WEEK 2: STARTING MY FIRST PROJECT

25/04/22 - 29/04/22

This week gave me the opportunity to experience and work on my own personal project whilst experiencing the full effect of working for a commercial based design company such as IKEA.

Working on my first project was scary yet also very encouraging as I want to be able to prove myself. The experience of working on my own allowed me to practice some of the skills and fundamentals learnt last week, ensuring that I have the opportunity to grow these on my own as well as in a group.

Something I did not necessarily consider was the effect that current world events have on a large design company. Having spent the past two years suffering through a pandemic, in combination with more current events, there hasn't been opportunity to get back and create a a stable working environment again. As part of this development and design opportunity, it has sometimes been quite hard and at times frustrating to co-ordinate a space with some of the issues caused by world events whilst still trying to follow the company fundamentals. Although it is part of the design process to have to rethink, it has always been something that I have struggled to do in previous units as I like to try and make everything near to perfect the first time as it can become quite discouraging. Working on this commercial scale means more compact deadlines and time has to balanced across multiple projects, there is no time to be discouraged and so it has taught me to take a step back, reflect and simply adapt to the situation at hand - something that I wish to continue to do as I come to the end of this course.

My Project - Seasonality Dining Coordination

As a commercial based design company, seasonality is key meaning that all co-ordinations and spaces within the building have to be updated to reflect the kind of activities that may occur during each season. This helps to not only boost sales of products, but to influence the customers in a positive light for example, during summer, you do not want to be surrounded by cold and uninviting environments - which as mentioned previously is important in order to create a comfortable environment for all customers, as no customers means no store.

My project is to design and develop a summer co-ordination that surrounds this idea of bringing people together but with a more sophisticated twist. In order to portray such characteristics, it really makes you dig down into the basics of design such as colour, textures, patterns and so on. Taking on this idea of nature and the greens that surround this, it allowed me to move away from this traditional idea that summer is all about warmth and bright colours and made me focus more on textural components of the space.

Working on my first project was scary yet also very encouraging as I want to be able to prove myself. This space, although compact, has to have the ability to communicate and interact with customers in a timeslot of around 2 minutes. This means that in combination with my neutral palette, there has to be a unique selling point. Similar to previous units, it is very difficult to design for the mass and therefore I had to approach this design with an archetype and activity in mind. As this is in the dining department, the activity in mind is bringing a group together for dinner and drinks in a naturally inspired environment. Having now sourced the correct products and taken the right environmental considerations, the design is ready to be implemented following on from this week. I am cautious to approach this task on my own, but I am excited to take a more hands on approach to the project as I have previously struggled to communicate my ideas into a 3D form.