swedanes.dk

Pen on paper designs

Ingo — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 19:52:50 +0000

Another trip down memory lane. During the 80′s I had a small screen printing and graphic art studio. It was in the age before the computer. Frequent use of Letraset, repro camera and Xerox copy machine…

Here is a gallery of some of the designs, a mix of T-shirt painting , posters, screen print designs etc:

See more under Drawings

Everyday design

Ingo — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 09:56:36 +0000

One of my interests is “everyday design”, usability and functionality of ordinary things. The book by Donald A. Norman (co founder of the Nielsen Norman group), The Design of Everyday Things, printed 1988, is dealing with design challenges. It’s fun and interesting to read and to learn how and why everyday, simple things was designed and why some products works and others don’t and is just frustrating to use.

The tumble dryer challenge
We have a Siemens tumble dryer that is approx. 6 years old. Around a year ago it stopped working properly. After a few minutes of tumbling it just stopped and a lamp on front started to blink. (1)

It means that you should empty the water container (2). But it WAS empty! Tried again…and again…and again….same result

Look in the manual: “When the indication lamp blink, empty the water container.”

Called a service agent – “Empty the water container. Clean condenser/lint filter. Unplug and re plug the machine (?) and try again”. Done that, didn’t help. “We can come and have a look but it cost about SEK 700-1000 to analyse the problem”. I’ll be back…

I asked Google. Didn’t find a solution but information that others have had the same problem. Good to know.

Since we are about to sell the house, I thought it would be a good idea to make a final try to fix it. Some weeks ago, just before calling a service agent, I asked Google again. Success!!! There were still several others that experienced the same problem but this time I also found a suggestion on a solution to the problem (maybe I used the wrong search string the first time).

I think this case is in the department of frustrating department of usability and design of everyday things and this is not from 1988 but a machine from 2006. Don’t know how the person who put this on the net found out how to solve it but here it is:

Remove the condenser/lint filter (3).

In the very far end of the “tunnel” on there is a lid (4).

The lid is “a bit” difficult to open. Under the lid you find a lot of water and lint, quite “gooey”.

I thought it was difficult to reach the “secret department” this way and tried to open the side of the machine. I removed the top of the dryer, no problem. Removed all the screws that hold the side, no problem. But couldn’t remove the side since it was mounted with plastic splints and not screws to the front cover. Put everything back again .

With help of a mirror, torchlight, cloth and paper it managed to remove the “goo” . It helped, the dryer works again

There is also a “float” in this “secret compartment” where lint also could get stuck and make the “float” to stop in top position and then the machine thinks the water tank is full and stop the dryer due to security reasons.

I admit, I am not a professional tumble dryer repair man but this is construction is designed so you HAVE to call the service agent to clean up the lint and empty water to make it work! And it’s not mentioned in the user manual.

Cover art

Ingo — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 13:03:05 +0000

Inspired by the website The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies, I went down memory lane and found some of my own books and magazines from the early days…

Ski posters

Ingo — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 16:51:13 +0000

Added a new Art gallery, a collection of ski posters I made for the Novo Nordisk Ski club…

Exam exercise no. 2

Ingo — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 15:36:04 +0000

The exercise no. 2 in my course was to pick one of 5 photos from The Photo Book, analyse and interpret it, reflect and comment on the compostition, comment and reflect on the image-text and finally explain what I understand with the term punctum. This is a resume of the exam that contained approx. 5.000 characters.

My choice was Goldfish Glass, 1937 by Herbert List.

Location is the Greek island Santorini. The sun is setting behind a glass bowl with a swimming gold fish. According to List, “the fish symbolizes the human spirit trapped in the material world. It cannot escape from that setting into whatever lies beyond, which is represented by light playing on the distant water.”

My interpretation was that even if the photo is from 1937 it can symbolize the modern man. We live in a “bowl”, moving around between family and work. We look out through the “glass”, TV, Internet, Facebook etc, to the rest of the world – “so close but still so far away”.

The term punctum can be explained like a feeling the viewer get from a detail in the photo. The feeling can be a knowledge, memory and/or experience the viewer has about the detail or the photo.

I have been to Santorini a couple of times and punctum for me in this photo was that I remembered the visit to the island in the photo. It was an active volcano with sulfur steam and the smell of rotten egg…

Exam exercise no. 1

Ingo — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 21:42:30 +0000

Exam exercise no. 1 in the course Photography – visual communication, was to take a photo from a working place or from the home. I chose to take a photo of our kitchen (actually quite a few but I should only send one) . Together with the photo I should attach a description with about 500 words explaining the choices I made regarding Motif, Message, Content and Form. Things like why I used portrait format instead of landscape, the meaning of diagonal lines, lightning, composition rules like “repetition and order” etc….

Got the result today and I passed

Teachers rating: “The picture is smooth and stylish, you use many photographic grip in your photography, good! Your documentation is excellent with feedbacks to the course literature and lessons.”

Window vs. Mirror

Ingo — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 16:07:00 +0000

On the course I am attending, Photography – visual communication, we learned a concept called window and mirror.

The exercise was to take a window and a mirror version of the same motif :

Window: observation and no participation. A bridge, a boat and a sea – that’s it…

Mirror: more involvement and participation. Added some composition elements that lead your eye to two men that talk about??? is it the weather, boat or how long and high is the bridge???…

Made in Sixty One

Ingo — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 15:45:39 +0000

A month has already passed

What happened @ summer holiday 2011

Ingo — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 12:29:01 +0000

It was some time ago we finished the summer holiday 2011. Today, Nine eleven, has the same weather like most of this summer – 19 degrees, sun mixed with heavy showers. Thought I should evaluate the summer holiday 2011.

Before the vacation Mickey and I agreed on some “projects”:

Camp Møller
Visit my colleague Bo & family at their summer residence at Marienlyst. Beach, minigolf, jogging, good food etc.
Game box
Mickey designed 2 boxes for his video games that we made and cover them with art we created in Photoshop.

All images
Golf
Pay & Play golf at Hylliekroken Golfcenter. We had the pleasure having our neighbour, Håkan, as golf instructor.
Canoe trip
The plan was to go on a two day canoe trip with overnight camping on an island in Immeln. Since I’m not a hard core camper, I didn’t like to camp in pouring rain. During the actual week, it was not possible to find two days in a row where it didn’t rain. We decided to go on a one day trip instead and we were happy – it didn’t start raining until 14.00. It was a great day anyway, getting close to nature with stop overs on different small islands

All photos

Xtras:

Minigolf Folkets park
A fun adventure golf court at Folkets Park in Malmö. 14 holes with themes from different sights in Malmö.
Hälsans stig
Mickey and I spent several hours walking the 9 km “path of health” and took the opportunity of doing some photo safari at the same time…

All photos
Camp Jensen
A week before the official summer vacation we visited colleague Rune & family who rented a house on Bornholm. A weekend with “walk abouts”, mountain biking, “John Deer gardening”, nice food and drinks…

All photos

Header images

Ingo — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 18:20:43 +0000

The theme I use is called Panorama and the header images are displayed in a random order. In this post the first ones are displayed.

I now added four new ones after a go via Photoshop: