Design Integration

I know I am overdue in posting our next assignment but as the semester draws to a close everything is just getting more and more intense. I think 75% of the work I will do this semester is falling into these last few weeks! But it is worth the wait, the assignment is one of my favorites so far.

Called Design Integration, the challenge is to design a piece of furniture that can be mass-produced and mass-marketed for a segment of the population different than our own. By December 13 we have to make a finished prototype - meaning it doesn't have to be the "exact" product that would be manufactured, but it needs to be as close as possible with the resources at our disposal.

After compiling a long list of various population segments, ranging from hermits to musicians, I settled on people with tattoos. I have always found tattoos (and the reasons people get them) intriguing and thought I might be able to derive some interesting forms and ideas with body art enthusiasts as my subject. In the end it turned out to be really difficult. I spent a good two weeks trying to find some unifying theme that would unite people as diverse as tribal cultures and suburban moms. I think I came close but didn't want to design a piece that represented what tattoos meant as a cultural practice. I then thought about just making something that would deal with the physical aspects of the skin - maybe something that played with the ideas of public and private, being "seen". But that plan seemed a little too obvious and I didn't want to make a chair (which seemed the logical formal choice). After many conversations with Graham, walking through the details of all of this, he gave me a copy of a case he had studied in business school about product development and meeting user needs. The article asked the question, "What job are you hiring this product to do?" I discovered there were a number of jobs that tattoos were hired to do so I decided I would build something that would be a substitution for the tattoo, something people would "hire" instead. I settled on the job of "I want to memorialize or remember this person/place/moment/thing forever."

The plan as it now stands is to build a set of small drawers that will act as memorials for whatever people feel a desire to remember or keep close to them. The drawers will be made of unglazed porcelain and will sit inside a metal skin lined in felt. The drawers can be ordered individually so people can buy any number they wish from 1 to 1,000,000. The stackable drawers will all be contained within a larger enclosed table that will hold approximately 50 of the boxes. You may be wondering, "Has Micaelan ever worked with porcelain before?" The answer is no and that may well prove to be the downfall of the project. It is an easily mass-produceable material but it will be difficult for me to create a prototype. I am hoping to pay a student in the ceramics department to complete the project for me but they are all quite busy as well.

The Welded Chair

I haven't really talked very much here about my welding class and that is mostly because it has been a blessedly low-key class. We haven't had anything due in quite a while but it has been expected that we are busy working on our final project - a steel chair. Unfortunately, it would be bad form to use the steel chair I just finished for studio so I have designed another steel sitting place. I can't say there is anything too special about the chair. I designed it with one goal in mind, easy. I wanted to make something that would use all of the things I have learned but not something that would take forever to execute well. I decided to have a pattern laser-cut into the steel which would create interest and allow me to make the form fairly simple.


This was nice because I was able to learn the laser-cutting procedure in a fairly low-pressure scenario. But I had an incredibly difficult time with the pattern. I really wish I had known some textile designers at the school by then because I really didn't know where to start. In the end, I think it works but it could have been more interesting. The chair is due this Thursday but we have until December 6th to put a finish on it. The teacher is really relaxed and is very aware that her class is low on the time-priority list for many of us.

Body Language Presentations

Here are some photos of some of the other first-year presentations.






Here are some photos of the second-year presentations. They have no set assignments but are working on projects that will come together to form a thesis body of work that they will exhibit in the spring.

Body Language, Version 2

In the last post I posted some pictures of the first full-scale model for the body language project. From what I learned making and using the model I moved on to to the next version. I knew I would have to present this version as my final product, but I was pretty sure that I would need another couple models to really get it right. For the second version I changed three key features. First, I considerably reduced the thickness of the steel to make it easier to maneuver. Second, I angled the seat and footrest support to provide a little more strength. Third, I had a small foot-hole cut into the steel. This was to draw attention to the fact that the feet were supposed to be propped up and it also created a nice small-scale detail.


This was the first piece of steel that I have taken beyond the welding and grinding steps. When the steel is joined together there is excess steel that looks a little like metal hot glue the builds up around the joint. This build-up needs to be ground down to redefine the joint. The grinding pads are rough and designed to remove large amounts of material at a time so invariably they leave heavy scratch marks on the steel. These scratch marks are removed by gradually sanding the area with finer and finer grit sandpaper. Once the piece is sanded it needs to be cleaned to remove any metal dust or oils before a finish is applied. I decided to apply a finish called Jax that looks like a clear, blueish liquid and puts a patina on the metal that is supposed to get darker and darker the more coats that are applied. It didn't really work out that way for me and I learned from others that the patina process can be quite unpredictable. My experience was that wherever the liquid touched the metal through splatter or drip a dark patina was created; wherever the liquid was applied by brush the finish was much lighter. I am sure you can imagine the effect. I then had to wipe all of the film from the Jax off of the steel and apply a coat of wax to keep the metal from rusting. Aside from the drips I was pretty pleased and felt like it was a good first-attempt at a steel piece.


My professors and classmates encouraged me to continue on and build version three. I have some ideas on what I would change and I think it would be fun to reject some of the formal factors that were important to me in the first two versions.