

visual smarts and not so smarts

2009-03-10T23:12:00.000-07:00

The black car is an actual smart car and also, in my opinion a very balanced package. The dimensions of the vehicle relative to the tires relative to its height make the car look quite visually appealing. The white car is Toyota's version of the smart car. For being a micro car, the car seems too tall and the wheels seem out of balance with the rest of the car. Toyota's version doesn't seem to be as clean of a package as the original, plus the headlights and front end are unproportional compared to the rest of the car. The red car is a Chinese copy of the smart car. It is made by one of the small start ups in China that is trying to cash in on giving every person in the country a car. It is a blatant copy of the original with Mercedes headlights, BMW kidney style grill and cheaper looking wheels. Since its a direct copy, it is balanced like the original, except for the front end and the rear.l

Applied art turned into fine art

2009-03-03T22:56:00.000-08:00

'59 Deville at Cadillac Ranch from Flickr

was a mode of transport, able to get someone from point a to point b in subtle luxury
designed to be beautiful on the road
its image evokes an entire decade, a seemingly innocent past
it symbolized America at its excess
the tail fin was to cars as a high carat diamond necklace is to a celebrity, useless but eye catching
before it came to reside in its current state, it was applied art at its most advanced
now it is fine art
it is sculpture and a canvas
those who visit it can ad their own piece of themselves in the form of sanctioned graffiti
at this angle it is a symbol of another decade, a time when we could get on the road and travel the roads of this country in order to find such sights
always a symbol of freedom, whether stationary or moving
proves that it can stay beautiful even when no longer used for its original purpose

visual puzzles for you and me

2009-02-25T00:43:00.000-08:00

For this exercise I decided to use my fiancée Heather as my puzzle solving guinea pig.
With the umbrellas, we tried to line up the outside color scheme first, and then if they matched we would line up the inner color scheme. After awhile though, the colors started to bother our eyes and we just gave up and wanted the satisfaction of cheating and knowing the answer. The primary colors used seems to mess with your rods and cones to the point that the triangles will start to rotate when they shouldn’t.
The cat one was relatively easy because it was just about counting similar shapes. We both found 16 off the bat but the last 4 required further investigation. The 2 in the eyes and the 2 that make up the tail are seen as separate and not as their wholes.

VDL part 1

2009-02-17T23:21:00.000-08:00

The image of the red remote came from migs.wordpress.com and the really long remote image came from www.textually.org. I really like the long remote because it is a simple design that could also be considered an object d'art. I think it measures like 8 ft. and each button is a separate number from 1 to 99. The buttons are of the same size but are given different colors to make them visually pleasing. The other remote is an example of design that I despise. The makers are trying to cram so many functions into one remote that it makes it look like a cell phone, and to tell you the truth, I could not tell the difference if you were to put it next to a modern mobile phone. The only visually pleasing quality is the color, but the buttons are all the same shape and color, even though they may have different functions. Well thats it for this post.

testing 1,2,3...

2009-02-04T23:08:00.001-08:00

Hello interweb