Some things need not be that clear...

Photo by: id photography

Sometimes things need not be crystal clear for clarity of purpose to be achieved. It is good for things to be made clearer later on...but at times, having an idea of what is the intended picture should suffice. especially so when things are still a little murky.

Communicating Design

I had the pleasure to revisit some of my old lessons from last year on the topic of photography, and have decided to add a tinge of spice and variety in my lessons this  year. Honestly I did that with a little apprehension, knowing how sometimes even with the best of plans, things might not turn out as what you would have wanted or imagined. But to my surprise, my young charges definitely superseded my expectations, and some of them even went beyond what I was asking for.

Basically the premise of my lesson was to see how photography, as a skill that combines art and technical knowhow, can be used more effectively, beyond just the mere capturing of a single, or a set of photos. I was looking at how photos can be used to communicate! (Enduring Understanding). My advice to these noobs in photography is the revelation that taking good photos is not necessarily the exclusive domain of professionals with big-sized cameras or DSLR's. What I was more interested in getting them to understand were the concepts of good photography, and then applying them. Moving on from there, my challenge for them was to get them to create a storyboard of photos, that tells a story of their own choosing, using a toy, or a set of toys.

Well, barring the fact that some of these toy stories are very boyish in nature, I do find their stories to be well-thought of, and in fact, very well executed. What surprised me even more was the amount of effort that these students have put in into their works. And mind you, the lessons were only about 9 hours long (spread across 3 weeks). I do like to showcase here some of their works here. The ones shown below were done by Jian En and Wei Qin from class of S1-07 (2011):

Storyboard 1 of 2

Storyboard 2 of 2

More of their works can be seen from their Facebook pages. For more information, do add or gmail me at irfandarian. I'd be more than happy to show them to you.

Designing for the constrained spaces of an airplane

It is interesting that in my plane trips, I tend to look at how the the overall designs of the spaces centring around the customers' experiences tend to be rather ingenius. Ingenius in the sort of way that they are still functional, but yet not necessarily lacking in its availability to pander to (almost) most of the usual needs that a passenger would want on a flight...and maybe more! Space constraits aside, I am always amused at firstly, the design of the aisle and the seats, of how a high degree of optimisation must have gone through the minds of the seat designers when they were conceptualising its designs. It certainly brought me back to the good old days during my post-graduate studies, when optimisation studies and operations research were 2 of my specialisation areas.

And who can forget the swiss-army-like concept in the toilets. The kind that perhaps would put some of our pulic toilets to shame. Barring the squeezy nature, what surprises me from an ergonomical and anthropometrical points of view is how everything seems to be within reach and arranged in a certain orderly yet logical way. However i would love it even more if they could just make the toilet roll a little more to the front of the seats, rather than at the back.

And who can forget meal-times, the sight of the stewardesses sashaying down the aisle to hand out the airline's version of MRE's (meals ready-to-eat) is usually a welcoming one to most (hungry) passengers, unless of course you were beginning to think that they must have been cooked by your evil mother-in-law from your previous live/marriage! And what surprises me about these meals was also about how some of the small design details that must have taken place back in the design studios. Two examples that I have managed to capture in my recent trips are as shown below.

The first picture shows how a portion of a cornflake meal is also packaged with enough milk at its top. Hence instead of having the flakes and milk as separate entities, they are combined in a single packaging.

The second one is a little easier to see, but what surprises me is the non-necessity of such design, but then it might just be my opinion. They perhaps dipped one end of the 2-pointed toothpick into a green dye, to allow its users to differentiate the different ends. Perhaps its a small gesture of design thinking, but it certainly was enough to make me wonder whether I might have missed out on anything else!

And perhaps I have....!

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Location:Singapore

Reflections from Saigon...

I was privileged to be part of the team that went to Saigon (Ho Chin Minh City), Vietnam, for a recce trip a few days ago. Oh my, what a culture-shock it was for me. But in between the 2 taxi-service breakdowns that I had at the beginning and end of the trip, being accosted by ladies of the night, trying out new food that seems unmentionable at first, but was so seemingly wonderful when it touches my tastebuds...and amidst all the organised chaos of Saigon's road traffic, one thing that stood out in all that noise, was the warmth of the people there. The kind of warmth that was so honest, simple, yet touched my raw nerves on more than one occasion. Even in the humblest of huts, even in the most busies of traffic, and even in the 'busyness' of sacrificing their own personal time, the Vietnameses' warmth and sincerity in helping my partner and I, in trying to negotiate and make sense of things, was indeed a beacon of light in all that is chaotic. And to the 2 guides who untiringly help my partner and I chart a credible program outline for my students, this picture is a tribute to your beauty, on both the inside and the outside! Thanks once again...and hope to see you in a few months time!

Thao (Left) and Tram (Right).
Photo by Irfan Darian (2011)

Signing off...the Cynical Idealist