Phone Disection

3 sustainable strategies:
   
design modular phones for easy assembly/disassembly to make recycling easier

find material alternatives to the toxic heavy metals found in so many electronics

Design phones that can be upgraded rather than tossed as soon as there is something better

Megafactories: IKEA

It was interesting that the Megafactories episode started with an explanation of IKEA's roots which are very far from megafactory.  IKEA got it's start as a service by a young man how made furniture that people could order from a catalog, and then had it delivered. This process of building and delivering created some of the ideals that makes IKEA successful today. These are making affordable, light weight furniture that can be packed flat and assembled at home to reduce shipping cost and hardship. Today IKEA has expanded that vision to the worlds largest furniture supply company with 300 stores, 42 distribution centers and over a hundred suppliers all over the world. IKEA has patented some methods of making strong light weight furniture such as a specific form of veneered particle board that often incorporates the scrap material created by other factories and wood panels with a cardboard honey comb interior structure for support. These make for products that can be carried packed and shipped by customers in their cars, dramatically reducing cost. For this same purpose all of IkEA's products are designed to be modular so that parts can be quickly made in the factories and then easily assembled at home by the average person. Factories create incredible quantities of products, but according to IKEA any given factory may only produce somewhere around 20 different types of product for the sake of streamlining.

Hallmark

     It was a little bit surreal to be in the hallmark factory after having seen thousands of hallmark cards, advertisements, and even hallmark movie specials throughout the course of my life. Our tour began with a general explanation of the primary products that they make in this Hallmark plant. They described that they buy high quality paper from sustainable forests in the U.S. so that their cards have a higher quality of color and resiliency (cards that don't come out curved). We were shown samples of their "flitter" (glitter), "flock" (fuzz or hair texture), "virko" (thermographic printing of gloss) and foil, as well as heat sensitive inks for customizable cards they make in smaller volumes.
     Their cards are designed and then they create dies to cut the blanks for each card, for the sake of being able to make multiple card lines at once, they then attach multiple cards dies to one board that will cut all of the cards. Quantities of less than 25,000 cards are cut with a magnesium die to be cost effective, but lines with above 25,000 cards to produce use the more expensive brass dies, which last longer.
     After the cards are cut most of the way and pressed out of their stacks of sheets using a scrap press, some cards are sent to be embossed with the foil. This process involves adhering the foil to the card and then being pressed in a die with positive and negative sides to create a texture pattern on the front of the card. Other cards are sent to be either flocked or flittered. Flitter is the simpler of the two and involves applying glue spraying with flitter, sucking off excess, and sending the card through ovens to set. Flocking is a similar process but is done in a temperature and humidity controlled environment for better results, and even uses static charge to make the flock stand up on cards that need that specific texture. Hallmark also colors, cuts, folds and adheres paper into envelopes in one dramatic and fast machine we got to see working. Aside from the cards, this hallmark plant also did large scale screen prints onto paper but this process was not active at the time and seemed to be a relatively small portion of their work.

El Dorado

While our trip to El Dorado was shorter than many would have liked it was not a total loss. We were afforded the opportunity to see inside a successful, once-but-no-longer-startup, architecture firm built by people from similar backgrounds and communities to ourselves. it was interesting to see how they modified an old industrial space with modular furniture of their own design to help make a collaborative and creative environment. El Dorado does work for everyone from individuals to municipalities and public works, and after perusing perusing their website it seems they prioritize sustainable, industrial modern works that benefit the community. My carpool group missed most of what was apparently a brief talk about the fabrication area of El Dorado, but we were informed that they can do much of the metal and glass works necessary to make scale mockups for clients to experience specific aspects of potential designs, which was surprising to me based on the overall small volume of space available at their location. A valuable piece of advice we were left with was to be mindful of the information we consume and to prioritize knowing whats going on in the design world in order to understand where our skills lie in the scheme of things, and also to use it as motivation to raise the bar for ourselves and to challenge those we grow with to reach higher as well.

Function and Personality

The first chapter seems to focus on the need for designers to use the connections and connotations that materials have to fully realize the intended purpose of whatever object is being designed. This is important in humanizing the work. The idea of making things more "human" is underlined by the introduction to the chapter which basically states that as humans, we are significantly different from most animals in our ability to see more into and about objects than just its color or form, but also intention, use, environment, permanence or impermanence. They use the example of a violin which is a well designed object for it's function, its beautiful and decorative form, and the relatively simple and holistic materials that make up this instrument that makes raw acoustic music from the vibration of these materials. It seems that the meat and potatoes of the section is to highlight the need for designers to be conscious in all choices and aspects of their design, and to bridge the gap between design and production by taking into account all of the things that are important in an object, all of these things that we, as humans, can "see"beneath the skin, and translate that into tangible produceable product.

Barry Plastics

Barry was very cool if for no other reason than the sheer output volume we experienced first hand. After we had safety glasses, hard hats, hair nets, beard nets, ear plugs, smocks (they were serious about safety) we were led to the companies printing facilities. This process was very different that what I expected and the machines looked like large circular airplane engines with radial pistons firing in slow motion. Each "piston" was just adding pressure to to a specific paint roller that was associated with an ink well. the inks were made in house and capable of mixing to make any pantone system color. Rollers had a plate with a specific aspect of the design to be printed. the product (cups) came through, were painted, dried in a tenth of a second with UV light, and sent on their way at a rate of hundreds of thousands per day.
     Next was thermoforming, which was arguable the most impressive process. Here huge hoppers of plastic pellets were heated to extrude gigantic sheets that were cooled and then reheated to specific pliability before being stamped with a two sided dye press that was probably 30 feet tall. It was then cooled, and cut. scraps are shredded and returned to the hoppers for minimal waste in the production process. When asked about the output of McFlurry cups(that's what they were forming that day) they answered in tons, which didn't help at all but showed how ridiculous the output really was.
     Finally we saw injection molding which wasn't as interesting to look at due to slower production rates and more thoroughly enclosed machinery, but it was interesting to learn the specifics of the process. I had no idea that the injected material was forced into the molds with hundreds of tons of force and that the molds had to me internally cooled in order to have the products set fast enough. I also learned that injection molded plastics are harder to recycle back into raw material because the process puts so much stress on the chemical makeup. But according to Barry, our tour guide this seeming lack of manufacturing efficiency is negated by how little waste material is formed in the process compared to thermoforming.

What influences design?

To summarize the textbook, the primary force in influencing product design in a nation where product design is a major industry (developed country, free market economy) is desire. Wants and needs control economies, and in most developed countries, most people have most of their actual needs met. therefore want people want is a huge factor, and -- it seems to me -- a rather cyclical factor. Much of what people perceive as needs come from advertising and media that play on the idea of creating a better life. Fashion, color ways, patterns, and line styles are in constant flux so product designers often use the fashionable aesthetic in conjunction with a novel improvement on former products or processes to create desire. An emerging aesthetic is that which plays towards mindfulness, eco friendliness, and efficiency. This comes in the context of environmental degradation and massive material science advances, so one could argue that environmental factors and scientific pursuits are major design influences as well. People today are more conscious of what happens at the end of the life of their product, so when a product can be made cost effectively with recycleable material it becomes a selling point for desire, more than it is a necessary tool for sustainability. So the cycle repeats. There is eco conciousness, and new materials, so a product is advertised as the future, as better, as necessary. People see this happening, recognize the fashion and desire to be a part of it, creating a demand. This is a cynical explanation for an example of a good and beneficial trend, but it is nonetheless true. Even our desire for a sheer volume of things, useful or no, is a manufactured symptom of a consumerist economy.