INDN 312: Presentation Slides

INDN 312: 3D Printers In Every Home

The project that I've been developing in this class focuses heavily on the potential of the 3D printing revolution. I'm looking at how this revolution could impact smaller towns in New Zealand. This culture is one which New Zealand's history is heavily steeped in. Small towns formed the basis of our western cultural heritage, often being based around specific resources or commodities that were made, mined, or harvested there. These towns now form the backbone of our agricultural sector, with most farmers using the small towns as their closest port of call for almost anything.

The small town is sadly also seeing a slow demise. The rural-urban shift is a very real global trend. This spells disaster for those who depend on their home town for their livelihood. The reality is a lot of people end up moving to the city after being faced with job difficulties in their home time, therefore further perpetuating the cycle. No one is to blame for this of course, the cities often bring much more excitement as well as more people into people's lives that they might have missed out on otherwise.

The issues that face small towns could possibly be dealt with in part with certain active responses. The opportunities that I see involve using 3d printing as a method for creating new jobs, new opportunities, and new life in a small town. Perhaps by allowing the town to retain and sculpt its own identity, it might encourage more people to engage and stay in their communities. New life could be injected into these townships, and the youth of the towns might be able to find creative outlets for their free time and isolation from the cities.

A concept that was suggested was the potential of letting the towns develop and create a scape that that the big cities don't have. Encouraging technological progression in the small townships could legitimise the towns as a place to stay and live for uncertain people. The utilisation of new technologies would allow the town to develop a progressive cultural and social identity. Using Scion's cellulose-based 3d printing material as well as developing their manufacturing techniques into a system that would allow more more independence from the larger cities, as well as creating an almost self-sustaining system.

3d printing being such a new and minimally adopted technology means that there are definitely going to be some barriers to its widespread adoption. This is almost consistently the way with new, game-changing technology. Hopefully the development of the technology and the acquisition of it into the homes of many would be accelerated with the presence of the internet and the global economy. The ability for everyone to design their own 3d printed objects might be a little much for now, but the potential is that soon 3d modelling knowledge might be as commonplace as knowing how to use a computer. At the very least, the hope is that the basic skill set of 3d printing; utilising it solely as a printer of available designs, would be widespread.

The way that this could be engaged with a small town presents a unique challenge. The idea that this could be a holistically designed system of products and services is an attractive one. But, that said, how would I, a single person accomplish that in such a short time, considering time is running out? The answer would usually be I'd try my damn best, but given that this is one of my last project, I want it to be a really good one. A really good one. That means that I think I need to take a more realistic and considered approach to the project and what it might mean and how it can then be extrapolated and made awesome. More to come soon!

INDN 312: Presentified!

INDN 312: Research Complete!

“3D Printing is going to be way bigger than what the 3D printing companies are saying” (Credit Suisse, 2013) This huge projected growth will have an impact on New Zealand, just as much as the rest of the world. The result will be interesting to project in terms of the ripple across the different sorts of cultures in NZ, particularly the clash it might have with “small town NZ”. How might latest-generation 3D printing (wood cellulose printing) revolutionise small-town life in a way that requires and creates a meaningful brand of products and services?

Technology

Scion's bio polymer research places them almost in the realms of science fiction, and yet the position Scion places itself in is an inherently NZ position. The research facility seeks to make technological advances through research into our forests. This scientific alignment appears simultaneously hyper modern and astoundingly ancient, and subsequently fits well into the NZ story. Developing new technologies while having the foresight to never lose track of where you come from and how you got there is both a recipe for success and a sound way to keep the press happy. The mission statement “Forests – Products – Innovation” (Scion, 2014) harmonizes well with the Maori cultural and spiritual connection to the whenua; the land, and fits a strong NZ story connected to our multiculturalism.

Wood fibre based 3D printing – 3ders

Scion's current uses for bio polymers are interesting yet few in number. Current uses are limited to low-design items such as kitchenware and small-scale 3D printing, yet the potential for more diverse uses certainly exists. The advanced material 3D printing exhibits certain surface qualities that speak of a naturalistic NZ identity, a concept that has been explored in some designed forms including the curious kiwifruit “Spife” (Scion, 2014) as well as light explorations by David Trubridge. The phrase “wood-based materials could be the next big thing in 3D printing” (3ders, 2013) is becoming more ubiquitous as the media realises the potential in making more degradable and materially interesting polymers. The benefits cost- and material-wise of wood-based filaments has yet to be fully developed, but the future for them is promising and bright.

New Zealand Resource

New Zealand shows time and again that its most important resource is not natural or refined materials, but the people who live here. The culture that NZ has cultivated is one that is more than ready for the world stage now, as it has evolved extensively while still maintaining a strong connection to its roots. NZ has joined the global vanguard in creative industries and scientific research, allowing us to make large strides in a world so often dominated by money or power alone. The innovation and capabilities that NZ brings through its culture stand out, despite the fact that NZ's most defining and enduring cultural feature is the small town. In global terms, the small town is not traditionally associated with “cultural melting pots” or “centres of innovation” (Leading Edge, 2014). Despite the stigma, this is a definitive part of our history and the physical make-up of our landscape. Historically speaking a lot of our best cases of “Kiwi Ingenuity” have stemmed from these small towns.

Queenstown – Alexander Sac

The outcome of NZ starting as a sporadic assembly of small towns resulted in a lot of wares and technology being of limited or no availability, subsequently forcing inhabitants to “Do It Yourself” (Leading Edge, 2014). DIY culture should be celebrated and given the tools to produce and develop meaningful solutions for real problems in small communities.

Brand

Apple as a brand commands a high level of respect in the consumer electronics area, and not without good reason. The qualities and emotive responses associated with Apple and their products are astonishingly far-reaching as well as exceedingly controversial. Apple has cultivated an extremely alluring brand identity and has created “an emotional response to its products that other companies just can't beat” (Boone, 2011). Apple's products can elicit high-process brain responses that mimic those of religious faithful (Boone, 2011).

Apple Product Connectivity – Jordan Kahn

The key aspect of their products however isn't necessarily the product itself, but what the product comes with and or is capable of. Applications, accessories, all of the products are designed to work seamlessly with each other, and this is where a lot of the power of the brand lies. Apple products are designed to work perfectly with the iTunes store, as well as use the iTunes store as a one-stop-shop for all the digital needs of the devices. This fully integrated, holistic concept for product integration and cross-platform usage sets the products up as being part of a family of products, rather than separate entities, and creates a highly successful, desirable product line that defines the brand. The synergy between products and services is the best means of keeping the customers coming back for more.

Project Brief

Small towns are an integral part of New Zealand's cultural, historical, and physical make-up, and as such, a well-designed brand that presents a successful combination of products and accompanying services could have a strong and positive influence on the future of NZ. A brand identity centred around the development of 3D printing systems and services in the cultural landscape of the small town would meet little resistance at present. A fifteen-year plan developing said brand with a holistic, all-encompassing, sustainable approach to the technological advancement of small town communities would align well with the explosion of public and cultural adoption of 3D printing. By focussing intently on the small town, the brand would be able to fill a specific niche that 3D printing could meet as an agent for self-sufficiency, independent repair, production, and problem solving. Integrated with a wide-reaching supply and a mobile support/service network with backing from product retail brands, this would guarantee a step forward in the NZ DIY mentality and ensure a brighter, easier tomorrow.

Bibliography

3ders. (2013). Could wood-based material lead 2014 3D printing priorities?. Retrieved from http://www.3ders.org/

Boone, A. (Producer). (2011). Technology [Episode 3]. In Secrets Of The Superbrands. London, United Kingdom: BBC.

Company Watch - Apple. (2014, January 6). AirGuide Business. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA357066562&v=2.1&u=vuw&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w&asid=66483d6850a010ab71bc1e4ca3b9eccb

Kahn, J. (2014). Apple brings Multipeer Connectivity to Mac, enables cross-platform nearby networking w/ iOS. Retrieved from http://9to5mac.com/

Scion. (2014). Scion Research. Retrieved from http://www.scionresearch.com/

Sac, A. (2012). Queenstown. A voyage to Queenstown, New Zealand, Pacific. Retrieved from http://traveladventureeverywhere.blogspot.co.nz/

Wheeler, A. (2006). Designing brand identity: A complete guide to creating, building and maintaining strong brands. Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley.

INDN 312: Brand Research: Apple, POC, Dyson, Muji

To think about how the scenarios that we're going to develop, one of the considerations that I need to take into account is the different companies mentioned in the brief, and how they actually convey their brand's identities and the way they present their products. One of the important aspects of a brand in today's market is the ability to cultivate a certain culture around themselves as well as generate a certain image that can be conjured at any time by a consumer looking at their brand.

The four companies that I'm tasked with taking a closer look at are POC (A Swedish adventure wear company), Apple (An American multinational consumer electronics company), Dyson (A British household electronics company), and Muji (A Japanese household and consumer goods company).

POC

Image acquired from: http://www.pocsports.com/

POC is a Swedish corporation that designs adventure and sporting wear for a variety of activities. As well as making beautiful and well designed gear, they also push the limits in terms of material usage as well as material research. The brand has been endorsed by a large number of athletes, and as such prides itself and bases it's image on being at the forefront of adventure wear design and technology. The technological advances are mostly in material research as well as fittings and comfort, and while most of the gear POC develops in terms of types is fairly standard, there are a good deal of products that are very unique and serve purposes and needs beyond that of the average adventure sports person.

POC's aesthetic is texture and pattern low, relying instead on block colours and large sections of colour to drive the unifying design aesthetic. Since the company is responsible for developing clothing, a very standard way of displaying one's personality, the company sells products in a very large range of colours. The one-size-fits all mantra cannot be found, although anything that you buy would very definitively be "designed by POC". The brand's logo is to be found on everything, and it certainly isn't always discreet. The brand uses a futuristic sort of style to it's products, and this style works well to underpin the brand's value set.

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Apple

Image acquired from: https://www.apple.com/ipad/

Apple is a very familiar company for any industrial design student, as go to any lecture and you'll be guaranteed to see an Apple MacBook out on someone's table. Apple's consumer electronics division is huge. They have received a host of both negative and positive critiques for their design styles as well as their design choices. Advertising is a huge aspect of what makes Apple Apple. Employing a vast array of emotionally manipulative techniques in it's advertising and PR, Apple has firmly cemented it's position as the brand of designer electronic devices to own.

Utilising excellently minimal design choices for the majority of their products, the Apple brand is something that isn't conveyed through logos, but through an extremely distinctive look. Their current primary choice for materials is brushed aluminium and polished glass, with several other materials coming in in certain situations and products as backups. Apple's brand has been so aggressively marketed that certain products of theirs are now synonymous with that type of product. An iPod is now synonymous with an mp3 player. Apple makes a lot of highly considered material choices, as well as aggressive development into efficient material usage and electronic consideration.

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Dyson

Image acquired from: http://www.dyson.co.uk/vacuum-cleaners.aspx

Dyson is a brand that manufactures and designs vacuum cleaners, hand dryers, blade-less fans, and heaters. The company prides itself extensively on it's founding, whereby James Dyson developed the original Dyson bag-less vacuum cleaner after extensive iteration into a workable product. The company uses this story as a basis for their design identity, but primarily the company looks at creating products that work in different or better ways than their competitors or predecessors.

Dyson has created an identity that presents their products as the ultimate expressions of their development. With the company being primarily an engineering company, the design of the unique vacuums have presented a very interesting design challenge to the company. While other household electronics designers attempt to hide the products and the way they work, Dyson seeks to exemplify and highlight the mechanics and functionality of their products, by using both strong colours and interesting forms.

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Muji

Image acquired from: http://www.muji.eu/pages/online.asp?Sec=19

Muji is a Japanese company that expresses it's identity by being a brand that has no distinguishing brand. The goods it sells are designed to be quality goods without being excessively branded or extremely distinctively designed. The products are designs with a minimalistic style in mind, as well as encouraging recycling and avoiding waste in product manufacturing and packaging. This no-brand attitude is a very interesting one, as it immediately seeks to position Muji as a brand that is just great as well as being reasonably priced without being dominated by a particular identity or logo.

Muji is in a way also a blanket brand that occupies multiple different types of products. The distinction that separates it from other brands is merely in terms of the products being well designed, and yet this lack of distinction is a key importance for making sure that people feel they can buy everything Muji without everything looking identical. In that regard, I find the concept similar to Ikea. There is a unifying aesthetic, but it doesn't overtone everything else.

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INDN 312: Brand & Identity

The project that we're presented with in this new course is to look at using new technologies to add value and to promote NZ resources, in the global marketplace. This has the potential to sound a little bit wishy-washy, but I think that it holds significant interest, and the technologies that we might get to use sound exceedingly interesting. The way the project is structured is that it is laid out in two ways, allowing for two different paths a student can take to develop a project.

The nature of the project is very much up to us, but we have to involve the respective technology of one of the different branches we get to pursue. The two different scenarios we get to choose from involve two different types of technologies, each amazing and very interesting in their own right.

Image acquired from: http://www.scionresearch.com/impact/wood-fibre/investment-in-bioplastics-pays-off

The first technology or set of technologies is a large mass of research being done by Scion, a biomaterials research facility that is making really interesting forays into the area of wood-fibre enhanced plastics, allowing for them to be strengthened as well as having some really interesting properties. The interest factor fer me behind this set of possibilities is what might be possible with them. Apparently Scion has figured out how to extrude the materials into some really interesting shapes, as well as 3D-printing filament, which is one of the things that possibly at this point has the most potential for me.

Image acquired from: http://stretchsense.com/

The second technology that we'll be hearing more about tomorrow is called StretchSense, a wireless stretchable sensor setup that can work via Bluetooth with mobile phones and computers, and has a still-not-entirely-known potential uses. Supposedly the sensors are able to tell how much they have been stretched, allowing for measuring the human body, as well as small-scale robotics and other projects.

Both sets of technologies have lots of potential, and both I can see interesting and innovative uses for, however, this project is quite specific in the way that it allows us to approach it, as it calls for us to investigate and develop our projects with New Zealand and the NZ identity specifically in mind. The result of this is that depending on which scenario I choose to pursue, I have to seek to add value and promote NZ resources through either looking at NZ culture or NZ commodities.

Image acquired from: http://www.mch.govt.nz/

Looking at NZ culture I have to consider how my project might apply to the present NZ fashion trends, or perhaps how it might relate to our identity as an arts-and-craftsy nation. It could also look at the intertwining of many cultures, considering how the project might appropriate all of these cultures or develop their ties. New Zealand has a certain identity when it comes to our lifestyle, and this could also be something that the Scion research applies to, as well as considering how research like that might fit in around this 100% green (total bullshit) national identity we've built around ourselves.

Image acquired from: http://static2.stuff.co.nz/

The NZ commodities angle looks at how NZ is defined by the commodities that we produce. Certain materials and goods shape our national identity, and allow us to have a distinctive individuality. A lot of materials and commodities have a certain cultural and historical heritage, such as flax (Maori culture) and wool (European culture). These materials, when used appropriately, can be distinctly New Zealand. The exports that drive our economy identify us in the global marketplace, while the distinctive material identify us through slightly more cultural means.