stumbling through summer

Well, it's July.

Apologies for being rather quiet on the blogging front this past month and a bit, I been flitting around like a butterfly doing a manner of different things. Okay, I'll admit I'm perhaps not like one of those butterflies you'd see on The National Geographic "Photo of the Day", more like a busy little moth.

Aside from the various things I've been doing, including helping a friend find a new house / actually move house, visiting home for a quick catch up with family, working and spring cleaning (yes, a little late I know), camping, attending the degree show (congratulations are in order for all DJCAD graduates of 2011, more specifically IED's now former 4th years, you guys did a fantastic job!), visiting Glasgow, working for the university during graduation week and going to see the midnight opening screening of the last of the Harry Potter series... I have also been putting together some things I plan on using come September. The daunting thought of third year has well and truly set in, so I figured that I might as well use my summer months to do something useful, rather than waste them in beer gardens in the sun. Don't worry though, some hours will be spent doing just that; if the sun ever shows itself.

I've bought some new books to pour over during the next 8 weeks before term starts again as well, which I'm looking forward to. I'll post short reviews of them if they are any good.

Further to my beavering online researching various things I've realised I am getting heavily addicted to stumble-upon. I'm not sure what a user of stumble-upon is called - a stumbler? A stumble-uponer? Either way it's proving to be very useful as I've honed my interests into course related topics and has so far produced interesting pages - along with throwing in a few funny images of animals for good measure.

As you can probably derive from this post - I'm keen for term to start again, and feel quite lost without the pressures of coursework, projects, deadlines and the general buzz from IED as a whole. I guess that's a good thing, nobody gets a near 4 month break from their career unless it's forced upon them in the form of redundancy (which I hope will never plague any of us!).

Alas, just as I sit here moaning about the lack of summer weather - the sun has decided to show it's face, but for how long is anybody's guess, so I'm off out into it.

...Although I think I'll take my wellies, just in case.

Yanko Design

While trawling through endless products online to include in my final outcome for my conceptual design for a Dundee branch of SEPA offices, I came across Yanko Design, an online magazine dedicated to various aspects of design, including industrial, product and interior design.

A few products fascinated me, as not only do they look seamless and elegant, but many of them also have an environmental aspect, something that is crucial during this project.

This interesting take on the extension lead is energy saving as well as innovative - something that I'm sure would come in handy in an office environment. The "Powerful Branches" designed by Eunsung Kwon also has the useful ability to adapt as required by simply adding in a modular "branch", meaning it can grow to suit any demand.

Another product I came across was "One Litre Limited" by Yonggu Do, Dohyung Kim & Sewon Oh. This is a faucet that is limited to the use of one litre of water, before requiring to be turned off, allowed to fill, and turned on again. It promotes user awareness of how much water they use, as opposed to the 6l used in just 30 seconds of a standard running tap.

It helps that it's a nice design too!

Lastly, the "Eco Shelf", by Seung-Hyun Yoon, Seol-hee Son & Jo Chal-youn is something that is minimal as well as useful. It's essentially your cooling system built into your surroundings, minimising the intrusion of large appliances such as air cons. Oddly, I have already designed a similar bar area for the cantina space, so this would be a perfect product to incorporate, as I have not considered the space for such an appliance yet.

If you would like to follow Yanko Design on Twitter, you can catch them at @yankodesign.