11/17 - ZIBA Design Workshop

This workshop was a very interesting experience. Before arrive at ZIBA's office we had the taks to pay attention at the path that we were using. The information that we had gather would be used in the workshop later.

When we arrived at the office Mr.Hirata, ziba's office president, received us and gave a presentation about the company. The company has its base in Portland, Oregon and its in the marke for over 20 years. It has a impressive history of success and growth.

After the presentation of the company we've started the workshop. Our task was to to develop a map to show how to arrive at ZIBA's office from the train station. We should consider our client's needs. Our client would be the office's president himself, and an important consideration was the fact that he used glasses, so the elements inside the map would have to be easy to see. The results were very interesting. I was very worried to represent all the important elements, but didn't realize the most basic aspects, how to represent the elements.

In the last part of our visit, Mr. Hirata showed some design processes and gave important adivices regarding the creation process. It was a very rich and interesting experience.

11/11 - Edward Tufte and Micro/Macro workshop

Edward Tufte works with information design, interface design and graphic design. He's well known by writing analytical design books, and he had written 7 books which gave him more than 40 awards for content and design. He is a professor Emeritus at Yale University and he teaches courses in statical evidence, information design and interface design.

In the class we saw his book "Envisioning Information Book" and we concentrate our study into micro/macro readings. In this work Tafte studies the relation between micro and macro readings and how to find a good connection between both of them.

At the end of the class we made a workshop based in Macro/Micro reference. We should create something graphically that could show at the same time the Macro and Micro universe.

11/04 - Masahito Sato and Rule workshop

In this class, we studied about the Japanese designer Masahito Sato. He was one of the creators of the tv program "Pythagora Switch", an interesting and funny educational program made for children. It's basically a puppet show, but with a strong educational purpose, with some advanced subjects for children. One particularity of this designer it's that he was a marketing specialist that studied other designers by himself, and created his own and unique method.

Then at the end of the class, the professor gave us a "rule workshop". First we had to write down 20 things that we liked and them resume this 20 things in 3 key-words. Those key-words represented important aspects of our identity as a designer and could be used to create our visual identity. A very important step to the creation of our unique method and identity!

10/28 - Vision proposal design methodology

I wasn't present in this class due to a flu.

10/14-10/21 - Achille Castiglioni and workshop

I'm summarizing the classes from 14th and 21th october in one post, because in both of them the subject was the industrial designer Achille Castiglioni.

In the beginning of the first class, each of the students made a short presentation about their works and then the professor talked about Castiglioni and some of his works. Achille Castiglioni was a very famous Italian Industrial designer. A lot of his inspirations came from everyday things and he often made use of ordinary materials. For him it was very important to use the minimum amount of materials to obtain forms with maximum effect. Castiglioni had a very playful person, always loved to "play" with the objects and this could be seen in his works, his projects should have a friendly relationship with the user. In the class we saw pictures of his works and some products like the "sleek spoon", a very interesting spoon that was conceived to Kraft mayonnaise jars. This spoon has a very interesting design and the purpose was to facilitate and improve the removal of the mayonnaise from the jar, since the curvatures of the spoon matched the curvatures of the jar.

                                                              Castiglioni's sleek spoon

Other very interesting project and perhaps the most iconic project of Castiglioni was the "Sella stool", that is basically a phone stool. Its a bike's saddle adapted into a spherical iron base, that gives a dynamic balance while seated.  This object was made in order to sit while in one's feet, because in the fifties the houses used to have wall phones, so the person was forced to stand while using the phone. And then the professor talked about the design aproaches of Castigliani:

- Redesign: it's the reformulation of an existing design, in order to improve it.

- Ready made design: It's the creation of a new product with parts from other products.

- Metaphor: it's when the design has the reference of another product, it's a way to play with the form.

At the end of this class, professor Yamazaki started a workshop session with "ready made design" and the results were very interesting!

10/07 - Paul Rand

In this second class, the professor Yamazaki told us about Paul Rand, a famous American graphic designer, best known for his corporate logo designs. He made logos for several companies, but one of his strongest works was the IBM logo.

In the 50's, Rand started to change IBM's visual identity. He started with a smooth change, until he changed to the striped logo in 1972, first with a version of 13 stripes and then the version with 8 thicker lines that was adopted by IBM and today is still used. He brought the beauty of simplicity into the design's world. Paul Rand, from 1970's until the early 1980's contributed for IBM's packaging and marketing materials, including the famous "Eye - Bee - M" poster.

This class was very interesting and showed me the importance of the brand's identity. Other important point that I've already had in mind, was the importance of simplicity. Paul Rand's works were very simple, very functional, but very beautiful. The most diffcult ideas aren't the most complex, but the simplest ones!

09/30 - Kevin Clark, User experience innovation

In this first class, professor Yamazaki told us about the purpose of the course "information design" and the schedule.

The purpose of the course is very interesting and a very important subject, it's the search for a "original design approach". Lately the originality it's a very rare subject. The designers tend to lose their personality and absorbs the identity of the company they start to work. So in this course we will try to create our own identity as designers.

After this first class, we attended to a very interesting presentation that was given by Kevin Clark, the president and founder of Content Evolution LCC Worldwide.

In this presentation Mr. Clark told us about the important elements of a successful brand. He used as example, successful cases. To create a good and strong brand that can survive for a long time, we need to be aware of the relevance of the brand, "why do we need this brand? ", then we need to pay attention to the context, the economical and cultural changes that the brand needs to follow in order to endure. And other important aspect is the mutual benefit, so when all the people involved (clients, manufacturers, stakeholders, etc.) can visualize their benefits, good relationships will be maintained and even in times of crisis the brand will find its way to endure.