Week 5 - Tool Presentation/ DIY Aesthetics

This week we did our presentations for our tool design. We had the pleasure of having some designers from MAO studios come and critique our projects and show us some designs that they have produced, which was really, really, cool! My group was hectic to say the least. First, week 4, the week we had the whole day to work on our projects, both of my group members were gone. So we didn't have a lot of work to show everybody, but thank god Ryan did a lot of work in a short period of time. We decided to name our brand SimpleCraft. Our tag line was " Because Everyone Can Create"

This is the logo

Basically our design was this little hand drill that was tiny enough to be one of those "impulse buys" next to the register. Our demographic was the crafty, stay at home mom, or the not so good with tools kind of man. Our drill was just a craft drill, like for putting up pictures on the wall or something like that, not a big Makita drill that is too heavy for the average woman to hold with one hand. So we didn't have many other drills as competition because we were almost one of a kind. I thought it was a fantastic idea, I stand by it one hundred percent, but I just wish we had more time to revise it. We could have made the package design a little more refined maybe, and also we could have had a better, practiced, presentation. We could have all three worked on illustrator or whatever and drew out a drill on the computer so it looked more professional. Sure there was a lot of things I would have done differently, but at least we did have a great concept, and great logo.We simply just didn't execute our ideas well. That was all we did this week, because we ran out of time. We still have a lecture for this week to blog about though. 

DIY Aesthetics and Design: working class and design 

What images are used to create images of the working class?

 Here are some images of  "the working class" that I found online. It seems like all of the images had people in work clothes and they all looked kind of distressed.

However, when I typed in " middle class" I got images like these :

Some of these images look a little more like upper class but I guess everyone's perception is different.

 What products are considered middle class?

These products are products of the middle class. They are considered middle class because they are a little more expensive than the average things people buy for their family. There are many more products but I chose to stick mainly with electronics because people kind of judge you by your electronics these days. For instance when your on the bus and you pull out an Ipad, people are going to look at you differently than they would if you pulled out a old 80's boombox.

How much money does a middle class family make?

    I found out that the average middle class family earns, according to the 2009 Census,  $50,221 annually. Now that is not that much money a year, especially if your family has more than one child. In this day and age the cost of living is going up dramatically.

Could you briefly write about how this might be political?

 This could be turned into a political debate because the president has something to do with the economy, which, in turn, kind of determines the gap between upper class, middle class, working class, and poverty level.

Ultimately when I researched this working class vs. middle class info, I discovered that the more our economy gets worse, the bigger the gap gets between upper class and working class. In other words, the rich are getting richer and the people that were struggling to pay their bills are now losing their homes. I know alot of people that were pretty well off, and now because of a layoff in the family, they are fighting to keep the house. I think that is so sad. What else is sad is the fact that the people living in poverty are hungry, and we shouldn't have a hunger problem in the United States! Something needs to change. Obama isn't changing it fast enough, and I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking that. That's just my opinion, I don't mean to offend anyone if I have.