Speaking from Experience

At this point I had a crit which went well except for one issue regarding my idea for a "Break Glass" 

It had definitely already been done.

Almost exactly the way that I imagined mine to be. 

I realised now that if I was going to continue this idea then I had to come up with a new design or a new way of implementing it to make sure that I wasn't just copying and idea which already exists. I wanted to try and come up with the same idea but in a new design to separate it from this existing one so I looked at other emergency equipment to see if any of it could be modified or redesigned to fit my brief (See design context or sketchbook for examples of other emergency equipment).

The above page shows some ideas based on an analogue bell and hammer style alarm. The ideas that I could see to work with this design were quite complicated and definitely crossed into product design instead of graphic design as I would have to somehow craft the bell or modify an existing metal one. As such I decided that this probably would work as a design and left the idea.

In this above page I was originally attempting to work around a siren light design but came across the same problems as with the bell. The siren light is made with a strong plastic and metal which would be almost impossible to modify. The only other option would be to try and build the design myself from lighter weight materials but this would have been extremely difficult and also doesn't really make much sense as a money box design. 

however, I also stated to look at the idea of a fire blanket. The general idea made a lot of sense. The fire blanket is definitely a symbol of emergency and has a fairly basic design which would be easy to work with. It already has a way for the money to come out and the simple design of the tapes and hatch are very simple to put back together and make a re-useable money box.

I decided that this was probably my strongest idea so far as it is a really simply ergonomically designed product and could be relatively easy to craft myself from lighter materials instead of the conventional thick plastic. For the moment I chose to take this idea forward as it was probably the strongest. 

For the next part of the design I had to think about how to record the amount of money inside the box and how the audience would know what that money could buy them. It was kind of working with an incentive to save so at this point I looked at the audience again and decided to focus it specifically to the graphic design course because everyone in the audience had this in common. 

I came up with the idea of a really simple chart which could be filled in to show the amount of money inside the box every time that money was added to it. I then also came up with making the chart directly related to a booklet or small book which showed all the things that could be bought for the amount of money that was saved. 

in this way, the student will be able to mark up on the chart and see what useful equipment or printing could be done or they work the other way around and save towards an upcoming print at the end of a module or some really necessary books from the course reading list. 

 

These are some other ideas for the design of the chart. At the top I came up with the idea of a laminated chart with a basic non-permanent marker to make the chart re-useable after the money was used. The user could just rub off the marker and start again. The idea in the middle shows a pad of charts so that if one is used up or finished with it can just be peeled off to show a fresh one underneath. The problem with this idea is that it could end up bulky and is quite needlessly wasteful in terms of paper.

At the bottom of the page is the basic design for the fire blanket box with an idea to have the chart on the side of the box making it easy to access and impossible to misplace.

 

I designed this page to show exactly what the idea is so far in the most simple and effective way that I could, listing what it is, why I am making it and how I am making it. 

I did this to make it as clear as possible for the upcoming crit and to make sure that the idea was fully understood by whoever was giving me feedback.