Lesson video

My name's Mrs. Finlay, and today we're going to look at design influence in our design ideas.

For the lesson you're going to need some paper, a pen or a pencil, and you're going to need to be somewhere quiet where you can hear my voice and you can really concentrate.

Just a reminder to make sure you have your paper and pencil for today.

Okay, so you've probably done the intro quiz, so well done for that, but what else are we going to do today? Well, we're going to look at ways in which we can bring influence into the things that we design.

You're going to have a go at making a mood board, and I've got some suggestions about how you can do that.

And then you're going to have a go at actually designing your own product, using your mood board.

And then as always, there's an exit quiz at the end.

Keywords for today.

Let's have a look at them.

So, the first word we're going to look at is "form", and this describes the shape of the product.

And we looked at form when we looked at aesthetics, so hopefully that's a word that you recognise.

The second one is "design influence".

Now, this is anything that inspires you and gives you great ideas when you're coming up with your designs, and we can be inspired by things from nature, architecture, or just products that we see in our everyday lives.

The final word we're using in our keywords today is "mood boards", and these are a collection of images or products that can be used to inspire our designs.

Here is an example of a mood board that I have put together for you.

We're going to have a little think about how we can collect images to inspire us in our designing.

Within our mood boards, we could include pictures of other products, we might want to do colour swatches, which are blocks of colour that we could potentially use.

We might want to include images from nature, shapes, or patterns.

I'm going to do a demonstration now to show you how to build a 2D mood board.

Okay, so these are some of the things that I have cut out for my mood board, okay? Some things are textured, some things have got bits of red off an old book.

I'm not exclusively looking at red, but I have got some other bits.

So now I need to put them together in a mood board, okay? So, I'm going to move those to one side, I'm going to get some paper.

I'm not going to stick this down as I go, I'm just going to sort of move things around, so I'm going to try and put bigger stuff on to start with, maybe get some layers in there as well.

So, see how it would all fit in.

I'll get some of these.

Maybe that's a bit big.

So, that one there.

I'm not going to worry too much if I go over the edges, to be honest, to start with.

And I've got some pictures of nature as well.

There's some great things you can get from that.

And then I've got my colour swatches.

Now, these are squares that I've taken.

Oh, I'll take that off a minute.

These are squares that I've taken off of bits from articles or bits of packaging at home, and they're just different shades of red that I potentially could use.

You could also paint paper or colour it in.

Okay, put that one down there, maybe.

Got these sticks I might use.

Stick these down there, I think.

A bit of a.

Oh, I'm not sure I like that or not.

Got my strawberries.

I'm going to put those in as well.

Tuck them underneath, I think.

That comes back out there.

So when you're building up your mood boards, it doesn't really matter.

You might put something down thinking, "Oh, that doesn't look very good," and then have to have a little bit of a wiggle.

That's super fine, too.

I'm going to take that one off for a sec, move that around.

Good.

Tuck that underneath that one.

There we go, that's better.

So, obviously red is my theme.

Put that together there.

I've got some bits I haven't used.

I'm not sure if I will use those.

I might use those maybe to get some angles or some corners, get some edges going in there, maybe.

And I could do another layer on this, I could doodle on the top of this as well, but I think.

Oh, got a little rose.

Use a bit of white just to break that up, maybe, down there.

Now I can take a photo of that and use it, or I can stick it all down, and that's sort of up to you.

I think I'm going to stick mine down for the next bit.

Here's our mood board.

I've glued it all down.

I'm then going to cut out a rectangle of card, fold it over, doesn't matter how accurate it is, and then cut like that to make a frame, okay? So, you can have a little skinny frame like that, or you can maybe make it a bit thicker and have a bit of a thicker frame.

What we're going to do is you're going to use this to frame out some different sections.

And you can doodle the texture or the colour.

It doesn't have to be a 2D sketch.

It doesn't have to be a particular colour.

It could just be the texture.

So, in this frame now, I can maybe, even if I just want to draw that frame in, I might do the circle there.

This texture here, I might follow that all the way down through there, maybe.

Okay, I've got a bit of curling coming up there, I might want to draw that in as well.

Let's have a look over here.

This is really focusing you down, you see.

Let's have a look here.

We've got really interesting shapes.

I might want to do a square just to focus my drawing down, maybe doing some circles like that.

It might be, again, that I want to stick some of that texture in the background, and we're going to use this as influence when we start doing our drawings.

And this is how we can really focus, rather than trying to look at everything as one big piece, just try to focus on little bits, you know.

Like down here, got some really interesting shapes being created.

And you've also got, this really interesting, this texture down here, so it might be that you create something like that, and then you pull out some of the little diamonds in it.

Okay, and you're going to keep going till you fill up your little card with some bits of inspiration which you can use.

What could we put in your mood boards? I'm going to give you the theme of a colour, okay? Mine was red.

You could choose greens or yellows, and it doesn't have to be really rigid on that.

You can use that as a loose influence.

But what are we going to add to our mood boards? I'd like you to think of some of the things you could add to the mood board that you're going to create.

Pause the video now and have a little think.

Well done.

Okay, so these are the ones that I came up with.

We might have a doodle on a sketch, we might pull something from a magazine.

You might find some headings or titles you really like, maybe a font, maybe a phrase that you think really fits in well.

You might find colour swatches or want to use some coloured crayons to colour in some block colour.

You might find different materials or textures.

What's interesting about mood boards is they don't have to be 2D.

They don't have to be stuck down.

You could design a 3D mood board, and that's what I'm going to do a demonstration for you now.

So, for those of you at home who don't have things to cut and stick, you could arrange different items that you can find that you enjoy or you like or have a really good colour, and you could put them together.

I'm going to do a demonstration now to show you how you can build your own 3D mood board.

Okay, so for my mood board, I am going to use.

Well, actually, it's the theme metallic.

So I've found a lot of shiny things while I've been at work today and we're going to put them together.

Actually, maybe we'll put them up on their end to give us-- Ooh! To give us a little type of texture.

Maybe not.

That one doesn't seem to want to stand up.

So, put that there.

Got some little drawing pins that I found as well, so I might put some of them on the side so they're shiny, but some of them up on their end.

Even though I'm looking at metallic things, I've found these crayons as well which actually gives a nice little bit of colour.

So, some grey and some yellow.

The example I've put on the table, sorry, not the table.

The example that I've put on your screens is obviously looking at green, but you can choose whatever you want, and I thought, for those of you at home who can't really cut and stick things very easily, this is a great way to do it.

So you can either make your 3D mood boards and take photos of them, or you can use them just to say, "Ah, make your little, some little".

Quite like the fact that's all gold together.

You could make your 3D mood board, leave it, and then have your frame of view and just put the frame over the little pieces that you want to look at.

Got some more of these drawing pins.

I really like them, I think.

Nice coppery colours.

Okay, get rid of those.

Last of the drawing pins I'm going to put in.

Okay, and then I could probably do something like more 3D, so I'm going to pop.

Got a bit of a silver bucket on here.

I might just pop this up here.

You can't really see it very well on the camera.

So the idea is that you also need to bring in height, so I've got a little concrete pot that I might use and that's quite nice 'cause that's giving me some texture as well to draw in.

So, 3D is a great.

Here we go, I've found something else.

3D is a great way to be inspired when you are designing, especially if you want to be quick and not having to be so considered and to be sticking things down all the time.

So this might be a better alternative than doing a 2D mood board.

Okay, so we've got our mood board, and now what we're going to do is we're going to use that to inspire us when we're doing our designing.

So I'm going to read through what I've written on the slide.

Your mood boards are looking fabulous, we just said that, but how can we use them? We're going to use them to inspire colour, shape, texture, and even function.

We are going to look at redesigning a few products.

We are mainly going to look at aesthetics and visual design rather than function, what the product does.

So what we're going to do, and I'm going to show you a little video in a minute and demonstrate how to do this, we're going to make a little frame out of cardboard.

We are then going to put that frame over different parts of our mood board, and using those spaces, we're going to redesign some standard products that we see all around us.

It sounds complicated, but I think you'll understand when I go through.

Let's look at the three products that you can choose from to redesign.

Okay, so you ready for this? We have got some pegs, so plastic pegs that you'd hang the washing out with.

We have got a potato peeler, and some headphones.

Now, it's up to you.

You can redesign and be inspired and choose all three, or just two, or concentrate on one.

That's absolutely fine.

But what I'm looking for is for you to take inspiration from the images that you put together previously.

So in the next clip, I'm going to be showing you exactly how to do that.

So here's my mood board that I've got, and I'm thinking about the pegs, the headphones, and the potato peeler or vegetable peeler.

And I'm not going to worry so much about function, I'm going to worry more about aesthetics, so texture and colour and things like that.

And I'm going to think about our little potato peeler.

So remember I said to you it doesn't have to be 3D drawings, so if I just draw what my little potatoey peelery bit will look like, and then maybe I'll just start to think about some of the textures and things, like I really like the inside of this button, so maybe if I make that like that, a little bit rounded, and just make a nice little handle to start with.

Nothing too, you know, it's not too crazy, but I want to sort of reflect the inspiration that I'm using on this button, so I'm going to pull down through here and have that little surround like that.

I like the fact that maybe it could be hung up, so I might put two little button holes in here as well, so that looks quite cute.

Okay, what else could I do? I kind of like this.

It reminds me a little bit of deer feet, like deer toes at the end, so maybe we'll just replicate that shape.

I'm going to to try to do something in 3D now, so it's a little bit more.

Bit of isometric.

Maybe something a bit more bulbous goes round, put the blade across.

Something like that, maybe.

And obviously I can add the colour in that I want to.

Just have a look at that curve and then it goes into almost like a pulled-out figure of eight, isn't it? Okay, so something like that.

Now, it's going to have to go together, otherwise it's not going to work, so we'll put a little bar across here, maybe.

Little bar across here and just end it like that.

See, that might be quite good, 'cause if you imagine your hand going in here and holding it like that, you could almost peel like that, or you could have your hand back further and you could peel, rather than having to.

Or you could hold it to one side and peel down through like that, so that's quite interesting.

So, also, I might.

See all the texture here? I might put the little texture on everything as well.

So, have a go and see how you get on.

Well done today.

As always, you can share your work with us if you would like, and we'll see you very soon.