Data encapsulates our everyday lives, affecting us in both positive and negative ways. This project makes use of your data whilst at The Edinburgh Fringe and creates a personalised poster as a souvenir of your experience.
I wanted to create a personalised souvenir that encompasses the Fringe’s lively nature and traditional, iconic posters. Through the use of an app, users document their festival experience with shows and dates. After they have finished their time at the Fringe, a unique poster is created. Each shape in the design correlates with a show the user has been to, with a large organic shape representing the location of venues throughout the city. The app allows users to customise their poster before ordering, with shapes and colours being adaptable.
Flyers and posters are such an iconic element of the Fringe, however they create tonnes of waste each year. I have decided to create my posters out of recycled flyers and posters from the previous year to help reduce the festival’s overall wastage. This project contributes towards The Fringe Society’s goals of a more eco- friendly fringe whilst providing attendees with a personalised souvenir that they can collect year after year.
Throughout the New Making course, I explored multiple techniques that can be used together to create elements of design that would not otherwise have been possible 50 years ago. The exploration of parametric design was something that I found particularly interesting within the course. Parametric design is ‘a process based on algorithmic thinking that enables the expression of parameters and rules that, together, define, encode and clarify the relationship between design intent and design response’. By defining different parameters, you are able to digitally create intricate shapes, sculptures and structures within a matter of minutes that without the use of technology would take hours and hours of man power, if not, being impossible.
The ability to create these shapes was something that I found very interesting. I started my exploration within the software ‘Processing’. This was something that I had never tried before but saw a similar resemblance to Arduino coding which I have done in the past. Through iteration and exploration, I was able to create an immediate visual, on screen 3D shape that was adaptable and theoretically printable. I struggled to figure out how to actually export the code from Processing as an STL file for printing which led me to try new software.
The second software I tried was ‘Open sCAD’, I found this relatively easy to get to grips with and immediately started experimenting with different shapes whilst watching different tutorials online for help. I felt slightly limited with this software in terms of what I would have liked to make versus what the software would allow me to do, however that may have just been down to my lack of knowledge. One thing that I did appreciate about the Open sCAD software was the easy of exporting an STL for print. This is where I made my first two prints, both iterations of the same parametric shape, made from multiple different sized triangles pieced together. I had to print both structures with scaffolding to support them which unfortunately detracted from the defined, geometric finish I intended.
The most enjoyable part of my parametric exploration was when I started using Grasshopper, a plugin for Rhino. This took a lot of tutorial watching to get the fundamentals and I still feel as if I only know a small portion of the software but it allowed me to create organic shapes with a fluidity and satisfying aesthetic. I found these objects to replicate that of some architecture pieces where there is a juxtaposition between the brutalist nature of the external façade with the fluidity of the shape and structure. I went on to use parametric design within my final artefact where I also put to use the brim created by the 3d print as part of my final shape. Often the adhesion plate is discarded and only used for printing, however I thought it would be interesting to incorporate this into my design itself.
I think that the exploration of parametric design is something that will take a huge amount more practice to learn how to incorporate it into my real-world designs, however as an exploration point of view, I have learnt enough to get me started.
This concept caters for communities that rely on one power source and are all a part of a micro grid system. My product creates a decentralized system that is controlled by the community, allowing ease of distribution of energy between all its members. This removes this ability of a corrupt controller which is often a problem, especially within less economically developed countries. My system, Luthe, has two essential parts for each user, the hub and the wallet. The hub is fed energy by the micro grid and stores your energy for your whole home or business. The wallet then gives the user the ability to withdraw energy from the hub, and then pass it on to other members of the community who may need it more. This is unlike any system which currently exists. The concept of bringing members of the community together with a physical interaction for the exchange of energy creates relationships and ties that would otherwise be lost or carried out over a screen.
“We took a grandfather clock, made the base with an openable door. Inside there are 3 washers with images to help kids with some stories”
Razzmataz: Alexandra Ross, Chris Hardman, Maria Khartonova, Preston Kneen
“A code breaking activity which leads the kids to prompts placed around the bus. It will have an “address book” which which houses the codes and the idea is that each number corresponds to a letter; once all the letters are found, they will have a word to unscramble, this will be the place on the bus have to go to in order to get their prompt”
Inferior Five: Guillaume, Ladina, Vasilisa
“We modified the chair by adding a table that flips up, added a helmet that ‘connects you to the universe’. We also created an activity that involves the children picking cards that represent their real life superpowers to build confidence and a sense of identity”
Old Shadows: Yifu Liu, Zidong Lin Jonathan Hazel Katie Mcgroarty
“It’s a machine to find hidden password to get in the bus.”
Chicken Nuggets: Erica, Amos, Chris, Brad
“We created a system for the bus. This is a game the children will play once they step onto the bus. It will allow them to create their own superhero while applying their reading comprehension skills. This is more of a platform for how the bus would be designed and ran, for all the books on the bus will correspond with the questions within the game”
Magic: Fangqian, Findlay
“We created a superhero gun, where the children can create their own superhero logo, and then by cutting it out and sliding it into the slot in the gun, they can then turn on a torch which will then shine their logo onto a wall or surface like in the batman films”
Kapow: Ben Manders, Harvey Everson, Shannen Tioniwar, Niamh Mundy
“We created the Super-Word Cannon. It’s an interactive game for groups of around five that helps spark creative stories for the children. By firing out words from different categories; e.g Places, Verbs, Actions, Objects, Adjectives and Bonus words the children catch one of each to inspire stories around their own superhero. It’s aim is to be a fun, exciting and interactive game with the outcome of an original short-story created by each child.”
