Gerry's 'Make It Different' Workshop

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The Brief :

This project is all about imagining alternatives that would give rise to different kinds of design. The challenge is to imagine design within a wider context or system, rather than designing just an object.

The resulting system or outcome could take any form. You could design the following to demonstrate your ‘novel system of making’:

- The product that might be made by this process, highlighting how it differs from

products we know;

- The building or buildings where these things are made;

- New kinds of tools or work-wear for participating in this manufacturing process;

- Graphic communication that explains the system or the users involved.

Can you imagine new materials that could transform design? Ask

yourself, ‘What is the design made from? Who made it? For whom? Where does it

come from? What happens to it next?’

How might we reimagine the making of things to reimagine the things themselves?

Deliverables :

Explain your research findings through the production of:

Visual data – drawings, diagrams, physical pieces and photographs, and/or,

Written data – this could include critical and analytical reflection.

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Many items were placed in the middle of a table with someone appointed to select the items. We were then instructed to turn away from the table and let the person selecting pick out two objects at random.

I ended up with a blue Sharpie and a bright pink and Lemon vape. The most obvious and immediate idea came to my head to make a literal 'vape pen' out of the vape and pen by merging the two together.

I started by photographing each piece individually and then cutting them out using a mix of the wand tool and the quick selection tool.

To merge everything together, I needed to make sure the perspective, colours and text lined up correctly. I started by layout out each element in the right place, with the pen lid being cropped around the vape at one end and the pen tip layered behind the other end of the vape. To merge the colours, I changed the blue pen to make it a similar pink to the vape whilst also correcting any changes in clarity to the shadow. The hardest bit to merge together, was the text on the vape and sharpie. I wanted to keep the text on the vape but also make space for the iconic Sharpie signature. I did this by moving the vape text around the pen, adding a layer mask to fade it at the bottom.

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To take this workshop a step further, I took two digital images that I wanted to created a connection between using Adobe photoshop. I started by removing the backgrounds of each image with magic wand and quick selection tools. When working on the penguin, I also applied a 5ptx feather to the outline to remove any unnecessary grain or stray pixels.

To merge the two together, I duplicated the penguin twice. One for the top section, one for the middle. I wanted to replace the bottle lid with the penguins head so I scaled the penguin down to size, selected the bottle using Command > D, reversed the selection and then erased the body of the penguin to have the head remaining. I then placed the bottle on top of the penguin and erased a light section of the bottle to reveal the fluffy texture. I used the same technique with the penguin's flippers, slowly bringing through the texture to give the illusion the bottle is the penguin.