DESIGN FACTORY 2011/12
STUDENT BRIEF
MAKING THE EVERY DAY EXTRAORDINARY
We live in a world which has been shaped by design and designers. Almost every aspect of our lives is touched by design. Does the work of the designer define the way we live or does the way we live define the work of the designer? This year Design Factory asks, how can designers challenge and innovate the archetypes, the unseen and the everyday – designs that have become second nature? How can we re-think that which we take for granted and make the everyday extraordinary?
Design Factory takes its inspiration from the multidisciplinary nominations and exhibits in the exhibition Brit Insurance Designs of the Year. This year, we have worked with designer Samuel Wilkinson and product design company Hulger who won Brit Insurance Designs of the Year 2011 with their stunning redesign of the low energy light bulb the Plumen 001 to produce the brief. Low-energy light bulbs have never been regarded as a stylish product, the Plumen addresses this by creating an aesthetic bulb which uses 80% less energy and lasts eight times longer than an incandescent bulb.
‘The Plumen light bulb is a good example of the ordinary thing done extraordinarily well, bringing a small measure of delight to an everyday product.’
-Stephen Bayley, 2011
This year’s brief encourages students to work across disciplines and interrogate the designs and products we interact with in day to day life. Through design thinking, creative play, experimentation and problem solving, we are inviting students to question the unquestioned and propose innovative and critical redesigns of the everyday.
Brief Part 1: Design Museum research
Visit the Design Museum’s This is Design exhibition which proposes narratives about design in mass production and how design has shaped the modern world. Select 3 examples from the exhibition, identify and analyse the essence of these objects. Demonstrate your research findings through the production of:
Visual data – drawings and photographs
Written data – this should include critical reflection for example; How well have they succeeded in performing their function? What makes them important pieces of design? Have they been designed in response to human behaviour or changed human behaviour in their inception?
(Outcome: 1 board exhibition response)
Brief Part 2: Design task
Design defines our everyday lives yet often the most used everyday objects or designs go by unchallenged. Identify an everyday and unnoticed product/design that you wish to challenge and innovate, adding to the quality of everyday life.
Through your own creative design practice explore and experiment with this design in an open and questioning way. The brief is about stepping back and rethinking, adopting an approach of creative enquiry and play.
(Outcome: 2 boards research, ideas generation, development and creative enquiry, 1 board final visual outcome accompanied by a written statement of 500 words on how your design makes the everyday extraordinary.)
Submission:
Tutors will be asked to nominate an allocated proportion of student work for submission to the Design Factory judges. All of these students will receive written feedback from the specialist panel of leading designers and design education experts.
Online submission from nominated students by 12 o’clock midday, Friday 9 March 2012:
4 boards in PDF & 500 words written proposal to designfactory@designmuseum.org
Following the judging, 40 students will be invited to the Design Factory one day Symposium in May 2012. Participants in the Symposium will work to a final project brief inspired by the Designs of the Year exhibition in 2012.
