Looking at how people live within an urban environment and then kind of like taking
different aspects of the research and applying that to my design.
Hi I'm Harry Skinner, I'm a Product Furniture designer, just finished my third year. This
is my creation, Para-seat. It's a bit of parasitic design that is a bag that attaches to urban
supports and it can turn into a swing seat that I'm sporting at the moment. It was a
really fun project, I think the research process was kind of one of the funnest aspects of
the project.
At the start of this project we were given a word to begin with because I think a lot
of designers struggle with a place to start with, so I was given 'camping.'
Initially I was attracted to this stereotypical way of people camping with their family, in
the countryside in a tent, and they're all playing frisbee and stuff. I kind of
wanted to go away from that and I kind of brought camping to the city. So then I was
looking at how you could apply that way of thinking, of adapting to a new environment
and how that would work in a city environment.
So I took seating as one of the main areas to look at. What I want to do is have
bags and to make the bag multi-functional almost, and for it to become a seat with a
simple kind of unzipping it and strapping it on to things.
The urban environment has so many different areas that can be kind of, can be inhabited
and I think if, to find a seat, a seat in the city is, is difficult enough so I think,
I mean this has the potential for you to relax and take a seat wherever you want.
What I want to do is, is have almost a collection, themed on this idea of adapting to the urban
environment. It is Product Furniture Design so this is kind of, almost very fashion based.
I had a lot of help from upstairs in the Fashion department in terms of techniques and using
their, using their facilities in terms of the industrial sewing machines and it
was a really interesting insight into how stuff gets made in different kind of disciplines.
Another project I've been working on is called the Placebo Project. It's very different
to the bag project that I'm working on at the moment where it's very based on research
and also it's almost like a kind of packaging and graphic project. The Placebo Project is
kind of based on this really interesting research I found out about the Placebo Effect. Initially
I was looking at medicine and the history of medicine and then kind of latched onto
this really cool theory that potentially people could be taking kind of fake dummy pills,
like sugar pills, and they could be working and be more effective than real medicine.
Using all this research into how colour has an effect on people's healing, how the shape
of a pill and the intensity of the colour can have the effect on its performance. I
kind of played off that, so I'm offering no side effects. I'm almost trying to sell
it now! I'm offering no side effects, it's drug free and it's cheaper. It's kind of this
idea of the power of the mind over healing other than the power of drugs.
Working with tutors who are in the field of design at the moment, and some of the tutors
we're working with are very experienced and they've been in the industry for like ten/fifteen
years and getting information from them about what they did, how they got set up and stuff,
I think that was really interesting and we got to work really closely with our tutors
throughout all, both of our projects. I think they had, they had some really useful information
about how they might have got started and you kind of see some of their first work as
well and how it's changed and I think that was really useful as well.
And as well as new designers where we get an opportunity to showcase our work to more
of a kind of industry business environment I think that's kind of very beneficial. I
think Kingston has set us up to be prepared for that sort of thing.
I think right at the beginning like, I initially thought I was going to be doing furniture
but I've had the freedom to kind of obviously do something like a bag and then I've been
working on my other project which is very graphics based and very research based and
it was almost a packaging project so I thought I'd end up with kind of a chair and a table
but I haven't and that's the good things about this course, you have the freedom to explore
all these different disciplines.
At this point in time I'm kind of just setting up a blog so that's where I can showcase my
work. It's almost like an online portfolio, so if anyone asks about my work I can say
this is my link and you can find it on here.
Kingston really helped me out in that way. I think especially in the final year you become
a bit more kind of minded that these creations and these projects are going to be something
that you're going to use as a stepping point into industry or into selling yourself. I
think the first two years are more kind of finding yourself as a designer but I think
in the last stages, I mean we got opportunities to work with Pascal who's a tutor here, that
really kind of helped us set out our portfolios and sort out our business cards and blogs
and everything so it was almost a bit frightening at first, I think it still is a bit now for
some people, that this is the time where you're using these projects almost as an opportunity
to kind of get your foot in the door.
Experience in the workshop I think was really good for our course, especially with use of
all the machines we learned a lot of new techniques and materials as well.
All round it's a very good experience - we have some really interesting lectures that
John Harrison has set up called the Toolkit Lectures, and we get a lot of designers that
he worked with at the RCA to come in and speak to us about what they're working on and stuff
and I think that's been a really good insight into what we might have to prepare ourselves
for.