In Response to Gary Hustwit's Objectified

Out of the topics covered in Gary Hustwit's Objectified the idea that struck me the most both in terms of intrigue and inspiration came from the designer Karim Rashid. In his words, "Design is about mass production . . . and I try everything I can in a mass market to really change the goods that people who know nothing about design, or the people who say they don't care about design, or the people who that their world should have contemporary goods in it. Those are the people I think design can have such an amazing effect on their lives". As well he speaks of things he owned such as a speaker system and an alarm clock which the very design of could instill him with specific emotions. Rashid's section in the documentary further strengthened my belief that there should be no items within society that have little or no design consideration put into them. All objects should have a visual personality or a story or something else about them that makes them more than what they are originally intended to do. With this in mind I set out to make a list of everyday objects which seldom get the attention of designers. Out of this list the product I found to be visual porridge in almost every example was the clothing iron. Currently if you were to walk into a store to purchase an iron you would see a plethora of identical looking slabs of metal and plastic which create no visual sense of movement or flow. At this point I knew that the household clothing iron would be what I attempted to spice up, and that my design would be based around giving it motion through the observer's eye movement. The first idea that came to me — I can't answer why — was the image of tropical birds. It seemed like a fun enough challenge so I stuck with it. 

Typically the water reserve is something that is tucked away and hidden on the vast majority of irons, so one easy way to make mine unusual was to make the tank almost entirely exposed. This also helps to create a "face" for the bird idea. By simply relocating a single essential piece of an iron it already stands out from the rest of the crowd.

on the topic of required pieces, a built-in stand is an essential aspect of any good iron so of course that was something which needed to be included. The stand section also presented a fair amount of freedom in terms of making this iron unique. With this freedom I attempted to loosely work in imagery of feathers coming off the rear of the virtual bird's head. As well I wanted to make the temperature selection wheel a large visual aspect of the design both for the aesthetics of the piece and to aid those with weak eyes in the operation of the iron. Overall, while not entirely realistic, I believe that this design solution was fairly successful in what I set out to create. It is an incredibly interesting experience to go into the design process without an extremely developed idea of what you are going to make. I feel that only sticking to a loose idea for this project and leaving room for improvisation was good for it and fits in with the character of what I was trying to design in the first place.