gaia residence
DESCRIPTION
A documentation of my final project for a surface design class at the Rhode Island School of Design.TRANSCRIPT
gaiaA DOCUMENTATION
OF THE PROCESS
Ole Tillmann
Artistic License/ Mary Jane Begin
RESIDENCE
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Contents
II. Research and Symbols
• RISD Picture Collection• Books
•Google Images
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III. Surface Design
• Color Pallettes/Textures• Patterns
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IV. Applications and Design
• Brand Identity• Dinnerware
• Bedroom• Bathroom• Packaging
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V. Final Products
• Products• Packaging
• Presentation
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I. Ideas
• Product Sketches• Gaia Residence
• Post Research Sketches
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Ideas
Intro-duction
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Introduction
This book contains a collection of imagery and explanations, documenting the creative process behind a surface design-oriented series of items. This first part deals with the initial phase of coming up with ideas of any kind really. The concept of visualizing a specific household to design a collection for helped to get me on the right track and focus my vision.
In response to current events I felt as though the environment lent itself to my designs. The plan was to combine my man-made items and nature, physically and metaphorically.To get a better idea of the general visual language I started planning the house but due to the class’ time restriction and specific regulations I had to leave them at a fairly raw stage and come up with product sketches.
I ended up chosing a very simple pallette of colors and mate-rials, combined with abstracted ancient symbols from a variety of different cultures.
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Ideas
Product Sketches
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Ideas
Product Sketches
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Ideas
Gaia Res-idence
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Ideas
Gaia Res-idence
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Ideas
Gaia Res-idence
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Ideas
Post Re-search
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Ideas
Post Re-search
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Research and Symbols
PhaseTwo
Phase 2
It was important to me to gather the right kind of information and not let myself be distracted by pure functionality (in terms of the environmental awareness) or other people’s renditions of ‘nature’-inspired design.
Outside and in the RISD Picture collection I tried to take in as much raw visual material as possible, thinking about its reduc-tion to a factor in my future work such as color for example.
Although the symbols that I found in books and online could technically be considered “other people’s rendition of nature” I was more interested in them because they represent a sim-plistic, way of communicating all of “Earth” or “Land” in a few lines. Its different from modern symbology and design because they havent suffered under the same amount of preconceived forms of language.
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Research and Symbols
PictureCollection
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Research and Symbols
Books
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Research and Symbols
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Surface Design
PhaseThree
Phase 3
When it came down to making specific choices for a style guide to the collection I tried to create a balance between marketability to a specific clientele, the ecological sustainabil-ity and previous aesthetic choices.
The textures and materials reflect an unaltered, raw simplic-ity symbolizing their origin, The colors are supposed to match this idea and were chosen to match interdisciplinary. This means that they can be randomly applied a variety of surfaces and are combinable amongst each other and within the house.
Ideally, seeing your toothbrush next to your bedroom door in a water glass from the kitchen should therefor be visually pleasing and not arbitrary.
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Surface Design
Color+Texture
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Surface Design
Pat-terns
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Surface Design
Pat-terns
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Surface Design
Pat-terns
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Surface Design
Pat-terns
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Applications and Design
PhaseFour
Phase 4
As the project was progressing the ‘style guide’ choices started to show their purpose. Apart from designing the actual objects to match my idea of an ideal ‘environment’ for the surface design, the process became more and more about labor while the amount of choice making declined.
The brand identity again was supposed to compress the given ideas into a symbol and a name. ‘Gaia’ was taken from mythol-ogy and refers to mother nature. The logo represents the starting point of nature (the seed) and its main nurturer (the sun.) Furthermore, I wanted them and the packaging to reflect the combination of the symbol/environment idea and market-able/modern design.
The final ‘theoretical’ outcome was a variety of kitchen items and a few bath- and bedroom articles.
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Applications and Design
BrandID
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Applications and Design
Dinner-ware
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Applications and Design
Dinner-ware
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Applications and Design
Dinner-ware
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Applications and Design
Dinner-ware
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Applications and Design
Bed-room
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Applications and Design
Bed+Bath
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Applications and Design
Bath-room
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Applications and Design
Pack-aging
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Applications and Design
Pack-aging
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Final Products
Con-clusion
Conclusion
In the end I was able to make a few things real within the given time frame for the project.
I made a table cloth, a plate and wine glasses with packaging for the latter two. While I modeled the designs for the glasses directly after my designs, I altered the packaging to make it more suitable for the collection and less visually confusing.
The last part was designing and realizing an adequate space to present the items to the class in(with a convention-type context in mind.)
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Final Products
Pro-ducts
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Final Products
Packa-ging
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Final Products
Packa-ging
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Final Products
Packa-ging
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Final Products
Presen-tation
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© by Ole Tillmann
2010
Thank you to Mary Jane Begin, the Artis-tic License class, Eric Zhou and Matthew Leifheit for helping me during this entire process!
gaiaRESIDENCE