[A definition]

Subtraction: (verb)

1.to take away by or as if by deducting.

Merriam-Webster

[process book preview]

{SDG}

[how we see]

Every second, we encounter a hundred different little images. Shape, color, line, space, dimension, and value bombard us. We are in a culture where we can print anything anywhere, and we take great advantage of this, plastering our thoughts, and things we sell everywhere. 

Look anywhere and you'll see a symbol. Glance at a wall, you're bound to see a word. What is it about us humans and our need to produce shape and text? What attracts us to it? 

Lets take a look at comics; a series of pictures, ranging from fairly realistic drawings to highly abstracted caricatures that tell a story in sequence, mostly mixed with words. Why are we drawn to these? In Understanding Comics, our abstracted tour guide explains that as we shift the human form to realistic to abstract, it allows us to see ourselves in it. Realism allows us to look at the beauty of the outside. Abstracted form allows us to look inside, and "see" something inside of us. Abstraction reflects, and sometimes in reflects things we didn't see before. 

[Just a thought]

I've been thinking about objects and our uses of them. I've also been studying the art of cinematography (for those not in the film world, that's the art of setting up three-dimensional space into a two-dimensional plane for film). One idea echoed by cinematographers is that if a cinematographer is doing his job right, you won't know he did his job. Rather you'll be so engrossed by the storytelling that you wont realize the technical.

I think design of objects should be similar. We don't make objects to enjoy them; rather, good design ignores itself and helps us enjoy life instead. 

Thats what I think anyway. 

{SDG}

[prototypes]

Hey look- Prototypes!

Here's the first of the prototypes. Single-prong with the bendable light.

The second is a much smaller duo pronged fixed light.

[thoughts on The Writer's Toolbox}

So true to form as we're talking about thinking and ways to write down stuff, I'm going to write this article from the top of my brain using that one method Jack K used, I can't sseem to remember the exact name right now (that's one of my problems, I don't ever remember terms) Freewrighting! That's what it is! So this post will be freewritten, so I appologize for it's obvious lack of coherance. Anyways, writing is an essental part of the designers life. Why? Cause not everyone thinks visuallly and not everyone can understand our silly little thmbnail drawings we do. Ya know, they can be darn impossible to understand at times. My old Design Prof used to say "explain as much as possible with words so the client knows what he's getting" or something like that. Anyways using words helps us to plan things out and make them clear, but even then it's hard for us. I mean, we're visual people even if we like writing (like I do). So we have to do stuff to get our brains stimulated, like mindmaps. Mindmaps are what I find most helpful when I'm doing design stuff cause they allow me to just explore ideas without hesitations, to get down every last thought about an object as fast as I can. Then I can go back and see different threads and where they lead and connect. Then there's that other one that's like mind mapping, but for more organized thinkers (you know, people who's brains work like a classical piece of music-my brain works like Jazz on drugs) anyways, you basically start with your topic and then use phrases like "works with" or "reacts to" to map out how your topic reacts to certain actions.
Freewriting is my personal favorite for story telling, cause you just write. You let every little thought flow from your brain to your fingers without any worries of misspelling s and crap like that. I mean i really don't give a owls hoot about spelling and grammar and stuff. we don't talk in propper spelling and grammar, so why should we write like it? I guess that's why I write scripts. Not important, anyways, this method allows you to quickly list down your most raw thoughts about a topic. This is often best followed by taking a pen and circling or underlining cool things your wrote.
Then you can do things like lists, or Brain expressing (I think that's what it's called-for the introverts) You have people write down the problem, and come up with a sort of chart for them to write stuff on so they don't have to talk.
The most important final step is peer review, and it's important cause you get an outside source telling you what is great and what sucks about your ideas and stuff, so it's pretty important. There are many different ways of doing this, but the key thing is to stay positive and be kind. Remember, these are people too, and to designers, ideas are like their children, and you don't want some idiot raggin on your kid.

Just saying.

[mind map]

Our mind map for the tape measurer. I was really amazed how many diseases we came up with without even toutching the tape. 

{SDG}