What Influences Product Design

Thinking about the environment, cost of materials, and the technology available is what designers do, its really our job. We take what we have and what we see and we create a vision to create something new. The aesthetics come last, because all great design solves a problem, or at least tries to. It frustrates me to work with simply aesthetics so often, negating research, problem solving, and world influences. Design isn't just limited to "10 factors of good design" because design is infinite, however, good designers can balance all of what is thrown at them and is able to see what we have available and what we need, then creating something useful and something beautiful. 

Functionality and Personality

The beginning of the book talks about why people buy products, and how designers can influence the consumer market. There is a paragraph about looking forward that is awesome, it is very inspiring to me as a designer because, like the paragraph on new materials and new design, design can go anywhere and really help move the world around us forward. It really inspired me to start looking, not at what is old and inspiring, but what is new, because if we look at the new and forget the past, then our thought processes aren't clouded by previous ideas and inventions.

Hutamaki

Hutamaki is an industrial manufacturer from Finland, North American Headquartered in De Soto KS, they pump out plastic containers and Tupperware and dinnerware similar to Barry plastics. Their technology is giant, industrial grade injection molders and thermoformers similar to Barry as well. I drive past Hutamaki almost every week so it was interesting getting to see what was inside and how it all worked. Being that they serve such large clients, the process, like Barry, was very fast.

Lawrence Paper Company

Lawrence Paper Company was my favorite trip we went on, although it probably had on of the more boring products. LPC make corrugated cardboard and it's related things, like displays and what not.

They bring in paper in bulk, and by bulk I mean up to 8,000 pound rolls of paper. These were the biggest rolls of paper I had ever seen! They take this paper and put it in a machine that treats the paper with steam to loosen it up, then it coats the paper in a "custom" glue, then it molds and applies a second, or third, or fourth, depending on the type of cardboard needed, layer of paper that makes the wrinkled inside of the cardboard, then another layer that is the other side. That's it, its just cardbaord, however the process is all done at 400 feet per minute, which is blazing!

The best part is the glue, this is no Elmer's glue, no Gorilla glue, no, not even SUPER glue, its just water and flower and a keeping agent. That's it. It's essentially gravy. Literally they have giant 2-4 ton bags of white flower that they mix with warm water. So the next time that you go and look at a cardboard display or a cardboard box, remember that it's probably edible as long as it isn't painted, which even then is non-toxic.

LPC also prints and assembles the displays, even filling them sometimes. Printing is a normal process with 8 primary colors that creates a palette of thousands of colors that can be exactly matched to a found color that the buyer wants.

Barry Plastics

Barry Plastics is a injection molding and thermoforming plastics company in Lawrence Kansas. They are one of three or five factories operated by Barry in the United States. They injection and thermoform plastic cups and tubs for products you use every day.

Their forming technologies are GIANT thermoformers and long assembly-line-esque injection moulding machines.

Their cutting technology is built into each machine, it cuts what it stamps or molds.

This was probably my second favorite trip. It was really cool to see the Betty Crocker containers being stamped and the McDonalds cups being formed. Although the process is pretty simple, its heat and plastic ran through molds. That's about it. The plastic comes raw in the form of beads and is heated up and squirted into a sheet, then that sheet is heated and sucked into a mold. Or it is injected straight into the mold and the sheet part is skipped. Pretty simple, however its very large scale, fast and loud! :)

National Georgraphic Mega Factories

The National Geographic video we watched on Mega Factories was pretty cool, it was about Ikea and their manufacturing facility in Sweden. I like manufacturing and factories which is a weird thing to like, but I just think it's cool how it all runs together so smoothly and so quickly. The video talked about how the composite in the MDF or particle board that they make their furniture from is a custom mixture that has been thoroughly tested, and all of their products undergo testing to make sure that they function properly. R&D is one of the most important factors in creating a business that is going to last. Creating your products to not only look better but to continually perform better is going to impress the buyers and keep impressing them. That's what I like about Ikea that I didn't know before. I honestly thought that what you bought from there was cheap and for a reason. However it is actually decent quality. Other than that the video was just about a giant factory and how long it had been there and how big it was, which was huge.

El Dorado

El Dorado inc was honestly a waste of time. I missed the first ten minutes of the guy showing us his small shop below his work area. El Dorado is a architecture firm that used to assist contractors in building parts of the work in-house, however they are getting away from that aspect and moving toward just architecture. They worked in an open office which I liked, as there aren't very many walls and no one has an individual office. Oh, and the guy lectured us over being on time when he was late to his own business call and we weren't allotted enough time to drive from Lawrence to Kansas City Mo.