Comments on project 2

http://guyuliang1990.blogspot.com/2010/10/upcycling-unwanted.html

http://stellaanddesign.blogspot.com/2010/10/miss-magpie.html

http://snailmina.blogspot.com/2010/10/ides1031-project-2-upcycling-2010-10-26.html

http://cocodesignforever.blogspot.com/2010/10/project-two-upcycling.html

http://jharleydesign.blogspot.com/2010/10/rationale.html

Project 2- Upcycling

Rationale- Seat belt iPad case

The iPad case I made is from seat belts in cars that will be scraped.

Statistic shows that from July 2008 to September 2009, 14.8millions of cars are scraped in the USA, which has the largest amount of vehicles around the world. Moreover, 70millions of cars are produced all over the world, and the average life of each one is around 15 years, so that the amount of dead seat belts is enormous, and they can be easily recycled from local car scrap.

From the environmental angle, as the seat belts are made of plastics, the will be taken to landfill and it can take thousands of years for them to break down, so choose seat belt as the raw material will reduce the pollution to the environment. What’s more, the whole case is purely handmade, combined by needle work, no glue involved, totally environmentally friendly.

As a matter of fact, seat belts are well-made industrial products, they are extremely strong and can last long, even longer than the iPad its self, so it is the idea material for accessories for protecting. As the screen is the most fragile part of an iPad, it needs better protection, a folding technique is applied on the front surface of the case, this will create space above the screen, absorb energy when impact. Four pockets are made on the back, user can put paper in the lager pockets and SIM cards in the smaller one. Two buttons on the top can secure the iPad inside the case.

In conclusion, this seat belt iPad case is totally environmentally friendly, achieve the up cycling purpose, and it really does its job: protecting your iPad.

Video Reflection- Design For Life

Design for life is a TV show made by the world’s most famous designer Philippe Starck, it is basically a show of Philippe selecting one young designer from 12 candidates he already picked up before to work for him for 6 months, who will help Philippe change the world by designing new chairs, and it's every young designer's dream.


First, Philippe sends them to the supermarket with a simple task: to buy things that represent function, ecology or gender. The candidates have to prove that they can think in the right way, that they share Philippe's philosophy and understanding of the world. One person came back from the supermarket with condoms to represent male and female, one brought a bicycle back to present the green object, a battery the environmentally unsound one. There's nothing really wrong with their selections, but in Philippe’s point of view, their choices are unimaginative, uninspiring, lazy, they've been too narrow-minded about the task, too literal, too English. Two people ended their journey here.

The second task is that they had to design something that would benefit humanity. Neither round produced anything interesting. In this task, I learnt that whatever we design, we should consider target market as one of the most important thing, the thing we design should be appropriate for the right people.



The third task is to design a product that is ethical, ecological, democratic, for daily use and is non electronic. I really like the way Mike used to design. As he is designing a product for blind people, he blind folds himself for the whole day so that he can know how blind people feel and what they really need. This is what we designer should do, think of the people we are designing for.



This TV show is really beneficial, especially for people like us who just started their design careers, we can learn things from the world’s most famous designer, as a experienced designer, he knows what people really needs, what we should do and so on. I wish I can have a chance to meet and talk to people like Philippe Starck to inspire me.