Week One: Raiding the Pantry

Through this lecture we followed cooking and following a recipe as a means of understanding design practice as a whole, from a starting idea, through research and into practice/production. Using cooking as a metaphor.

As my area of research is so broad and not pinned down to just the specifics at the point in time I was really drawn to looking at making something that is usable for some one who identifies as a nomad. Someone how doesn’t specially have somewhere they have come from and somewhere they want to go, but instead they can use this thing as their center, their “home”. So, when I started creating my models I wanted to create this kind of home for them, and in doing this I started by getting a 150x150mm book. This book is my metaphorical “home”, in the sense of this project. The collection place for all of my ideas, all of my models and works are contained within this book, and they operate within and out of this book. The book of a nomad, the nomad’s home.

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Choosing 3 ingredients from the “raiding the pantry” list we were to use these words to generate ideas and models in relation to our research area. 51 A6 sized models in total were to be made and realised from these chosen 3 words. The 3 words I was most drawn to when starting the process were “Raw”, “Processed” and “Porous” therefore these were the words i kept in the back of my mind when creating these models.

To help add another level of complexity to the models after i had made a few i looked up different words to describe what each of these 3 words meant (raw, processed, and porous) and i came up with a new list of words to help me generate even more models;

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Contrasting Methods

– Medium	– 160 gsm 150x150mm paper – Copper craft wire
– Software	– Samsung galaxy s10+ camera lens – Custom built windows PC – Microsoft surface book 2 laptop – Adobe Photoshop – Adobe Illustrator
– Drawing with a series of different mediums	– 0.05 thickness black fine liner – 0.1 thickness black fine line – 0.2 thickness black fine line – 0.3 thickness black fine line – 0.5 thickness black fine line – 0.8 thickness black fine liner – HB pencil – 4H pencils – Silver calligraphy pen – Red water colour pencil – yellow water colour pencil – blue water colour pencil – Red acrylic paint – yellow acrylic paint – blue acrylic paint
– Mark making	– Pencil end as a stamp for paint – Shading with HB pencil – Fingers for paint marking – Cotton bud and water to spread water colour
– Adding and subtracting	– Using craft knife to add slits to paper – Fingers to press and fold paper – Uhu all purpose glue

Reflection on raiding the pantry exercise

Raiding the pantry was a very interesting way to start the iterative model making phase of thinking about what my area of research is all about. As my thinking was all jumbled and all over the place I found it really hard to pin down just one solid plan of attack for this model making task. So I didn’t. instead of having just one standard approach to this task and having a series of models that all looked the same and all followed the same process I instead decided not to challenge the way I think, but to instead let it reveal itself as I went on, which is how my design process and methods tend to happen.

Working in this way actually ended up working in my favour as I was able to cover a vast variety of different methods that I use in most of the design tasks that I undertake. And, from this I was able to see what was being successful in conveying my ideas of a “home for a nomad” and how I could use these techniques moving forward into the next stage of development of my methods and presentation (as well as the refinement of my research area and potential design).