Sketches

I've started to spend more time drawing...
Just a note - Your eyes aren't going bad (or your monitor). The Moleskine books have ivory-colored pages. I don't like to color-correct the images to make the paper look white, because the ivory seems to give everything just a hint more warmth..

The real deal

This is what refrigerators are really for.
These were done by my niece, Miyo.

New link

I'll let you know when I add more links or make changes of note.
I ran across this great design inspiration link. Mmmmm. Click here!

Toys and Gadgets on the Fridge

One of the occupational hazards of being a designer is that you're always on the lookout for new designs, everywhere. Which means you are more likely to run into cool things that you just need to have. You know, to remind you of how clever a design is. So I have one of these hanging on the fridge. As it turned out, I needed a bottle-opener anyway (yeah, it’s easier to justify if the nicely-designed piece serves a purpose that you so happened to need). Another occupational hazard .. is that designers tend to look at things and imagine ways that they could be better. Couldn’t the bottle-opener have had a magnet in the outer band so the thing would stay up on the fridge all on its own? [sigh] And, I just wish that the outer band was something softer, more grippy, instead of hard plastic. Then it would have the OXO thing going on, and that would be even better!
And, no, we’re not talking the ‘hugs and kisses’ variety of ‘OXO’, at least not in this case.


I found these little metal containers with clear inserts in their lids that have magnets on the bottom. So you can put stuff in ‘em and stick ‘em up. Seems like a good idea, huh? So, when I want to get some of the stuff in the container out, I pull the container off the fridge so I can hold it better to pry off the cap… and, Ooops, there go all the take-out menus! Maybe I should get more magnets that function just as magnets, so I can relieve the metal containers from having to do double-duty, huh?



The BusyBodies shop at Cafepress.com has all these little stick figure dudes, of all sorts of occupations, celebrations, emotions, printed on shirts, mugs, bags, mouse pads, buttons and, hey!, magnets. Me? I draw!







And of course, I could have the little kid alphabet magnets or Magnetic Poetry. Those are amusing, but they take up too much space, and take a little too much time to get to where it’s really entertaining. The longest I’ll stand gazing at the stuff on the fridge is about the length of time it takes to get ice and water from the in-door dispenser. If I had space to spare, though, the toy that I’d really like to have is/are Frigits. Now that’s fun! :)

Bellows

And there's always the obligatory photo of Bellows...

Bellows has the best sand ...

Banana Cars

It seems only fitting that the Digital Fridge Door’s (DFD) inaugural post be of the infamous banana cars. The original sketches are still up on the actual fridge. The background on this is pretty immaterial at this point, but involves my saying something like, "Well, if you want color options without having any idea of what the thing will look like, I’d do just as well to show color schemes on something benign like ... Bananas!".


So, the thing about being an industrial designer is that sometimes you have to turn off the internal editor in your brain, and just sketch whatever it is that you hear people trying to describe – you (I) have to draw other people’s ideas, more or less immediately. Sometimes I have to work out the mechanical details, but most often, once I understand the concept, I have to just sketch, so that the idea can be quickly communicated and shared. That’s why they call it "visual communication" (‘viscomm’). Three years of VisComm classes, folks.

I had more fun with the banana-car sketches than the real ones, trust me. As is usually the case, the most ‘fun’ sketches are the quick ones, the ones that come without content editing, during chaotic, rapid-fire brainstorm sessions, where people are going off on tangents, making goofy comments, like, "Hey, that looks like a snake on a rock", "Here, Wendee, you draw it. If I draw it, it’ll look something like a turd on a leaf" (I have sketches of both). Or, when a drawing starts to look like something else, completely unrelated to the task at hand, I go ahead and draw it in its alternate form. Whatever the reason, it’s a good sign that the scribe is still having fun and being playful. Embrace these for the healthy folly that it is.

Expect to see more of these unedited-stream-of-consciousness drawings (or, "Wow, you say it, and it magically appears!").