Iverything

 Intention

My intention is to steal Apple’s copy right, borrow their design elements and concepts, and apply them to objects other than electronics. I like the way that Steve Jobs simplifies everything and creates elegancy with simple coloring and clean design. I want to apply the same methodology to objects around us so that everything will look clean and futuristic.

Context

Design has become a core component of tech products and the connection between art and technology - the link between imagination and logic - is becoming increasingly important and is the basis of many innovative products to appear such as the Apple II computer, which proved to people that an electronic hardware can be artistic as well. Everything can be designed in a way such that it appeals to people’s eyes. So the simplicity of Apple’s design, which attracted so many people’s attention, might also be applied to various objects around us and give people a fresh sense of novelty.

Process

I will primarily edit a photo of a room and re-paint it in Apple’s style. Also I will put some designs I make for different kinds of objects beside the main photo. The challenge is that it’s hard to fit the design with the object’s surrounding unless the style of everything else in the frame is in concordance with it.

Product

The outcome is a collage of different objects that are re-designed with Apple's philosophy. I will basically use photoshop to revise certain parts of an existing design.  For the final outcome, I re-painted and re-arranged a colorful room to Apple theme and followed the concept to design bags and fashion.

Critique

It’s very likely to be artistically pleasant since the style has already been used by apple and has got huge success. But the critics may criticize that the objects are oversimplified because they only have one style and have no diversity. Other critics might say that as long as one wants to make things simple, he/she can design something similar to my project.

My response to the critiques would be first of all, simplicity does not represent the absolute meaning of "simple". It is the result of careful consideration to reduce the redundancy of existing prototypes. The word "simple", when applied to design, can sometimes mean immature or coarse. But carefully conducted design that aims for simplicity will yield elegant products. Secondly, in my personal reflection I will talk about the difficulty to keep something simple without compromising the functionality of the product.

Personal Reflection

I can identify the valuable elements from an existing style and apply them to a different medium without creating ambivalence. After finish editing & designing either setting or objects, I start to realize the essence of apple's design principle. Though simplicity is the primary idea in many of Apple's product, what it really explores is the beauty of pragmatism - no superfluous ornament and surplus functions. On top of that, the product is designed in a way such that it looks pleasant and is in concordance with the principle of simplicity. That's what made Apple II computer a revolutionary machine in computer history, which is the fact that Apple products have no complicated outlook nor sketchy structure that usually resulted from limited functionality. The ingenuity of the designer stands out because it takes care of both sides: simple but not sketchy, aesthetically pleasant but not complicated. When I was designing the bag, I found it difficult to keep both two standards from getting compromised by each other.