Why Design?

The Apple iPod is one of the most popular designed objects today, a piece of technology that no music fan can do without. Although it is just an Mp3 Player, something that there are many different types, brands and designs of, the iPod is the most popular, and successful, of them all. This is because Mp3 Players before the iPod were all too big in physical size or maybe even too complicated for everybody to use. When it was released in 2001, Apple aimed to keep the iPod simple, with a minimalistic user interface and by keeping it quite small in size. These aspects are what helped launch the iPod to popularity, making it now the market leader in digital audio players. However, it's not just practicality and functionality that have made it so successful, the actual design of the iPod has become iconic, a stylish and 'cool' accessory for the current generation.

The iPod shown in the picture above is my own, a 3rd generation iPod Nano. There is actually a now a newer version of this, the 4th generation Nano, as shown to the right. Personally, I am not the kind of person who will rush out and buy the new version of something, just because the old one is now outdated. However, there clearly are people who do this or Apple would not release a new design for their iPods each year. I even knew someone at Uni last year who purposely tried to break their current iPod so they could claim off their insurance to get the new updated version. There are never really any dramatic changes to the actual hardware of the iPod, and only a few new features are added to the software and UI, so essentially it is still just an Mp3 Player like any other. This leads me to believe that people who are willing to pay money for the new model, especially when they already have one of the previous ones, are only doing it to impress others or look 'cool'.

Pixilation - First Attempts

Over the last few weeks we've had some seminar sessions in which we've been creating and editing our own pixilation animations. Here I have three of my own attempts, though they are very short and hopefully my finished product will be a lot better.







The quality of these videos is pretty bad, they look so pixelated you can hardly tell whats going on. But nevermind, like I said, these are just first attempts. My finished animation will hopefully be better, and should be on here within the next couple of days.

Pixilation Stuff

I've been looking at a lot of pixilation animations since we started our small project on the subject for the narratives module we're doing. Maybe it's about time I actually put something about it here!

I love the stop-motion shorts created by PES. They have a lot of simple ideas but are executed in a really clever way. Western Spaghetti is a good example of this, using lots of really simple techniques to create something quite brilliant. The way they use everyday objects to represent something else works really well, such as the colourful pick-up sticks as a substitute for spaghetti, which then turn into elastic bands as the pasta is 'cooked'. Another little thing in this animation that's pretty nifty is the candy corn used as fire on the hob, I find it really visually pleasing. The animation titled Roof Sex is an amusing little short showing the secret sex lives of two armchairs. It's pretty clever in the way the chairs are shown to be performing different sexual acts and positions. The Human Skateboard is a pixilation animation showing a guy riding through the streets using another guy as a skateboard. Though I imagine it may have been pretty time-consuming to shoot this film, overall it looks pretty simple, though still effective.

Another interesting pixilation animation I have found is this piece titled Mirage. It is pretty simple, featuring people dancing in a natural setting. Although it is a simple piece of animation it has a somewhat surreal feel to it, created by some of the editing and effects used as well as the movements of the dancers.