FEEDBACK, MATERIAL TESTING, WHO AM I?
Another drizzly day here in Portland. Not really any rain, just consistently overcast. I love it!
The view from the MAX station by the hotel
In morning meeting we started off with a little bit of criteria that we should think about for our products. What is the business impact of the product? Is it beautiful? Is it original? How well does it function? What social good is created by it? Although we are not necessarily at the final point where we can judge our products yet (we haven't even started with the visuals), these are good points to keep in mind.
What I want to do better than yesterday: Understanding
Goal for today: Clean and Organize
Book of the day: Buy-ology by Martin Lindstrom. The truth and lies about why we buy.
Quote of the day: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit." – Aristotle
Website of the day: theshoethatgrows.org. Shoes that grow with the feet for five years.
Bruce Lee Complete Creative #2 & 3: "A style without a style." and "Fluid, free-flowing like water."
Bruce Lee Creative Process #3: "Be formless."
Bruce Lee Creative Consistency #3: "I try to live freely from moment to moment, letting things happen and adjusting to them."
Work stations in the MLAB.
After we finished the morning meeting, most of us went upstairs for a pitch-back session, very similar to critiques in college. The only difference was that this was only for written concepts and ideas, and that it lasted for three and a half hours. My biggest takeaways were that, in this industry, the consumer we are designing for needs to be very, very specific. And although it is difficult to do, we MUST remove ourselves from our consumers. We are not the consumers. We are not the consumers. We are not the consumers. Although I wasn't presenting, I was very active in the critique. Finally, in the big group, I felt that I had something to say: something that needed to be heard.
The mentality of a CMD.
After breaking for lunch, all of the CMDs and most of the footwear and brand designers had a lecture on material testing. I knew that there was a science to materials. But I had no idea just how much science was involved. Testing new materials, in particular, is one of the most thorough tasks of materials. I learned about stoll abrasion testing, a way of testing the strength of the face and base of a material. After stoll abrasion testing, the material would move into physical testing, performance testing, and consistency testing. One of the interesting facts that I learned today was that, in footwear, there is no breathability testing.
We had some free time after the material testing lecture and most of the groups met to discuss notes from the pitch-back session and to steer us in the right direction. We ended the day with a lecture on resumes and portfolios. The biggest points I left with were "Who are you?" and "What are you selling?"
Notes in my workstation. Breaking our companies into brand and visual cues. More to come.