MPL magazine

SECOND TO NONE.[ ]

Fallen beind with keeping up to date with design prjects?! Don’t worry! Second to none is here to help you get up to date on all the goings on..

Mette Ramsgard ThomsenDan mountfords prints.‘Heard on the design vine’‘Keep in contact with..’[B&Q join the band wagonMalta comes to the rescue.

MAY 2011 edition. £

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Jade.McLaren..ring.enthusiast..scarf.collector..jewellery.obsessive..product.of.village.&.farm.dwelling..diet.coke.fiend..reluctant.Apple.lover..chicken.keeper..burgandy..keen.blog.watcher..even.keener.shopper..horder..

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Materiality in design, everything

LightingCreativityAll types of design

witt.Humour.

stairs

Furniture

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Textiles

Jewels

Rings

Fro

zen

Fou

ntai

n..A

mste

rdam

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Front Cover; -’Heard on the design vine’ 9-10 -Dan Mountford’s prints 11-12 -Mette R. Thomsen 15-16 -B&Q join the band wagon 37-38 -Malta comes to the rescue 43-48 - Keep in contact with.. 51-52

Other articles;-The basics 3-4-mind mapping 5-6-lets make lighting 13-14-Final Major project 19-22-Hacking; a way of life 23-28-Blog obsession 33-34

Contents;

Heard on the design vine...

Fancy a chat with some sheep?!

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After watching or following a couple of blogs of the past week, I thought I’d share a few bits or images that amused me a bit. I love the wit that some of these bloggers have when they choose which bits they’re going to share

I really need one of these!

Favourite form of procrastination = Blog watching!!!!

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Dan Mountford.11

I need the patients and talent to do this! 12

“Lets make...

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Lighting...”“lets make lighting’ is probably one of my all time favourite projects from doing my foundation degree at UCA Rochester in 08/09...Lighting, materials, making... what’s not to like? So, I was just experimenting really, playing around with different material combinations and structures that could be used to alter the affect of the lighting.. It was a lot of fun, I think I spent about four weeks with just experimenting different materials, as you can see in the photo’s here.

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“I’ve never really been one of those girls who could sew their own clothes” says Mette Ramsgard Thomsen. She is an experimental Danish architect, computer scientist and interactive textile designer. Her architectural works involve a host of things not always associated with archi-tecture; movement, dance, interaction, fabrics and interiors. -Mark Magazine.

By using antenna based sensor chips the fabric itself becomes a sensor, which feels the presence of its audience. The sensors inform a network of distributed micro-computers, that in turn control the fans, inflating and deflating internal bladders in the structure.

VIVISECTION is one of Thomsens’s experimental works, it is an exploration in spatial formation in architecture & design, it is the making of a live section, a sensing skin that acts and reacts on its inhabitation. The fabric, a weave of silk and steel, is conductive thereby allowing us to pass electronic signals through it.

I really like the combination of space and mate-rial in M.R.Thomsens work, it adds a new level to the space she works in.

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Mette Ramsgard Thomsen

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Where’s my pet ostridge?

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Final Major Project..

This is my final major project from my foundation degree year in 2008/2009. It was a project based around spatial arrangement and how people move within a given space. The wooden structure was designed as an obstacle to divide space and see how people move differently within the space.

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Hacking is a way of life....

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‘The Depth of Insanity’ is a project that developed from the idea of ‘hacking’ something, taking the ideas or products of someone else and making them your own by ‘hacking’ into them, pulling them apart and putting them back together differently, or taking something and changing its use.

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It started with taking the short film by Christopher Nolan, ‘Doodlebug’, and hacking into it, changing it to something of your own. The clip seems to be about a man in his apartment being taunted by a smaller version of himself, this looks like it could be a play on representing his subconscious. I took still images from this clip, the parts that I thought were the most important, and ‘hacking’ into them, changing what was already there.

I chose to play around with adding more smaller people, kind of borrower style, and switch it so that it was them chasing him and tying him down instead of him chasing the original small person. I made a few gif animations to go with this idea.

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From this we thought about taking an object and ‘hacking’ that instead of a film, changing anything we wanted about it for any reason. I chose a phone hand-set because it featured in the short film clip I’d hacked into in the previous part of the project. To decide what I wanted to hack about this object, we started doing research into something also rel-evant to the film hacking. Going with the theme of your subconscious ‘winding’ you up or taunting you as in the Doodle-bug clip, I started a little research into how people generally try to understand their subconscious, I looked into hyp-notherapy; something that supposedly allows a form of contact between one conscious and another. I also looked into pseudoscience and phrenology, the sci-ence of the brain and its different levels of consciousness. After this we put all the research and previous parts of the project together to start to hack into the object.

I decided to use the research I had done on people trying to get in contact with their subconscious to create a handset that allows people to easily and accessible be in contact with this part of their conscious. A form of intrapersonal communica-tion which could affect the person’s mood, desires, needs and wants. A domestic appliance that can maybe act as a form of therapist or mediator between two warring minds; the con-scious and the unconscious, allowing the ‘unspoken to reveal itself using the tools of pyschoanalysis’ and the newly developed handset. Using the research done on phrenology; differ-ent parts of the brain, I decided to use Greek symbols (as it was a Greek scientist who discovered phrenol-ogy), to represent on the handset, the different parts of the brain labelled on the phrenologist head.

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The idea of the hacked handset is to allow people to understand their subconscious mind, they dial the correct number according to what part of the brain they want to find out about, and it goes from there. In a state of hypnosis the person being hypnotised has to bought back to consciousness in a specific way, so with reference to another film written by the same man, Christopher Nolan, inception, I thought it would be appropriate to end the ‘therapy’ session of being on the new handset with a ‘kick’, which would be dropped the handset in a jug of water which is always sitting handy at the side of the handset, in its cradle.

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Dan Mountford.

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B&Q interior sensory strategy.

Wondering why your customers dont stick around forlong sometimes?Wonder why they choose the shop next door?Well, the shop next door has and interior sensory strategy which entices your customers and keeps them happy and loyal to that shop.Do you want customer loyalty and brand preference? you need an interior sensory strategy!....37

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‘The smell of loyalty’ is a project that developed from the previous one about hacking, we were given the B&Q as a subject to work with and it was the research I’d done in the last project that influenced the theme of this one a lot.

An article by Robin Wight says that in the recent years with recent hit-ting, it is important for companies to use their creativity in order to entice customers and keep them coming back. He says that the mapping and understanding of the brain was an important aspect of this idea, if we didn’t really understand how the brain works on different levels then we wouldn’t be able to target specific areas.

So its definitely time for B&Q to step up their game and compete with the companies already using these advertising techniques to the extreme.

this is where the interior sensory strategy comes in to achieve; customer loyalty brand preference stronger bonds emotional connection

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Refuge...An adaptable and flexible temporary residential sanctuary for those fleeing poiltical unrest and civil war, at present across North Africa.

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It is the flexiblitiy of the cladding system that inhabites the building alongside the residents that allows no.8 to become an inhabitable sanctuary for people needing shelter.

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DROOG...

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Keep your eye out for....Francesca Smith....

Budding jewellery designer Francesca Smith is a designer to keep your eye on, she’ll be big news in a couple of years.

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