product rotterdam

These are the first scethces and just form that came to mind when i thought of Rotterdam. My first idea was to create a kind of stool collection bassed just on the word Roffa, one of the slang names for Rotterdam, but this turned out to be a bit to simple and not realy a product that was deeper connecter to Rotterdam.

After those first sketches I made a list of words I thought of when I heard the word Rotterdam. My idea behind this was that I could express Roffa with the things i thought of when I heard the name. The first 2 things after bombardment are actually the things I went with in the end.
- Culture
- Food

In this phase I wanted to create somthing with the bombardment becouse I thought that was a big part of Rotterdams history. I had the idea to create a bottle / glass that I would destroy and rebuild. Just like they rebult Roffa once.
The second thing that I came up with while being in this thinking fase was a plate with a piechart on it. This piechart would contain the top 5 / 6 cultures in Roffa. This idea was in the eyes of my teacher a bit to bold and simple and i agreed on that.

index
- concepts
- prototype
- progress
- persona
- pricing
- poster + endproduct

Progress of creating the products

Poster + end product

This is a small recap of the first concept that I had.

These are the sketches I used as base for the endproducts.
I've always lived with the philosophy that my first ideas are the best. In this case I actually used my first ideas as the endproducts but because of the resit I was 'forced' to make more steps and concepts before eventualy having an end product. I think that I actually really like making mockups and tests and that's something that I learned because of this resit. I will definetly implement this in further projects.

This is the page where the concept of creating fictional product was born. I altered a bit but one of the objects, the flurpedurp, is still almost the same.

- clay
- foam
- pur foam
- laibor

€6.66
€30
€20
€7/hr x 5 = 35

I decided to create a really simple poster. I did this because I like minimalism but in my own style. I've always thought simple posters where much more inpact full because of the lack of distraction.
The the text is orgenised by the way the pictures are placed.

Name: Braam Bloesviink
Age: 35
Profession: stay-at-home dad
Intrests: household design objects
Has 2 daughters and one little boy. Loves to go out and have fun with friends. Loves his family more than anything. Has a great taste for clothing. Is a wonderfull dad for his children. A bit on the femeninet side but still has a wonderfull wife.

Brands: Alessi, Van MOOF, Apple

This is a page from my scetchbook. These drawings are concept drawings of my products. I drew each one with one of the following rules in mind:

- It has to have a surface to eat from
- It has to have 2 or more 'dots' to place food in
- It has to have some form of tentacles

These rules where based on the 3 endproducts I already created. I wanted to emulate the inbetween steps of my process by drawing conceptual ideas with the basic rules of the endproducts.
I used these rules as a starting point so that the steps of coming to the endproduct would make more sense because the basic aspects of the objects where the same.

The following prototypes are just expreiments of shapes that I found interesting. The red clay resembles the fantasy food it's created for. I thought representing the food with this material was a good idea because it's just as abstract as the objects themselve.

These 3 sketches are the starting points of my endproducts. I chose these 3 because they resembled the endproducts the most so the route to those wouldn't be that hard.

This object was different from the other ones becouse it is made out of a lot thinner pieces than the other 2. This was actually the easyest one to complete becouse it had the least creases that I had to close.

With this object I descovered that by using cling foil the clay wouldn't stick to the mat and would be easier in general to get into a thin plack.

I used toothpics to connect the legs to the body. This turned out to be quite a stable selution

While orientating my target audience, I figured that the group most fit for my design are young adults in my environment whose interests lay at the combination of food, art and multiculturality. Because of the fact that I am a part of this target audience myself, I have a lot of experience with people this age and seem to be able to empathize with them, which is why I know most of this audience’s perspective and opinion towards the diversity in Rotterdam. One thing that is very unique about our generation is that we are more open-minded than any generation before, this is probably because of the media influencing our opinion and altering our perception of other cultures. The objects I designed would play a big role in discovering and learning to tolerate different, perhaps unknown, cultures. The younger generation forms the bottom of society and will, later on, consist of people that will, in their turn, influence younger generations. This is why my designed objects will mostly advance our current younger generation and will play a major role in broadening their view on a multicultural society.
This is also the reason why my persona is the person it is.

Name: Vera Vázquez
Age: 16
Study: VWO 5
Job: vakkenvuller
ikes: Chill, work hard, read books
Family: 2 parents 1 brother
Status: Partner, no kids
Location: Roffa

Personality:
Ambitious, sweet, Strong-minded, rebel

Goals:
- Become journalist
- Live a healthy life
- To travel the world

Brands: Apple, Alessi, Fernandes

The foam was a great material to freeform shapes in, however it took quite a long time to dry.

In this opbject I used a combination of the 2 materials I used for the other objects. I used the foam as glue for the foam-plates, but this turned out to expand even when under presure so the whole foam-mesh-block-thing I created was croocked and I had to add parts to make it stable again.

The expanded foam did leave a very interesting effect.

The initial idea that popped into my head when thinking about defining Rotterdam in one piece was creating a collection of chairs based on the slang term for the city “Roffa”. The chairs would all take the shape of one of the letters of the word, however, later this idea turned out to be too simplistic to really express the multicultural depths of the city. To come up with a more profound project, I started brainstorming and writing down words that define and represent Rotterdam for me. Some words that immediately entered my mind were the variety of art and ability to express oneself, variety of food, but mostly the multiculturality and diversity of people living in one society. I reckon that mostly the variety of food belonging to different cultures plays a major role in representing and distinguishing all these different cultures,while still uniting all of them, combining them to be one community. Pretty soon, I realised that the outcome of my project would be on the more artistic side of the spectrum instead of the more practical side, due to the importance of art and self-expression among the Rotterdammers.

As I said, during the process I found myself wandering off to focus on the more artistic turn my project could take. While sketching and brainstorming, I ended up with three almost magical objects that function as food stands and all have their own significance. While elaborating on the design and function of these objects, I decided to call them the flurpedurp, bezurker and floemper. All three foodstands have their own function and consequences. One of them mainly focuses on the way the food is prepared, whereas another one centralizes the way the food is eaten. The deeper concept of the project is that the way you treat the stands, and the food they present, reflects on you as a person. With the flurpedurp, if you eat the food in the wrong way, the consequences will most likely be fatal, while the bezurker punishes you when preparing it the wrong way. This deeper concept makes these objects reflect on you as a person and will therefore define your role in the multicultural society of Rotterdam. All three objects originate from different fictional cultures and their function is to present the food while also representing the culture they come from. The variety of food stands and their function show the audience the difference in cultures and how none of them are the same. This demonstrates the multiculturality of Rotterdam, existing of different autonomous cultures while also functioning as one society.