Back from Paris...

In this Xmas vacation, we have been to Paris and stayed there for 6 days. It was fantastic city that has full of arts, designs, histories, memories, and so on...And this day we have got out from our house around 3:00 a.m. and checked-in the flight ticket around 6:30 a.m... We arrived at Paris 10:00 a.m. and it was a little hard schedule but the weather in Paris was perfect and it seems Paris is saying welcome to us!!



We stayed near Francisco Mitterrand's national library this time , this area is not for tourists and we can say that it's quiet, well-organized, and new.


This day we spent our time to understand Paris licaton , we went to Avenue des Champs-Élysées. In Osaka(Japan) a street called Mido-suji is folloing the image of the Champs-Élysées, there is an Arc de triomphe de l'Etoile in the middle and many streets start from the arch to go around the city. It as beautiful...



You can find more pictures in the website.

my motor show experience

Well...Eric has been really excited for motor show in Bologna, but for me... not really...but... actually I have enjoyed ^_^ So, what I was doing in the motor show is to take picture of 2 excited industrial designers!!

planning...

This is the first time for me to join the motor show in my life, especially here in Italy. I have gotten a lot of souvenir specially only for girls and discount price for ticket!! Maybe motor show is mainly focused on boys so they are trying to attract girls(who have much strong purchasing power and can lead act of consumption!)

show girl...

I was interested in the exhibition from Lexus, this is a luxury car brand from TOYOTA that has been started for western market. Actually it has been really successful branding example in terms of image strategy, function, and pricing.

But what I was impressed is their "brand image" is based on Japanese design language.

We can see one example from "Salone Internazionale del
Mobile 2006", Lexus has collaborated with Tokujin Yoshioka to create an emotional ambient in the space. It was colored all white and zillions of fivers were making wall. It seems decorative but minimal.



We can see many products "like Japanese style" in foreign countries, I think this Lexus's exhibition that is creating some feeling of Japanese minimalism design is good example that is expressing the different identity of design from Japanese perspective that foreigners don't have.



Here in Bologna, they are using image of water flow.
Lexus is trying to differentiate with the other western luxury car brands with Japanese design language!

Notice* of course I'm not saying TOYOTA is the best in the world"""hahahahah

Motor Show Bologna 2006

Motor Show Bologna - a huge car festival in Bologna (an Italy city) every year.

I like cars, not the power from the cars, what I like is the design details from appearance to inside interior. Today I would like to share some car pictures here!

LP640 (The one that I like most)


New design from Alfa


Conceptual car from FIAT


We’ve try to get into Land Rover!!!


Mercedes-Benz is the only one to put their old car in the booth


One of the most powerful car of them!


Poor Hummer3 (I like H1 and H2 more!)

Audi R8 - I would like to introduce this car because this is a car started from a prototype in a move called “iRobot” to be a real power car!

Later if I have time, I would like to share the pictures about car museums in Italy and Germany, Cheers!

Links:
iRobot movie website
Audi R8 website
Hummer website
Alfa website
FIAT website
Land Rover website
Mercedes Benz

Complimenti!!

Today is our Graduation Day of Domus Academy...We have gotten a lot of great friends, professors, experiences, and memories...



Actually we have met in the same cleass in Domus Academy, Master in Business Design. It was second year for MBD's academic year, it means MBD is quiet new department of our school. Interesting thing is that we're all not business designers, we have different backgrounds, nationalities, experiences for different professions or skills. So we have to communicate well in the each project to create more innovative business solution, because it's our academic advantage, we have economist, financials, art manager, editor, journalist, industrial designer, graphic designer, architect, and environmental designer. Everyone has their own skill that the others don't have so that each of us can use our own creativity for creation of one solution. It was great experience to meet so many different identities in the class...

Sometimes, it's not so easy to manage our project because of the reason that I mentioned, but Business Design is management. We have learned "If different identities can collaborate well, we can create something great that we never seen!" So, Business Design is not only making innovative business solution, but also manage and corporate each other to make project itself valued.The solution will be initially rich.

So Eric and Ayumi have already started to collaborate our identities in functional way...We will propose something from our collaboration.
There are something that we can do better if we collaborate.



Can you see us?? This is MBD!!

Thank you for everybody... and congraturations!

Designer tools (1)

Firstly, I don’t know how many industrial designers will read this post, if there are any opinion for me, please feel free to contact me!

In the industrial design world, nowadays our situation are become more complicated than before. 20 years ago, at that time most of our professors still students, at that period of time, hand drawing skill are the most important for them as they didn’t have any 3D softwares. But now, in our generation if you don’t know how to use 3D softwares, even you will get into trouble for graduate from school.

In Chinese speaking, we have the speaking about “Tools should be well prepared before you go to do something important”. So transfer to industrial design, what is our tools? pencil? marker pen? 3D software? Today I would like to spend some time to talk about 3D software, not going to teach you how to use 3D software, but the tools for 3D software, here is my experience:

First of all, do you know what is this(both left and right pic)? This is my desktop computer’s display card and CPU. Actually the tools for 3D software is the computer itself, without it, you cannot use any softwares. In design school, you can always hear about someone’s PC suddenly doesn’t work before the day final presentation, so they have nothing to hand in or present.

Computer problems mostly come from virus or hardwares, virus is better because that’s more easy to be solve. But for the hardwares … that’s easy to kill all of your data suddenly. As Milan’s buildings are old and they still using the electricity system from 100 years ago (sorry, may be they didn’t have electricity 100 years ago), last week the power suddenly gone and I couldn’t get into windows after restart... at that moment, I told myself “find out the way to save my data in desktop folder” (If you want to know how I get back my data without get into windows, please email me! I don’t want to have too many words here).

The idea that I want to bring out today, which is about how important that designers (not only industrial designers) know how to fix their own tools. Once you know how to fix it, you will have more knowledge/ideas about how to use it in a better way. Finally, I also have the alternative solution for the those who don’t want to fix their “tools”.

To have more than 1 computer!

Welcome to "Obej Obej!!"

Obej Obej!! This is abbreviation for "Oh bella" in Italian.The meaning is "oh, beautiful!". ???

These days we have Xmas market around castle in Milan, this is an annual big market that is related to Sant.Ambrogio's memorial day. Last year, as I remember...It was in area of S.Ambrogio's church, but they have moved to castle in this year, and it's become quiet huge!!!

Actually, there are a lot of special sweets, chocolates, flowers, soaps, hams and cheeses in the market, and it brings us a feeling for Xmas!




This is what we ate at that day when we went to the market, it's fried bread(?) with sugar! Donuts? It was very nice because pretty signor just fried it for us!!




Can you see these are chocolates but shaped in metal tools!! For old tools that have already rust out, it should be nicer than the new one, because it's with cacao powder! But silver one...it's unknown material to make chocolate;) ooooooo...

So, what about your city?? Have you prepared something special for Xmas??

Mouse Opener!

Apple Computer - a famous computer brand which many people crazy about their products. Since 2005, I became one of the user (but I still need to use windows) and I have my first Ipod and Powerbook G4 12". My girlfriend - a only mac user, she has nearly all of the Apple products, from desktop, laptop, Ipod and mouse. Just last month she found that her wireless mouse doesn't work, so as an industrial designer, I need to fix it... Here I would like to share the experience about how to open the mouse step by step:

The old wireless mouse and the new one that I bought her as the birthday gift.

You need to prepare some tools if your fingers are
not thin enough to go into the mouse!

From this step, you need to use the knife to separate the parts as Apple only use glue for the mouse. Its not a easy job as they put many glue...be careful!

This is the mouse's exploded view

Double injection cover with the main components
(The price mainly come from them...)

After open and put the components back together...still I'm not sure how to fix it...due to the mouse run away and fall down to the ground for several times...but this is a good experience to share with all of you! Cheers! (You need to take the risk to open the mouse by yourself!)

*This is my first post for the blog!!!

Link: Apple Computer

designer's carbonara?

Hi! Everybody!! My name is "Ayumi".
I'm an environmental designer from Japan.
I would like to share my experiences through this blog with my collaborator "Eric".
His original name is "Shun Yiu" in Chinese, and he is from Hong Kong.
He is an industrial designer.
We have met at Domus Academy, Master in Business Design(MBD) class in 2006, and we have found that we have totally different perspectives for everything!

Now we are expecting,
"We can do something new that we can't do without one of us..."
because he has everything that I don't have!!!! But I have everything that he doesn't have!!!!

Let's see from now
what will be happen from our collaborations...
We will inform you something that are related to our lifestyle to make you inspired!

Here we can see designer's carbonara...
Eh? What is different from the other carbonara?
You will know when you taste it!

Ciao to our friends!!!!