the re/design project.

Something I love about design [and at the same time is probably the most frustrating part] is the inability to say a design is “good enough”. It can be frustrating because a designer can always see what they have to do to take their project to the next level. On the other hand, the client may not be happy to know that a design projected to take a few months will in fact not be done…ever. But to say a project is “good enough”…in my opinion that means that given the alloted time you haven’t worked up to the project’s true potential. That you are just settling for something that is good enough, but not truly great.

Can this be applied to things that are already created? Sure. In fact, I think if you look around the room you’ll notice things that you take for granted, that serve their intended purpose and that’s good enough for you. So what happens if you take that object…and re-design it? Take it from being “good enough” to fantastic.

Here’s a great example of what I’m going for…

Bao Haimo, Yu Renzhuo, Ma Hu, Yao Shuai, and Yu Meng took this approach of re-designing a standard piece by conceptualizing and designing a simple bookcase. A design so simple yet compelling that it caught my eye and I think in the end accomplishes its purpose of making you reconsider what all could be re-designed for the better.

Check out 3rings‘ eloquent review of the Hanging Bookcase.

I have an idea. For the next few months, I’m going to do a study on what things we consider normal and whether or not it is possible to “re-design” these objects. This could be anything from a simple shelving unit to maybe…I don’t know, a bed.  I’m looking around the room trying to imagine what it could be, the possibilities are endless [maybe it won't even be what we consider a product...].  Anyways,  as an end result I am hoping to gain knowledge on whether or not these products are designed to be as affective as they could be. Hopefully through research, sketches and maybe a few study models…we will see what happens. Or if I have found that someone has already re-designed the project…how cool would that be?

Oh the possibilities are endless…stay tuned.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 at 11:35 am. It is filed under BLOG. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.