ALL ART BURNS

I had an “a-ha!” moment related to product design this week:

For the past few years we’ve been using an All-Clad brand teakettle we received as a gift. The first one started leaking at the base of the spout after a year or so and All-Clad replaced it. (The leak was caused by a poor quality weld, in my opinion) . Now after a year or so, the replacement has started leaking at the very same place. We’ve never been terribly fond of it: the polished stainless shows every bit of dirt or grime splashed on it while cooking something else on the stove, it’s easy to burn yourself on the handle or lid or while removing the stopper, the handle’s awkward, and so on. But it was a gift, it was certainly better than the $6 department store special I had before, and if you hold the kettle with a rag while you remove the spout, you probably won’t burn yourself…

But now that it’s started dripping boiling water while you’re pouring water for tea, the grumbling about “Yeah, but all the other teakettles suck, this one sucks less” started up again along with “what are we going to do for the three weeks we’re without a teakettle?”

Then while getting my afternoon mocha over at Peet’s the other day, I discovered the amazing Oxo Uplift Teakettle.

Why is it amazing? Well, when you pick it up and tilt it to pour out the hot water, the handle acts as a lever to open the spout. When you set it back down, the spout closes. It’s not only a great idea, it’s a great idea that works. On top of that, the handle is well insulated, it’s available in a wide range of colors, and it’s about half the price of an All-Clad brand teakettle.

I am reminded of two imporant observations:

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
— Albert Einstein

“Duh!”
— Amy Wong

Technorati: design | tea

Started the spring semester planning to take two classes: Drawing I and Japanese. I decided against taking the for-a-grade Japanese class that met every morning at 0830. Instead I decided to take a once-a-week evening class at a local adult-ed program, there’s no pressure for grades, it’s cheaper, etc. etc.

My Drawing I instructor is great. She’s a MFA painting candidate in her early 30s, likes teaching intro classes, and is really enthusiastic about art in general. I was nervous going to class today, but by the end of class, I was really into it and I’m looking forward to the rest of the semester.

The plan is still for me to get into a serious ID program, which means putting together a portfolio and not making an ass of myself when I go to my interview on 25 Feb. A fair chunk of my portfolio work is documenting previous projects, making sketches and SolidWorks models of new projects and a sketchbook full of ideas and brainstorming. I’m also finishing off one of my firewood racks as a present for some friends which means many hours in the garage with the TIG laying down butt-welds in carbon steel.

I want to stop talking about school for a few moments and talk about how much I love TIG welding. The cheapest and easiest types of welding, SMAW (stick) and GMAW (MIG) are great for all sorts of uses, but I really detest both of them.

Stick welding is great because you can weld rusted or dirty metal or in nasty environments or wierd positions. But with stick, sparks go everywhere, the welds are ugly, you have to hammer off the slag, and the welds are really ugly. If you’re driving by a road construction project and you see flashes of light and huge showers of sparks, that’s probably someone using a stick welder to put together steel girders or other huge chunks of metal. Stick is really easy to learn — I was able to put together a welding table with a stick welder as my first project. But trick things like filler-less welds are impossible with stick, and there’s no way to weld aluminum or exotic metals.

MIG welding is also easy. Imagine a hot glue gun that uses metal instead of plastic — just pull the trigger and you’re welding. But the welds, oh they are ugly. Ugly ugly ugly. And like stick welding, there are limits as to what you can weld based on the type of metal and the type of weld. If you’re making something like weightlifting equipment or ladder racks for trucks, MIG is definitely the way to go. A person without much training can crank out huge amounts of finished product at a really low cost.

But TIG, oh how I love the TIG. Weld together two pieces of stainless steel without using any filler? No problem. Weld together tube steel then grind the weld off leaving a smooth, polished surface that looks like it was made from a single piece of metal? Sure! How about welding together these bits of aluminum? I’ll get right on it. Dissimilar metals? Of course! Exotic metals? If you own a bicycle frame made of titanium, it was probably TIG welded and by a live human, not a robot.

TIG welding is at least as hard to learn as gas welding, requires levels of cleanliness not found in many home shops, and requires more expensive gear. While you’re learning you’ll probably spend more time grinding clean new TIG electrodes than you will be using them, but eventually you’ll get the hang of it and start cranking out beautiful welds. TIG welding requires a sort of meditative calm and you’ll find yourself in a near trance as you go thru the motions of laying down a bead. But like any skill that’s difficult to learn, the results are the payoff — beautiful welds.

For the really geeky people out there, Miller has a great bit on their site for choosing the right welding technology.

…back to school…

I see two outcomes from going back to school: an ID degree and a full-time job as a designer; or learning enough that I can open something like The Crucible. In my fantasy dream world, I have an ID firm that cranks out great work by day and teaches industrial arts and design skills by night.

In the really real world, I’d be happy with either one of those.

And as it’s now an hour past my bed-time, 　お休み！

Technorati tags: college | welding

…and I thought winter break was going to be a time of rest and relaxation.

Because I have a BA in an unrelated field, I’m being asked to apply as a transfer student at the school I’d like to attend full time. (I’m only part-time at my current school, and if I go full time, I want to go to a much better schoo.) Since I’m applying as a transfer student, I have to submit a portfolio — preferably 10-15 items and a recent sketchbook. On the upside, I’ve documented the hell out of several recent projects. On the downside, I didn’t organize any of that documentation. Oh, and a sketchbook? Well, I have several, but only every third page is something other than project notes, todo lists, personal commentary, etc. So, time to start keeping a ‘real’ sketchbook.

So this semester I’m only going to take only one class — Drawing I — and spend the rest of my time focusing on building portfolio material. My portfolio review is only a month after the start of the semester, but I’ll need all the free time that I can manage to get things together. (Oh, and I already checked to make sure I didn’t get the same professor as before. Based on the reading materials for the class, this one actually appears to be interested in teaching us how to draw.)

Q: So what’s the point of all this design school talk, anyway?

A: I finally figured out what I want to major in!

Granted, it’s 20 years late, but I think I figured it out. Maybe I can’t get a second degree and change careers, but I’ll never know until I try.

When I look back on the past 15 years of my career, I can’t point to much that I’m proud of. I did some great work supporting businesses that never made a profit (and in some cases never shipped a product), but it’s all gone. You’ll have to take my word for it that it was great work and that you should hire me, and that I’m not a complete goober who can talk a good story about how great their work was.

In itself, that isn’t a reason to change careers, but it got me to thinking about what I would be proud of 20 years from now. It got me to thinking about what I like doing, not what I tolerate doing because people pay me to do ti. And that brings us to…

Doing Something Meaningful With My Life
It sounds hokey, but it’s true. I want to do things that make a direct difference in other people’s lives. I feel like I’ve taken a lot from society, but that I haven’t contributed much back. Ok, so I’ve helped VCs spend a lot of money, and who knows how many sales rep’s kids i’ve helped put through college, but I’m not sure how proud I am of those things.

Take a look at the TiVo remote. It’s amazingly different from every other remote, it’s easy to use, and it’s pure genius in so many ways [1]. You might say that re-inventing the remote is not the most useful goal I could have, but it sure as hell beats anything I’ve done in the past 15 years. Maybe I can come up with a better instrument cluster for motorcycles, or develop new video game controllers, or make better interfaces for tele-operated robots. And maybe I can’t. Maybe I’ll suck as a designer, but I’ll find that out quickly enough. There’s plenty of other things I’d like to do, and some of them could be done whether or not I become a designer. Two things that come to mind are building custom vehicles from scratch like John Britten did and setting up an arts/education organization like The Crucible.

Hey, if the school thing doesn’t pan out, at least I have grandiose plans that can easily go awry!

[1] I don’t have a problem with the symmetric design, but the lack of any tactile feedback to let you know which end of the remote is “front” really bugs me. I’d have put a weight in the bottom side, or some sort of textured surface on the plastic to give the holder a non-visual cue that they’ve picked the remote up backwards. Or am I the only person that fumbles for the remote in the dark and picks it up backwards?

Haven’t written anything about school in some time. Not because I don’t have anything to say, but because I’ve got too much to say and I’m not sure where to start. Going to break this up into a few different posts to make it a bit easier to read.

Term papers
I had a term paper due last week in my art history class. I spent days trying to figure out how on earth I was going to write an intelligent paper on a topic I was interested in and kept coming up dry. As I haven’t written an undergraduate term paper since the KLF was the coolest band ever, I went looking on the web for term paper guidelines published by art history professors. I quickly discovered (then remembered) that undergraduate term papers are fancy versions of the book reports we wrote in grade school. Nobody is expecting any amazing insight into unsolved problems, they just want to see that you read some books, absorbed the information, and can write something coherent.

USENET and the WeLL are tougher audiences than any undergraduate prof I’ve ever had. 11 pages of text and 6 figures later, I had made a basic case legitimizing irezumi as an art worth studying alongside ukiyo-e. Ok, so the prof said 5 pages should be plenty, but it really took me 11 pages to even begin to make my case. Halfway through I realized it was probably a great MA Art History or Japanese History topic, but I don’t have a year to research and write a paper. I have a few hours a week over a few weeks.

Work vs. Play
It’s taken me almost a semester to reshuffle my deeply ingrained habits of how I spend my non-working time. First off, I have to redefine “non-work” as “not-in-the-office”. No more working at home after dinner because I slacked in the office all afternoon. If I’m not going to work in the office, I need to come home and study or do school work. If I’m home, I need to do school work, not turn off my brain and relax until the next work day. Here’s an analogy that will hit home with some of you — imagine that most of the year is the month before you leave for Burning Man working on harebrained projects.

In a typical, oh-those-look-like-fun shopping moment I bought Metroid Prime 2, an Eye-Toy and some other games last week. I’ve played MP2 for all of 2 hours and the Eye-Toy is still in the box, and probably will be until after finals. Same goes for every comic book I’ve bought since August, my magazine subscriptions, etc. (Ok, so I spent a couple hours playing the Japanese version of F-Zero GX so when I get to sent to Japan on work I can unlock my memory card using a Japanese arcade game…)