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@sizzling-lamchop
Thank you. Have a Nice Day! | The Development
A studio project by @austinlonie, @dacreativereza and Jolie.
Final submission
To research, conducting focus groups, prototyping, refining, development and installation to the final submission.
Studio Week 12 - 14
Ya girl is about to summarise three weeks of work according to her vague memory of it and lack of photos - leggo!
Week 12
All I remember was us three working our butts off on assignments for our electives. In addition to this I had a meltdown and poor Franz and Kelsea (and now that I think about it Reza and Austin too lol) had an earful about how crap group work in my electives were. We were on track with studio though - animation done, door hanger design drafted and branches were sourced. Door hangers were laser cut later on the week but we did not make enough. Will be returning to do some more. Sorry and thank you Matt.
Week 13
Our intended branches started shedding bark so we had to look for others at our local forest - Albert Park. Poked Reza in the face a few times. By accident I must mention. I was no longer crying over my elective assignments - yipee. Moved furniture and painted some walls. Kicked a table and bruised - no biggie. Stole a table from the 9th floor - no biggie. Started installing. Did some vinyl cut outs. Came into uni after a 4am shift at work to put these vinyls up. Fixed our software issue. Created our two headpieces. Set up is somewhat finished. Boom. Photo below.
Spent the last few days writing our statements. Just completed and submitted. Sizzle sizzle.
Studio Week 11
The team and I had set ourselves a fake deadline for Week 12 at the beginning of the semester. This leaves us with two weeks to ‘trouble shoot’. The animation was completed and rendered on Monday. Austin and I went ahead to buy full sheets of our coloured filters.
We tested our animation on screen once again to find the best picture settings for our filters to work. As we had been using an LG this whole time, we tried a Panasonic however the results were not good thus we will stick with an LG. We have noted and specifically asked for an LG screen on our form submission for assessment and showcase.
We settled on a name for our project - having being nameless for 11 weeks - to “Thank you. Have a Nice Day!” This refers to the iconic and nostalgic plastic bag design:
Austin and I made a small head start with all the smaller elements we need to work on such as the photobooth, take home items and filters. Slowly and surely things are falling into place and I am looking forward to the final showcase.
Studio Week 8 - 10
Week 8
After our last get together during the break, Austin and Reza began to power through all the drawing elements. Austin would then compile these drawings into our landscape and upload it to drive for me to begin animating. It was a tedious job getting the drawings at the right scale and thickness of lines and also the composition of where the drawings went was essential. Bad elements must have an opposite in the good world. For example a landfill in the bad world is overlaid with a lush native forest in the good.
Drawings were slowly being completed however there was no rush, as I was completely new to After Effects so it gave me time to stumble through it and work things out myself.
Week 9
Things were starting to take shape and we were able to test our filters properly - having more detailed drawings. We noticed lines that crossed over each other completely vanished with either filter creating odd white spaces in our animation. We played with blending modes to fix this. The tv screens were also showing different colours to my computer screen and as a result we spent time fiddling with the tv screen settings to get the colours showing at its purest form.
Drawings at this stage were still being produced. The more elements I added to the landscape, the more chaotic and laggy my laptop got. The visual chaos was welcomed as without filters it is hard to decipher what is being shown.
Week 10
Mid Week 9 I went down to Wellington to attend WoW. The boys had completed all the drawing by Monday - all that was left was for me to animate. I however had last minute things occur thus I did not complete animation until I got back. I completed animations by Tuesday studio however there were a few things that needed adjusting such as the train. With a majority of the animation being complete, Austin and I tested and found the perfect screen settings and blending modes for our filters to completely cancel out the required colours and the result is amazing.
Excuse the small gif don’t want to give away too much :)
A Large-Scale Flocked Steel Mural Accented With Live Foliage by Frank Plant
Studio | The Break
In our 14 week timeline, we had scheduled our two weeks break to focus on completing prototyping and production. So far we have been on track with our timeline and hope to meet our fake deadline - 2 weeks before submission. This will give us time to fine-tune details and room for any troubleshooting to do.
Break Week 1
We came together on Monday to draft out our landscapes. We incorporated elements that occurred from all our focus groups along with trends in the world to shape our Utopia and Dystopia Auckland. Austin began the rough draft of the landscape.
Reza also began the prototype for the door hanger reminders as part of a keepsake we will be offering with our exhibition. I produced an initial bag helmet we will be using - which has been done so that any alarm bells for health and safety issues are removed. Our feedback we received in class Week 7 suggested our theme was ‘weak’, thus we spent some time discussing our theme and intentions of our exhibition, to create and solidifying our idea with our research we have done for 3 weeks to back it all up.
Week 2
With a rough drawing completed and better quality cellophane, we tested how well the colours cancelled out as well as details of the drawings. This was all done on a bigger screen which we hope to be using at showcase. We realised that the cellophane was just not doing a good enough job and sought out for higher quality thicker ‘cellophane’ used in theatres as light filters.
After a quick Google search, I found a place quite close by uni that sold these light filters by the roll. A quick walk down the road got ourselves a swatch booklet - which we found at least 4 different shades that did the job of colour cancelling.
We have narrowed it down to a couple of shades, but will wait for more drawings to be completed before making a purchase as we found the tv screen displayed the colours differently from Austin’s laptop.
The elements of our city were divvied up between Austin and Reza and I will be doing my best to add the little animations we will have in our project. Two more bag helmets were prototyped today and was worn by me for 10 mins and I’m still alive :)
GreenPrint Studios Austin, Jolie and Reza
Studio | Week 7 Presentation
@austinlonie and @dacreativereza
I was somewhat left frustrated after our presentation as some of the feedback we received, we have already researched or prototyped to mitigate any problems. However due to the time limit we were unable to communicate our doings as well as our concept properly. The team and I are confident with our concept and plan to go through with our idea regardless.
Plastic bags will be gone by next year - choose a topic that has more longevity.
“Your project will no longer be relevant next year when there are no more plastic bags.”
Yes plastic bags will be gone by next year and that’s great news. Our project however is not solely just about the plastic bag ban. The multiple case studies we’ve done can tell you that New Zealand is far behind other countries in terms of getting our waste and sustainability sorted. Plastic bags are only the tip of the iceberg and through our project, we are using plastic bags as a literal tool to unveil a better future; as this ban can be seen as the first step towards a greener future for New Zealand.
Plastic bags put over people’s heads are a big no-no.
The audience showcase brings in are usually mature people and sometimes these mature people bring their kids. We expect these mature people to know the dangers of plastic bags over their heads. We also expect them not to allow their kids try it. We have also created prototypes to remove any sort of danger such as cutting the bag short to fall above the nose, thus suffocation is a no-no.
The irony behind the plastic bag helmet is that people are so caught up with their own health and safety, yet the real consequences of plastic bags on the environment and poor sea creatures (not the turtles!!!) are ignored. I can ramble on a lot more symbolism that will make my high school English teacher proud - but I’ll save it for now :)
Have you considered sustainable door hangers
We had yet to prototype our door hangers prior to the presentation. We were glad this was brought up and will explore more deeply.
Studio | Research
This is only a very small proportion of research we have done. Just to shed some light on NZ’s current waste crisis.
Hooked on Plastic, 2018
Last year sold 41 million kilo of used plastic overseas - January China stops buying our plastic.
Convenience culture - single use plastic, along with other unnecessary packaging
“Out of sight, out of mind” - priority is to reduce waste, recycling is only part of the solution
30 years ago was the last waste crisis - goal was to reduce waste however has not happened
Approx. family of four produces 3 tonnes of waste a year
Govt looking into taxing companies for the disposal of their products and supporting local companies who can deal with our waste
Countdown has banned the sales of single use plastic straws - working single use bags out of the system too
Issue with biodegradable and compostable bags - there are no regulations therefore cannot prove if the bags actually break down
1 News. (2018, July 15). Hooked on Plastic [Video file.] Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y39W_FZN7dg
Recycling in Auckland, 2016
2016 - Aucklander’s send 230,000 tonnes of waste to landfills each year.
140,000 tonnes of waste can be diverted from landfills if recycled correctly.
From July 2016, all of Auckland’s recycling is done by Visy, Onehunga.
They received more than 200 truck deliveries of recyclable waste a day.
Auckland Council. (2016, July 4). Visy Recycling Educational Video | Auckland Council. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFuD4V0-2fo
Auckland Waste Management, 2018
Since 2010 (first WMMP plan was in 2012) Auckland has achieved: household waste dropped by 10% – from 160kg/person in 2010 to 144kg/person in 2016. Waste from our own administrative offices dropped by 30%.
Household waste to landfill is dropping, but commercial waste to landfill grew significantly between 2010 and 2016, largely due to a spike in construction and demolition waste. The amount of plastic and organic waste going to landfills has also increased.
It is estimated that in 2016, Aucklanders threw away between $15 million and $73 million of recyclable materials.
In 2016 14% of total waste to landfill came from kerbside collections. There was a significant increase in food waste. 130,000 tonnes was thrown to landfill.
Auckland Council. (2018). Auckland Waste Management and Minimisation Plan 2018. Retrieved from https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/plans-projects-policies-reports-bylaws/our-plans-strategies/topic-based-plans-strategies/environmental-plans-strategies/docswastemanagementplan/auckland-waste-management-minimisation-plan.pdf
Studio | Week 6
I caught up with both Austin and Reza who informed me about their findings from the focus groups and interview they did at the end of last week. Again a big thanks to both the boys who arranged these meetings.
It was rather interesting to see how complex the younger generation think about our future. There is a heavy use of technology in ‘their future’ and only a handful of kids mentioned the natural environment in their drawings. Is this due to how rapid technology advances or do these kids use too much technology? We did talk to Year 3 students though - so were kind of expecting quite wild responses.
Reza and Austin were able to arrange an interview with Hayden from Sea Cleaners. Being at the forefront of waste in NZ, his perspective on the whole waste issue in NZ was really refreshing and insightful to hear about. I have reblogged both Austin’s posts that go into more detail - this saves me from repeating information.
Having conducted four focus groups and interviews, we broke down all the themes and challenges that arose from each activity.
After these were plucked out, we began to find recurring themes and other connections between related topics - across all four interviews we conducted. We did this to find common ground between all four discover tools. These were organised through a flowchart.
To break down our chart - we started off each branch with a large challenge/theme. The red lines indicates negative effects and green are positive effects or possible solutions.
From here on we started to delve deeper into ‘solutions’ (green lines) and discussed whether they have already been introduced or being used in other countries. This was so we could find an area that has room for us to work in - similar to finding a niche market you could say.
We found the area of habitual change was a sentiment a lot of our interviewees shared; as well as those keyboard warriors on social media that have expressed their distaste on the bag ban. We came with a concept, broke down the elements and steps and then planned for prototyping.
The Children may be the Future but they sure as hell don’t know the Future
On Friday I took a trip to Rm 7 Henderson Primary School to gain some insight in terms of what the children see the future being. The reason for doing this is that we thought it would be effective to tug on parents heartstrings by showing them what their children want the future to be. I instructed the kids to draw what they though the future would be. It became apparent very quickly that this wasn’t how 8-9 year olds work and need a lot more stimulation to work. At this age, they find it very hard to connect the past with what they know now to come up with a vision of the future. After all the students returned to their seats with a sheet of paper it immediately became clear that I had dropped them in the deep end. Thankfully, the teacher of the class identified this and began a class discussion. She asked the students about transportation, housing, technology etc. If I was doing this again I would take the students away in small groups of 2-4 and have personal discussions with them. Doing this would keep ideas isolated to the group so I would likely get a wider range of answers. With the group discussion I found that if a student suggested an idea, everyone would stay with that idea until the teacher would push the discussion on. There was a strong theme of everything being made of chocolate in the future. Regardless there were a few students that ended up coming up with a few really unique alternative futures that I couldn’t have come up with by interviewing adults. Some of these included: Houses being filled with hovering devices that allowed people to float through their homes, Banks being literal giant piggy banks and girls have mustaches in the future.
Thank you Austin for arranging this focus group.
A Good Yarn
Early this morning Reza and I conducted an interview with Captain Hayden Smith from Sea Cleaners, an organisation that goes around Auckland’s coastlines every day to collect waste. We thought that he would be a really good person to talk to since he was at the front line of what happens when waste disposal goes wrong. We were not aware of this but it turned out that Sea Cleaners actually worked with Foodstuffs to create the Bag Vote last year that asked customers if they would want to see a phase-out of plastic bags. Through this partnership, Foodstuffs began phasing out single-use plastic bags which then gave the government a foundation to implement the plastic bag ban. I personally found this really interesting as previously we believed that the only way that change within businesses could be achieved with government intervention. In this case however, Foodstuffs acted first. The reason they did this is that over the past 4 years, they had been building a relationship with Sea Cleaners so that they can be associated with the company and as a condition Sea Cleaners had Foodstuffs conduct the Bag Vote. By being associated with Sea Cleaners, Foodstuffs can be presented as a more environmentally active company which is good in the consumer’s eyes.
We asked him what his opinion was as to why people generally don’t care about how they dispose of waste. His response was that people don’t actually see the piles of rubbish as generally, the environments that people populate are clean. i.e. streets, offices, schools. however all of the rubbish actually ends up in oceans, forests etc. “We see the unseen” Other views that he had was that he’d like to see container deposits opened up to include anything with a bar-code. This way, even if people do litter, you could have kids picking rubbish off streets for pocket money. He did acknowledge the difficulty of logistics with this though. He also said that in an ideal world he would like to see that everyone picks up one piece of rubbish a day. This would also implement values of correct waste management and reduce the chance of them littering with their own waste. In terms of our installation, he expressed his satisfaction with most installations that use salvaged waste to build something, saying that at the end of the day it’s still rubbish and will eventually end up in landfill. He mentioned that he’s talked with schools who wanted to create artwork around sustainability and that he heavily advocated for painting murals to promote change. This is definitely something to keep in mind for our own project.
When asked what the best alternative for plastic bags are he said that cloth bags are the best alternative but when that’s not available, cardboard boxes provided by supermarkets are an environmentally conscious option.
All credit and huge thanks to Austin and Reza for making the early wake up for this interview. Some interesting points were raised by Hayden and has shed a lot of insight for our project.
Artful Swirls of Plastic Marine Debris Documented in Images by Photographer Mandy Barker
Studio | Week 5
After our efforts of perfecting our interview last week - we had set this week to conduct our interviews with our contacts in Auckland Council and other companies. This quickly fell through unfortunately due to people being ‘busy’ and/or just not replying to us. We were expecting this however - seeing as companies tend to avoid ‘student projects’ - especially if it’s about waste. They’re not going to share their dirty secrets with us and the world to be honest.
With our current situation, we have shifted our direction back to where we first started - consumers. Targeting the public, and inform them to make better decisions with their money to drive companies to make the change to go green.
We met up with Yvonne, as we failed to last week. Since we only made the idea change on Tuesday our meeting was not as fruitful as we had hoped.
That being said we have a tonne of research, so we are not fully starting back on square one. We spent our studio time narrowing down to a specific target audience to help, shape our project in terms of content and delivery. Our focus was:
Who is our audience?
What sort of experience do we want our project to be?
How is this experience delivered?
With the questions in mind, we’ve come up with an initial concept that has room for refinement. We would like to create a campaign that backs the governments latest ban on single use plastic bags; an educational campaign to help alleviate the stress, confusion and breakouts of war people are going to face, in a world with no single use plastic bags. I am being sarcastic yes. I spent a lot of time through numerous comments left on these news articles and some comments are hilariously ridiculous.
“Single-use? I reuse my bags as bin liners!”
Yeah... you kind of catch my drift.
Update Wednesday: We have managed to book ourselves a meeting time with a contact from Sea Cleaners. I believe this interview is vital as they are at front of line with dealing with waste being left behind and/or washed up on our shores; they can provide us with a unique and meaningful insight. Austin has also played a big role in arranging a time to meet primary school students to conduct a fun little activity to help us ‘shape’ what our dream future could/should look like. Despite all the set backs we have had with interviews, I am positive our move to make these compromises (and doing focus groups) has been a good decision.
With that being said we have drafted up and tested yet another ‘interview’. Similar to the one we did previously, we made it more kid friendly and tested it on the same people we did last week.
We simply asked them on one paper to draw their ‘dream Auckland’ and on another ‘A bad Auckland if we don’t look after it’. Most notably from this exercise was how dense, busy and full everyone’s ‘bad’ drawings were. We also received a diverse response from all the participants - which shows how each individual finds something important in their eyes than others. For example we had someone bring up having more green spaces, whereas another student imagined apartment buildings (to solve the housing crisis) with hanging gardens down the sides.
I spent today updating our brief, challenge statement and timeline along with Reza and so far we have made good progress as a whole. We will spend the rest of our week interviewing, doing relevant research and drawing up initial concepts.
Studio | Week 4 | Interview run-through observations
In order for our interviews to run on a timely matter and also gather the desired information and insights we would like, before we even interview our actual experts - Reza and I spent Wednesday testing and tweaking our interview flow/method, to ensure we get the best results.
First run-through: Two Year 2 students
Along with the caricature drawing, ask them to write their names at the top so we can refer to them throughout interview - making it personal, forming a bond
Draw 3 adjectives that best describes them - changed to writing as deciphering their drawings was a bit difficult, also could see hesitation in drawing, slowing down the time
Draw your dream - changed to write and also draw - again hesitation/unsure of what/how to draw - slowing time down
The two images we provided were small - in the real interview have bigger copies
Getting the students to explain their post it after each post it again slowed down the process - but also lead to their thinking being the same - they both ended up with similar endings to their story however started off in different directions.
The first run-through was a bit rocky as it was our first. It was also my first time seeing the flow so I could only observe at this stage. The interview took about 15-20 minute however the two who volunteered found the whole process new and fun. The second run-through implemented our minor tweaks and I was more involved.
Second run-through: Three Year 1 students
3 adjectives to describe yourself - changed to 3 positive words you associate yourself or best describes you
Explanation of the ‘two places’ needed to be fleshed out more - quite vague
On the second question ‘Draw a challenge you would face’ all three paused for a bit, hesitating about what/how to draw the scenario - reassured they could just write a sentence.
Question four was met with confusion - we tried to reword/rephrase it however realised that this question was no longer needed as it broke the flow of the story our volunteers were telling
Have headings for each post it/question so that it’s easier for them to retell/explain their story to us without us prompting was question there were up to
Through the second run-through we thought that the ice breaker in the beginning, we should also join in as a way to create a bond with our volunteers; joining in on the fun, making it a little more personal. Giving them the option to write and draw their answer was a better move, as there was little hesitation when answering our question. Interview took approx. 15 minutes.
Third run-through: Three Year 3 students
With facilitators joining the ice breaker, it set up a good, light and fun atmosphere.
The option of writing and drawing was successful - some did both to better communicate themselves.
Removing question four, now meant we had a concluded story.
After completing all story post its, we then asked them to explain their story. This resulted in very diverse thinking compared to our first run through, where they heard each others thoughts and somehow their answers were similar to each others.
Having headers for their post its made it easier for them to retell their stories.
This interview ran very smoothly, there were minor flaws we need to work on however we are confident that the actual interviews will go well. I never knew prototyping an interview was a thing, but now I see it as a vital step.
Me trying to find a way into the circle
I am cracking TF UP
Studio | Week 4
Continuing on from last week - we divided our research topics between us three and compiled all our findings in one document. Our research covered the following:
NZ businesses that are/becoming sustainable
Innocent Packaging
Method Recycling
Countdown
News articles and videos
One News - Hooked on Plastic
History of waste management in NZ
Case studies
San Francisco
Japan
Auckland Council’s Waste Management plan
From here on, meeting up on Tuesday studio time - we unpacked and discussed our findings which would inform our decision to rewrite our brief for more clarity, as well as start to define our target audience/focus of the project. We have come up with a challenge statement to inform our next set of information gathering - which are interviews.
We have gotten in contact with those we wish to interview this week. Reza took charge of creating our interview; as a group we came up with questions we would like to ask. I’ll be writing a separate post on my observations and findings of our run-through interviews.
The Final Fist Post
Reza, Jolie and I have decided to work together for this final project. With a unified interest in design we were interested in the sustainable packaging brief that was given to AUT students by Dow Goodfolk. However, it quickly became apparent what the real intention for giving this brief was. Sustainable packaging has been a hot topic for a while and many options have arisen for achieving this. The brief however, says that no-one has figured out how to achieve cost effective, sustainable packaging. Dow Goodfolk either seem unwilling to acceptthat any change in production will cost money or they are doignt his solely as a publicity stunt to say that Dow Goodfolk supports up and coming designers at university. It was also very clear that they are only looking at how sustainable packaging would effect business making their “interest” in the environment profit driven and not through an effort to actually benefit the planet. Wouldn’t a design company as big as Dow Goodfolk have people employed specifically to look at this issue anyway? So we’re taking what Dow Goodfolk say they want to do (reduce waste) and work with people and create a project that actually aims to reduce waste for the good of Auckland City. We’re hopefully going to be gaining some insight from the Auckland City Council for this as they have a goal of Zero Waste for Auckland by 2040.
