Forced words

Last lesson was about forced connection again and this time, playing of words.

We were told to go to this website to play with words. We were in groups of 3, Haeseul/Ferlyn and I. I started forming weird sentences with the words and both of them joined in after that to complete the sentence. We were allowed to form sentences that don't fully make sense. I guess it requires creativity.

After a whole long minutes we finally completed our "story" which was rather nonsensical and awkward. We had to present to the class after completing and as you can see we had lots of trash words mainly because we kept clicking on "more words". This activity definitely made us wreck our brains because we had a hard time joining nonsensical words together because we're all used to grammatically correct sentences that makes perfect sense. 

Analogical Thinking............

For this lesson, we were taught about analogical thinking. We were asked to walk around the school during lessons to look out for things that look like something. And so, here are 10 pictures i found while walking around with my classmates.

Is it me or does this looks like a penguin?

Well this is one of the school's locker actually.

Next this was taken in the lift. The eyes are the lights and overall i think it resembles a robot...maybe? 

This is an artwork found in the staircase. It was actually supposed to be a long pole artwork but i decided to crop it and it kinda look like an Owl.

\

Next we went outdoors and i found this part of the building. Don't this reminds you of a Whale? Hahaha the greyish black part of the wall would be the bottom mouth and the two lights are the eyes. 

We past by the graffiti wall area and we found one part of the artwork that resembles a sad face. The original artwork wasn't supposed to be an sad face. It was actually a king kong's nose. But we took a close up picture and so, a sad face appears.

Next, this is part of a chair that resembles a frog/tadpole. The hexagons at the top are the eyes and the squarish hole at the bottom is the mouth. Funny looking isn't it?

This is one of the picture that I'm very satisfied with. It really resembles a bird. Woodpecker/parrot maybe? 

Hmmm this is not really accurate but it looks like a rabbit head to me hahaha

the dust around it makes it looks like fur too. This was found in the vending machine though.

This totally looks like a Crow!!!!! It's a fire extinguisher. The beak would be the yellow part. The eyes would be the screw and the head would be the black handle part.

This is just a random locker outside the classroom. It resembles a cartoon face. Maybe a frog. With the Locks as the eyes. and the yellow part the mouth.

I gave up after looking for 9 pictures because it was kinda hard to find stuff that looks like "something". But guess what, the 10th picture was found when we opened our iPads, looked at the cover and realised that it actually resembles a face. Two holes as eyes and 3 lines as mouth. Haha. 

What i've learnt was unexpectedly great that day, which is to think and imagine more creatively because to be honest those pictures aren't realistic looking. Mostly just resembles a cartoonish face/animal. And also as designers I've learnt that we may not always get ideas from the net or other passage. More of the inspirations come from real life examples and are a great source of help if you look around yourselves!

Force connection?

For this lesson we were tasked to draw using an adjective or an object to depict the "forced connection". I chose clock as it is something that i look at everyday. We had to think of how to show the connections and so it turned out like that in the picture above....
Mine was definitely NOT the best because I was rushing to complete it as the time given was quite less (for me). However I was told from my lecturer that what i drew was focusing more on the design. After evaluating our classmates works i thought that it's okay because well, at least i got two recognition (red marks) from my classmates on my 'hardworking' and 'creative' clocks. Better than none I guess?

Through this lesson & sharing activity I've learnt a lot about forced connection and hopefully i can apply all these in future.

Inspirations from nature

 Barcelona’s most renowned designer: Antoni Gaudi had nature as a design concept.

Gaudi wasn’t the first to use nature as inspiration, but was probably one of the most well-known designer to do so. His work was considered to be revolutionary for the time and present day. One of his most famous phrases was “originality is returning to the origin.” For him, this origin was nature. Inspiration from nature continues to be seen in the designs of today. The picture above is one of his design, the Nest Chair inspired from nature, a nest that is made from birds.

Cellular Chair by Mathias Bengtsson

Composed of light-weight epoxy, this ‘cellular chair’ was designed by a  danish-born, london-based designer Mathias Bengtsson.
He not only adopts the appearance of an organic form. But actually designed it based on the growth principles of human bones which is associated and inspired by something natural, otherwise known as nature.

The exterior shape of the chair was computer program designed to simulate the regeneration of bone tissue. Given the exterior form as its input,
the program creates the cellular configuration that bone tissue might adopt to create a strong, stable construction and hence forming this Cellular Chair product.

Credit pictures to:
http://www.pleatfarm.com/2010/03/21/nest-chair-nina-bruun/
http://catablogcatablogcatablog.blogspot.sg/2011/12/matthias-bengtsson-cellular-chair-2011.html

Thinking out of the box

In this particular lesson, we had to pair up to solve some questions. I paired up with Haeseul (www.va1m-hae-seul.blogspot.com) this time! The questions given were rather easy but the ideas and answers we had in mind were quite complicated in a sense. We wrecked our brains and finally got the answers. My ideas and answer turned out to be more of the "traditional" way of solving. My partner had more of the crazy ideas in my opinion. Despite having different opinions we decided to go with the idea we both agreed on. But guess what, when the lecturer told us the answers, it was surprisingly simple and somewhat nonsensical. Then i realised that we had to think out of the box and not always use the same way and method to solve a problem. I really enjoy the lesson that day. I realised that besides learning how to brainstorm and think of different ideas, we learnt how to co-operate with each other and also, sharing of ideas. It was by far one of the best creative thinking lesson! Looking forward to more lessons like this in future.

Designers who broke the rules

This time round i am going to talk about designers who are non related to fashion, a few artists who broke the rules.

Steve Jobs was known for breaking the rules and as we all know that Apple doesn’t just make a product. They completely change people’s perception of what’s stylish, what’s the future and what’s going to be ‘trendy’ in the months and years to come., white earphones was just one of many. Steve Jobs is an incredible innovator and was known for breaking the rules in work. He was an incredible innovator who changed the way we saw and used technology like no other. While others were still stuck with black or silver earpieces, the CEO of Apple designed the iconic white earpieces. White plastic earpieces which looks tacky to him at first but he still made these white earpieces when releasing the iPhone. To his content it appeared stylish and trendy whilst listening to music.

In 1907 its painter, Pablo Picasso, broke all of the rules that the "artistically correct" learned at the art academies: he disposed of three-dimensional perspective, abandoned harmonious proportion, used distortion, and borrowed from the art of primitive cultures. In fact, the painting was such a revolutionary statement that when the painting was first viewed by some French critics, the painter Derain even suggested to Picasso that he would one day commit suicide for the shame that he had brought on the art establishment.

In rendering the new reality, Picasso also abandons harmonious bodily proportions. This, of course, was done on purpose since Picasso had been trained at art school how to render the human figure through mathematical proportions.

Picasso claimed to have broken the rules way earlier than another artist who broke the rules, Francis Bacon.

He is a artist who paints faces that are ferocious, distorted, hideous. The bodies tends to slouch insolently. The rooms are almost empty, the walls blank. Critics howled that the paintings were sloppy, stupid, and meaningless – the same complaints we often hear today. Now, it's a beloved style. Instead of giving us smooth, realistic bodies, Bacon pulled viewers into cosmic bleakness. 

Reflection on Mindmaps

A mind map is a diagram used to visually organise information. A mind map is often created around a single concept, drawn as an image in the center of a blank landscape page, to which associated representations of ideas such as images, words and parts of words are added. Major ideas are connected directly to the central concept, and other ideas branch out from those.

Mind maps can be drawn by hand, either as "rough notes" during a lecture, meeting or planning session, for example, or as higher quality pictures when more time is available.As with other diagramming tools, mind maps can be used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid to study and organise information, solving problems, making decisions, and writing.


Mind maps have many applications in personal, family, educational, and business situations, including notetaking, brainstorming (wherein ideas are inserted into the map radially around the center node, without the implicit prioritization that comes from hierarchy or sequential arrangements, and wherein grouping and organizing is reserved for later stages), summarizing, as amnemonic technique, or to sort out a complicated idea. Mind maps are also promoted as a way to collaborate in color pen creativity sessions. Effectiveness - Cunningham (2005) conducted a user study in which 80% of the students thought "mindmapping helped them understand concepts and ideas in science".



Last lesson we did mind map on "pursuit of happiness" because the topic was relevant to me and my group mates! And so we did wrote down all the points. It was interesting.

Omg @ Fashion Designers who broke the rules~

COCO CHANEL

Being a women who designs feminine womens outfit is already hard enough..... BUT being a women who design boyish yet stylish outfits has always been a challenge! Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel did not let that kind of restricted mentality intimidate or distract from her modern philosophy and innovation. Who knew that a woman, who grew up in an orphanage, rose by nuns, who also sang at a cabaret, could become such an influential mover and shaker in fashion history? 

Guys, Coco Chanel had arrived.

Coco Chanel is the most well known example of a fashion designer who broke the rules, especially for her time.. and boy she definitely knock them down! She disregarded the womens' mindset of her time period and created her own fashion perspective. She created a trend where luxury and comfort go hand-in-hand. 

This will have a long-lasting influence in fashion designs to come, because her style will always stand for what she believed in,

 –simplicity and everlasting elegance-

Paul Poiret

In Paris, one man broke the rules and made it his mission to modernise women’s fashion and make clothes bright, fun and exotic. After a while Poiret started to sell designs to large couture houses in Paris.  

Paul Poiret, who called himself the ‘King of Fashion’, was born in 1879 in Paris, and apprenticed to an umbrella maker. He used leftover scraps of umbrella material to make dolls’ dresses and managed to sell some of his sketches to a local dressmaker while still in his teens. 

Initially he worked for for designer Jacques Doucet and later on more famously for the House of Worth, where some clients were shocked by his modern clothes with a Japanese twist.

The cloche hat – now symbolic of the Twenties – was popularised by Poiret, as were fur-trimmed coats.

Poiret’s fashions remained popular until World War One. After the war, his complex designs seemed to be outdated and people were buying high quality clothes by the new designers such as Coco Chanel. By the time Poiret died in 1944 and he was largely forgotten. What a great shame...as he was perhaps the first truly modern designer.

Alexander Mcqueen

“You’ve got to know the rules to break them. That’s what I’m here for, to demolish the rules but to keep the tradition.”

 And breaking the rules is exactly what Alexander Mcqueen did. It was his hope that through his clothing, he would be able to empower women, to inspire them, and boost confidence.

 A legend in the fashion industry, McQueen’s short 19 years in the profession was a determined one. He's a creative “genius”. Most of his designs were dramatic, gothic and beautiful all at the same time.

The costumes on display are unique examples of the talent of Alexander McQueen.

Brainstorming? Mind maps?

Previous lesson was to brainstorm on a phrases given and my group chose the topic "How to break a glass" immediately. We thought it was easy but guess what. We're wrong. It's actually not easy to think those points because for this topic, what popped out on our minds was the most straightforward answers; none other than the typically 'drop on the floor' or 'smash it'. We wrecked out minds and finally think out of some exaggerated points which may not be necessarily useful. It was quite an interesting lesson that day.


Question of the day: 
What is brainstorming?
Is mind map useful?

Brainstorming is a great way to solve problems & to come up with new ideas. It allows you to examine the problems from outside the boundaries of normal thinking, and understand the issues and root causes, and come up with alternative solutions. 

Yes it is. When running out of ideas, mind map comes in. Ask yourself who? when? what? why? where? & how? and start joining arrows and ideas. That's how I develop good points. Isn't this how it works? Not sure what's your method but hope this helps!

Embarking on a new route

   Rise and shine! 

Good "morning" lovelies its currently 1:00am and I'm still awake here to blog after doing loads of homework. Well before i start, let me introduce myself. 

The name's Cheryl, going 17 this year,from NAFA's fashion merchandising course, class VA1M as you've known. Hmm, well so school is pretty far from my home. I stay near pioneer MRT and it takes a full 1hr journey to school. Yes it's tiring but oh well i have no choice. Alright so I'm going to talk about a new journey back home today! 

Walking back to Bugis MRT station after school. This time round, walking back home without the use of earpiece. No music no devices. What should i do? What I realised was I paid more attention to the surroundings. Traffic lights, cars moving, people crossing the road & sounds that came from car engines. Or even the smell of carbon monoxide emitting from the cars/bus. Yucks. 

Alighted at lakeside mrt station.(I live near pioneer mrt station) So where am i going? This route's so unfamiliar that i realised I was walking so slowly....and yes this definitely wouldn't happen if i was walking my usual way back home.

oh my god. look at the sun. The weather's so hot I can't take it.

And so... sneak peak! My family & i are moving here in a few months time. We just received our keys and so we went to take a look. Everything's new in there as it's newly built and its really near to the mrt station as you can see. I really need to familiarise this route because this would be the route that i will be walking to and fro in a few months time. 

Oh hey it's our country's flag. Haha reminds me of National day that is coming soon.... can't wait! Walking in, I was complaining to my parents about the designer who designed this condo. I was saying "I wonder who designed this?! Why do we even need to walk through the car park to go up? Ugh such a long way!!!!" Then i realised other new residence walking behind us were also complaining about that. Seems like its time to complain to the management!!! LOL ok kidding.

Reaching level 1, the pool is so....peace? Why is no one swimming though? But the weather is perfect for a swim! I guess it's too new and nobody dares to make the first move hahaha. Check out those random trees/plants. Before continuing, i realised i kept commenting on almost everything i see there. I kept repeating words like "look at that!" "Someone's coming in!" Hahaha. I guess its because this place seems so foreign. I don't even know why. And so ended our "tour". Went back to my current home after that. I went home by train actually.. to complete my journey, rather than taking the car back with my parents.

Much regret because it rained. But still has a tiny shade of sun. I was anticipating for a rainbow to appear. And so, as expected...Tada!! Rainbow outside my house just WOW.

Moving on to evening time. I look out of my windows and realised the sky looks purple-ish. The clouds looked so fluffy like cotton candy hahaha NOT. I see this everyday. But i still can't help but to snap a picture hehe. And so this marks the end of my journey back "two" homes. New route that i would be familiar with in the future.