Flat or wrapped machines

All the parts of this sewing have been polished and nickel-plated. Every reference to hand making has been avoided, although this is the most labour-intensive work Marloes Ten Bhomer said she has ever made. The piece deals with the trust humans have in machines.



This next piece contrasts well with the polished sewing machine. Would the artist say that it contains references to a labour-intensive wrapping process? The artist motive for making this beer bar came from seeing a documentary on a meat-factory. This factory made one big piece of meat out of little pieces of meat by gluing it together. Afterwards it was being presented as one big rump steak.
"What I find very interesting about this is the way that people deal with information. Something is not what it seems to be - Marloes Ten Bhomer"

This work by artist Marloes Ten Bhomer stands as an example on how social and individual percepts can be taken for granted in everyday design. The artist usually revisits these percepts and sometimes codifies them into material form. Last year I gave a lecture on semiotic principles for practical design that takes in consideration the visual aesthetic production process from the perception, the conception, the inception and the reception of information. I see a lot of table top interfaces in interaction design. Their references should be made clearer. It would strengthen the definition and context of the project and clarify their research goals. I find the analysis of this process very useful to organize how social and individual percepts are codified into material form.

Posted by Cati Vaucelle
♥ Architectradure
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The making of toys for everybody

A secret firm: Charlie's chocolate factory.


A toy plant in China.

A reality on toys: a large quantity of them needs to be mass-produced. MaZm offers a visual documentary taken in one of Chinese toy making plant unique in its optimism, clean-looking feel while featuring the serialized cherished toys and the 'scandalous' working conditions.

Notes about James Marston Fitch: "The Esthetics of Plenty" 1961

There is a crisis in design. Our design is flabby. Because we are too rich? Too wealthy? It seems that high levels of artistic accomplishment occur only in wealthy cultures...
Massproduction has made the consumer into an ignorant. He has to make his choice between a range of limited products and cannot discuss with the craftman and neither the craftman can be informed about how to improve a product. Modern mass production has succeed in filling our material needs but with artifacts whose esthetic quality is ordinarily quite low. The limits of time and space have been destroyed. Wisdom from a very narrow range of materials and techniques is gone. This wisdom made craftmen know the products intimately and the consumer learning them. Our material and culture discoveries have destroyed our comfortable local esthetic and the concept of relativity has been applied to our esthetic standard (the severe crisis in foundation in the 19th)
It relates to William Morris question: Why do high rates of productivity and high esthetic standards seem so often to be mutually exclusive?All is designed to maintain a minimum of material quality with more security, more sanitary. The soviet consumer seem to be even less demanding than its american counterpart. The soviet design has no more leverage on societ manufacture than the us and is as much a prisoner of his managment.
Is there a solution? exploration of a new kind of integration of modern mechanized production? Maybe it is possible to combine modern production and local knowledge. Folk knowledge could be preserved, and should be preserved and could be combined to the standards of performance.
The escalator effect in which satiety is never overtaken makes is necessary a kind of education: that of learning to be an adult, or in fact to be human...as the psychologist Norman Brown would say it would involve the reconstruction not only of human society but of human counsciousness as well.

By Cati in Product Design

notes from Mass customization, the new frontier in business competition by Pine, 1995

Here are some main ideas I took from the book

In the emerging system of mass customization, firms have thrown away the old paradigm of Mass Production by creating a variety and customization through flexibility and quick responsiveness. This is a new logic more suited to a world in which stability and control can no longer be maintained.

Creation of new flavors of similar products with short development cycles, e.g. cereals do not last much longer than the popular movies they tied to, and the idea is less demand for each individual product but increasingly stable demand for the company. The production system is driven by market and consumers and must produce a number of different, high quality products; production of affordable goods and services with enough variety and customization that nearly everyone finds exactly what they want. Instead of large & homogeneous markets, with low costs and consistent quality in mass production, mass customization offers heteregeneous niches and high quality goods and services.

In mass production low costs are achieved through economy of scale and in mass customization low costs are achieved primarily through economy of scope (a single process to produce a greater variety of products). Then this notion of EQQ, economic order quantity; for instance when customer desires are changing rapidly or demand is undertain, the cost savings of eliminating changeover time can be tremendous. Then as Stan Davis says "The general message is, the more a company can deliver customized goods on a mass basis, relative to their competition, the greater is their competitive advantage".
However like mass production, mass customization generally produces in high volume, has low unit costs, and often (but not always) relies on high degrees of automation.