For our last exhibition room and directly after slaving away on the thesis papers, we decided to take a pragmatic approach to the room decorating subject.

General room theme:

Check.

Spray paint each classmate’s master thesis title on the walls and provide spartan furnishings in the middle of the room to display our work:

Check.

Fill ceiling with balloons. Paste pictures from the last three semesters onto balloons:

Check.

Spend the rest of the allotted money on prosecco, bring some tunes and enjoy the last weekend together.

Check.

Commute. It is a word many are familiar with, and experience on a regular basis. For something that is so routine to daily life, it is perplexing the little signicance given to the event. After all, the time spent in transit starts to really add up when one thinks of it in units of months, years or even a lifetime. In spite of a majority who commute and thereby experience to a certain extent its
growing adverse effects, the ramications of commuting are often too lightly weighed in proportion to their actual influences on life.

I filmed and interviewed several people on their commute, to get a better perspective of how people handle and regard this routine. Many saw the time as a waiting period before arriving at a destination. For some it was a time for inward reflection, and others busied themselves with individual activities.

I was starting to get the feeling that we all commute together alone. My intention was to see if the social norms of commuting could be changed. Perhaps in the future, commuting could be a time to network and meet new people. I developed an experimental game as a means to start a change. The goals of the game were to increase awareness of time spent commuting, its inuences on physical and mental health, as well as make a positive imprint on the perceptions of the commute.

Summarized, the game, named goFaces is played so:
The game piece, a wristband, is the visage of the game. Located on the wristband is a face, whose design the participant can choose, before a commute, to react their mood. During the commute, a participant can visually see the results of interactions with other players in changes in facial expression. Additionally, a player can see changes in his or her body temperature reflected through color change of the face. Upon connecting the wristband to a personal computer, a player can see a history of interactions.

In this way goFaces is intended to break down barriers that hinder communication during the commute. Especially within the realms of public transportation, commuters observing others wearing the wristband might be inspired to strike up a conversation about it, comparing faces. The amount of interaction is, however, up to each participant. The game is meant to be a playful, non-intrusive means of interacting with others. In this way, it is hoped to override existing social norms to make commuting a fun event where social interaction is acceptable.

In October 2009 some 50 of the brightest design students from around the world will meet in Kolding to give their opinions on how society should look like in 2020. Behind this event you will find Kolding School of Design and Design City Kolding.

I was a lucky participant of the design camp, and worked to create a communication system that will strengthen the consumer-meat relationship via digital media.

Called MeatMe, it’s a subscription-based service, where consumers invest in their meat consumption starting with the animal. From the ranch to the table, the process is transparent, as subscription plans entail the kind of care and accommodations the animals receive.

For more see our blog.

MeatMe in the news! Sadly, I don’t understand Danish.

Nico Michler from “designaffairs” held a 3-day workshop centered around “Lifestyles & Trendscouting”.

Some of the topics were: Target Groups, Brands, Needs, etc.

Just how does an iPod taste? and the jewelry from Otto Künzli or Nike Air Jordans? How could a Barbie doll taste?

Can design objects be made “tasteful” through a semantic experiment? The Master of Creative Direction students busied themselves with these questions during the 2009 summer semester and developed the project into the theme of the MACD display for the school semester-end exhibition.

The task was to pick a topic and develop something to ensure “good taste”.

A classmate and I chose Menstruation.

What comes to mind when menstruation is the topic of conversation?
We wanted to know, and started by surfing the net about the topic. From our searches, we began to see attitude tendencies.
What were the reasons for these tendencies? How does the history of menstrual products play a role in their formation? What themes from the past influence perceptions of menstruation from today?

So we started a blog, went out to the schools and held discussion groups, and did some advertising on the street.

What we found out, is that the topic of menstruation – even today’s culture – is a difficult subject tainted with clichés.

So, we started the Happy Blood Day campaign (Happy Blut Day in German)

Today’s society still treats a woman’s monthly menstruation cycle as something to be out of sight and not spoken of. As far as cramps and the like, we are expected to grin and bear it. Why not change these ideas starting with a little celebratory cake?

It’s basically saying that having a period should be something special like a birthday.

To promote the campaign we made a video of a young girl, going through the day with her period. At first she sees it as a hindrance, until finding the Blood Day Campaign online…

On the 17th our class presented 30 creative and fresh marketing strategies for the Mercedes Viano, including this one:

(blind date and a test drive!)

Roadtrip!

We hopped on a train to Switzerland and visited the Vitra Design Museum in Basel, and then traveled on to Zurich to see a zero energy building, visit a materials library and visit the “Every Thing Design” exhibition in the Museum of Design.

Back in Pforzheim, we explored the material properties of sugar.

Assignment: write a business plan for a product or service idea.

Result: Burn Baby! a portable campfire.

Project Background of „Pforzheim 2030″:

Pforzheim has a long history of manufacturing and prosperity. It became known as the “City of Gold” nearly 250 years ago. The city currently promotes itself as the European centre for jewellery looking back to its illustrious past but in order to compete effectively in 21st century it has decided to look forward and imagine new futures based on its innate strengths and assets.

Therefore, in 2008, the positioning strategy “Themeworld Pforzheim” was developed to assist in the repositioning of the city.  A Themeworld strategy is a narrative strategy to uniquely position a city or a region based on authentic characteristics and strengths. The Pforzheim organisation for economic development and city marketing initiated a collaboration with the MA in Creative Direction of Pforzheim University,  School of Design, and the MA Creative Practice for Narrative Environments, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London, to develop some scenarios based on the “Themeworld Pforzheim”.

The assignment for 24 students from London and Pforzheim was: Develop, illustrate and explain Pforzheim 2030- How could Pforzheim look like in 20 years from today? Based on the authentic strengths of Pforzheim and within the frames of 6 distinct scenarios, students examine extreme futures for Pforzheim. After about 2 weeks of intense research and professional inputs, the findings were shown in the city hall.

The project aims were

• To produce a range of visual-think-pieces that visualise and communicate a wide range of possible futures for Pforzheim on the basis of the “Themeworld Pforzheim”

• To stimulate debate in the City of Pforzheim about its futureand to foster a new productive and creative relationship between two world renowned design schools

PFORZHEIM IS GOING TO THE DOGS

Upon brainstorming ideas for our task to transform Pforzheim into a beauty oasis, we discovered an underlying need to first focus on the deeper beauty within. Over 80% of Pforzheim was destroyed in WWII. In the following decades it was rebuilt in the style of the time, yet still today the majority of Pforzheim’s citizens are wistful for the Pforzheim that was. This tragedy of the past, combined with Pforzheim’s present high unemployment rate and aging population, has formed a distance between Pforzheim and its citizens. Our idea is not to create drastic, high-tech solutions, but rather to focus on Pforzheim’s moral. Through design solutions in key public areas, interactions with the city and its people are encouraged, resulting in positive outcomes. A starting point is to focus on the bond between humans and dogs, as they are an ideal catalyst. The interventions in key areas will allow people to start looking at and using public space in different ways. The aim is to connect the city and the people who live there, through emotion and empathy.

photo by Winfried Reinhardt

We did a short video envisioning Pforzheim as a "Dog Town"

excerpt from "Page" magazine