Creating Objects that tell stories...

Product design - Something.. that has always always excited me. Maybe this field is more n more synonymous to APPLE for most of us today.

This video here is from TED TALKS - one amazing place where zillions of groundbreaking ideas are shared. Most of the talks here are power houses of inspiration. This talk today reminded me of CEED and all the informative browsing I did a zamana back..!! (These days its constrained merely to watching random videos on Youtube or some movie every other day.)



Isn't he charming :D...!! I loved the way he concluded saying values can change the products we design.. change the companies we work for and together we can change the world into a better place. Think of designing products that are more environment friendly, ergonomic, recyclable, that can be put to multiple uses, products with a cause , products that make a difference and then "the world as a better place" isn't far off at all...

Every Product's design and its aesthetics has its own story to tell. This field has such loads of creativity involved that it awes me all the time. The one time I put in a serious thought and effort to be there doing what I wanted to, was when I prepared for CEED ...Yeah ..!! very few even know of it ...Its (Common Entrance Examination for Design). I couldn't get through...too many highly creative souls sat for it back then and one thing led to another and here I am.. doing a Masters in Industrial Engineering right now.(sob)...!!! But talk of an exam that I thoroughly enjoyed preparing for and got a lot outta doing so...this would be it...!!

These are some links that were so much fun :D

• Graphics courseware
  

• Design Surfer

• Design of Signage Systems

• Don Norman's Design site

• Product Design & Joint Program in Design - Stanford

• Centre for Sustainable Design

• Design Engine

• A Lifetime of Color

• Causes of Color

• Color Theory

• Industrial Designers Society

• Lighting Design
  

• On Furniture Design

• Color Matters

• Tribu Design
  

• Product Design & Development MIT Courseware

• Art Source

• Design Addict

• BadDesigns.com
  

Ramblin On...

Well, FINALLY..Finally, I'm onto writing a blog :D ...never thought I'll find the patience for doing this ..!!
Joblessness, solitude and lunacy, definitely drive people to doing strange things they never thought they would.

Now that I've created one...I'd like to clarify to the very few souls I know on the face of this planet and even fewer ones reading this piece of blah, that the title of this Blog is nowhere racist... It just suggests the degree of unstructured randomness, absurdity, triviality and insanity of the posts to come. The title would seem gibberish to any sane person... I agree..!! Heres some trivia to it.

A red herring is a narrative element intended to distract the reader from a more important event in the plot, usually a twist ending.

It originates from the tradition where young hunting dogs in Britain were trained to follow a scent with the use of a red herring(salted and smoked). This pungent fish would be dragged across a trail until the puppy learned to follow the scent. Later, when the dog was being trained to follow the faint odor of a fox or a badger, the trainer would drag a red herring (which had a much stronger odor) across the animal's trail at right angles. The dog would eventually learn to follow the original scent rather than the stronger scent.

A white elephant is a valuable possession whose cost of upkeep exceeds its supposed usefulness, and is therefore treated like a liability.

It originates from the sacred white elephants kept by traditional Southeast Asian monarchs. To possess a white elephant, was regarded as a sign that the monarch was ruling with justice and the kingdom was blessed with peace and prosperity. The tradition derives from tales in the scriptures which associate a white elephant with the birth of the Buddha, as his mother was known to have dreamed of a white elephant presenting her with a lotus flower, a symbol of wisdom and purity, on the eve of giving birth. Because the animals were considered sacred and laws protected them from labor, receiving a "gift" of a white elephant from a monarch was both a blessing and a curse - a blessing because of the animal’s sacred nature and a curse because the animal could not be put to practical use.

A black swan is a term indicating a hard-to-predict, large-impact and rare event beyond the realm of normal expectations. Many scientific discoveries are regarded black swans - undirected and unpredicted by nature.

It originates from the ancient Western conception that 'All swans are white'. In that context, a black swan was a metaphor for something that could not exist. The 17th Century discovery of black swans in Australia metamorphosed the term to connote that the perceived impossibility actually came to pass.

So much for those who care about history..!!

This name was to be... coz I had chanced upon reading a book "Red herrings and White Elephants" by Albert Jack... (once upon a time when I was officially at work). It was a random compilation of various phrases of the English language and their historical origins, a pleasurable read and the name just struck me when I wanted to drop the idea of blogging, coz it seemed, I couldn't even come up with a title that interested me.

Colors and Nature have always fascinated me... and this just seemed more apt than any other phrase that struck my cerebrum. On a cognitive note, herrings I associate with water, elephants to land and swans to flight and air, encompassing elements of nature. My degree too, now seems to me, a white elephant... expensive but worthless and impractical of sorts. I'll leave all the angst to feature in the future posts though.

Posts to come will contain snapshots of vagueness that my mind conjures up regularly, its fancies, impulsive bursts of creativity (well, thats according to me), dreams, random thoughts, people and incidents that inspire now and then, wishlists, regrets ....so on and so forth ... !!!

In short.....Some place I am going to vent it all out ..!!