TED Talk: Fashion and Creativity

Watching this talk, I was overwhelmed by his level of enthusiasm despite the fact that he confessed at the beginning of the show that he does not sleep much. I have a pretty weird body clock so I tend to sleep late and wake up early for classes but throughout the day, I get very cranky.

Hearing him talk on stage is almost like talking to my best friend. He told us so many things I never thought famous people did, such as following people in his neighbourhood because they look interesting. He kept jumping from topic to topic, like how your friend would if they haven't met you in a long time and they had a lot of updates. But then I realized that him being so random meant that his brain was actually jumping from ideas to ideas all the time which made him such a creative person. It was like his brain was moving faster than his mouth could.

However, along the talk, the pattern became pretty obvious... He found something interesting and then he had a reaction(that was funny). I understood that that was the key to a happy and creative life but hearing his numerous examples became a little monotonous after a while. However, there are some agreeable parts, such as "The best ideas come when you are falling asleep." and "You always have to be slightly bored with everything. And if you're not, you have to pretend to be slightly bored with everything."

TED Talk: The First Secret of Design is...Noticing

All along, I thought I was someone that likes finding fault in things. I always wondered why some packagings had to be so hard to open...

Example of hard to open packaging

And nobody ever tries to change it! They leave it as it is, or as Tony Fadell calls it, it became habitual.

In his talk he told us how noticing the loopholes that normal people don't can make you a great designer, innovator and entrepreneur. A great example would be Mary Anderson, that invented the windscreen wiper because she didn't want the driver to jeopardise their lives by driving with a snow-filled windscreen, nor did she want the cold wind to blow into the car when the driver opened the door. She saw a problem and she went about to fix it. And that is what makes her memorable when people talk about female inventors.

It is true when he said it is hard to fight habituation. In his talk he told us a few more secrets, such as looking broader and closer and thinking younger. 

Speaking of the stickers on fruits....

People in Europe are very advanced!

Week Four: A Fashion Designer that Broke the Rules

Yohji Yamamoto

My designer of choice would be Mr Yamamoto. He is widely considered to be a master tailor, very well known for his avant-garde tailoring featuring Japanese design aesthetics.

The first rule he broke was to go into fashion. He actually graduated with a Law degree from Keio University in 1966 but he then went into fashion design at Bunka Fashion College.

From there on, his fashion career started and he became well known for frequently creating designs far removed from current trends and also his signature oversized silhouettes in black that often featured drapery in varying textures.

And that was another rule that he broke. While everyone in the 80s were going on about flamboyant bright colors, Mr Yamamoto was designing black clothes. 


Yohji Yamamoto wanted to make men's clothes for women. He felt that his menswear looked as good on women like his womenswear. His designs were meant to protect a woman's body, be it from the cold wind or a man's eyes.


While everyone in the 80s had the mindset that "Bigger is better", Yohji Yamamoto was thinking "Less is More". And while everyone was busy experimenting with yellow eyeshadow, big hair and shoulder pads, Yohji Yamamoto was just all about black. I guess that's the biggest rule that he broke, by going against the social norms completely.

Week Four: 20 Best Ways to Kill A Cockroach

Warning: The following 20 photos below may be disturbing and uncomfortable. All photos were taken from Google.

Step on it

Hammer it

Chew on it

Microwave it

Dissect it

Put it inside the washing machine

Make into food batter

Pluck out its shell

Bomb it

Fry it

Flush it down the toilet bowl

Superglue it

Chop in half

Mash it

Freeze it

Hit with newspaper

Mince it

Drown it

Starve it

Burn it

TED Talk: Where Good Ideas come from

I watched Steven Johnson's TED talk earlier today and it started out by him introducing a picture of a coffee house to us. The coffee shop claimed to have a long history (1650) and this brought him to tell us about what people drank before the invention of tea and coffee.... Alcohol. They drank alcohol for breakfast and such because water isn't safe for drinking.

He also shared with us about how ideas usually come from nearby place/things etc. (No wonder I usually look around my surroundings when I'm searching for ideas.)

Next, he shared with us scenarios that we have all experienced: Mind block. We tend to work with our own ideas so much that sometimes we get stuck and we don't know how to go about with it. He said that we should "get out and mix more". And he also shared that we shouldn't pin so much hopes on one idea to become a plan. Sometimes, we need ideas to come together to create a new, improved and refined bigger idea. And to get there, we need many different people from different backgrounds to give their unique perspective that could lead us to being innovative.

Week Three: Brainstorming

Brainstorming in a nutshell

This week, we were tasked to find out about brainstorming and blog about it. Being in my final semester in school, I've heard this word countless of times. Like it or not, it's part and parcel of being in this school.

Brainstorming consists of a group of people coming together to share their thoughts and ideas about a particular topic. The outcome of brainstorming would be to find a solution or a way to a problem. It takes time and everyone's effort to contribute to the group. It consists of different perspectives and ideas that could lead to many possible outcomes. There are actually no rules to brainstorming. If there had to be one, it would probably be no judgement.

Judgement stops proper brainstorming. It kills creativity as well. So, instead of judgement, all of us should encourage each other to contribute all they can to break down barriers.

Over the past few years, countless of lecturers have gave me tips to better productive my brainstorming sessions. They said it is okay to give bad ideas first because you never know when good ideas will come out of it. And from these ideas, we can break them up or build them into bigger ideas for them to eventually morph into plans.

Week Three: Mindmapping I

Mindmap Topic

Halfway while mindmapping....the pen's ink had to do this to me :(

Our thoughts in progress (featuring colored pens)

Out of boredom, I took a look around class and everyone seemed to be looking for inspiration

Wu Zhao busy mindmapping too

"My side" of the paper and my "ways" to kill cockroaches

Upon a closer look...

Almost done! Words sprawled across the paper

While Miss Debra was giving feedback to Meishi, I snapped a final pic...

I realized I only had 9 photos to submit for this entry only after typing this out.

So... In class we were told to choose a topic and write out 101 ways to do it in a group of two. Apparently, it seems like Killing Cockroaches seemed to be a popular choice among my classmates. I only picked it because it seemed very general and open and pretty easy to do...but I was wrong.

While mindmapping, initially it was easy to do the usuals - step, kick, hit it but then these conventional ways ran out so I had to resort to much more violent ways - throwing it into an erupting volcano and tearing out it's "skin". It was pretty fun to be able to write anything I wanted, without worrying if it was even scientifically proven or socially acceptable. I was basically free from any forms of judging since the outcome was quantity and not quality.

It was really  nice to run of of space on the paper as it means that we were being productive. It was quite worrying to see us writing so much and still have so many blank spaces on the paper... And just like any other works, there is definitely this sense of satisfaction seeing your handwriting sprawled all over a blank piece of paper...

TED Talk: 4 Lessons in Creativity

For my second week of class, I watched Julie Burstein's 4 Lessons in Creativity TED Talk. Burstein starts off by showing us a pottery she made in college and from there, she linked it to creativity. She talked about how we are so afraid of the possibility of failure that it is hindering our creativity. We overthink and judge ourselves that we unable to let our thoughts flow naturally.

I completely agree with her when she said that creativity grows out of every day experiences, even the broken places. I think of "weird" ideas from time to time in a day and they actually come in handy when I'm stuck doing a project. These "weird" ideas may not seem much now but it is a creative process, it is just how our minds work.

The talk was very inspiring, it encourages us to not belittle ourselves, but instead continue without fear of failure. She simplifies everything I've wondered about creativity nicely into words and examples.

Week Two: Breaking the Rules

This is a watch design by a Alan Chan, a Graphic Designer based in Hong Kong. He is famous for incorporating his Shanghainese-meets-West style in his designs and this is one of my favorites. Unlike your normal watches, this watch features thick and thin lines. The design concept was inspired by the navigating instrument that locates time and directions.


Alexey Brodovitch was one of the first Graphic Designers that incorporated photography with typography. He felt that typography was a medium to express a certain feeling/mood and he loved complimenting it with photography. The result would be a refreshing and balanced design, using typography to show movement.



Paul Jung is one of my favourite photographers due to his breathtaking and unique photos. His models are usually either fair or really dark and they are always doing weird poses and expressions. It may not seem like your normal sort of photographs as they do not show landscapes, selfies, objects or even people... The models shown are not your average people in photographs.

This is a clock named ClockONE, which uses E-ink in its display. It is actually a wall clock but its design is very much familiar to all of us as it looks exactly like our bedroom alarm clocks. The company caters to audiences that are looking for something unique in their homes.
This water block bottle was designed to convey the unique aesthetic beauty and purity of Jeju Island but also to reinvent the presentation of standard water bottle with its landscape orientation.

Week Two: The Egg Experiment

Egg One

Excited me receiving my egg for the first time! Attempting to paste double sided tape on it

....So I could wrap it up like a mummy!

After that, I wrapped it around with straws so they could provide some cushioning.

Here's another angle of how my egg looks like...

I still felt uneasy so I protected it further in a cup..

I took the plunge and threw my egg but... it cracked :(

 Egg Two

Undeterred, so here's round 2! It looks like a rocket now because the "legs" can hopefully "stand" so the egg won't crack

Covering the egg with more straws 

It still looks empty so I placed it in a cup.

IT CRACKED AGAIN

For my Week Two class, we were tasked to prevent an egg from cracking when thrown about 2m above. In my case, I attempted cushioning the fall using straws and tissues but it failed. The egg cracked.

For my second egg, I repeated the steps again but this time round I made some "legs" so that it can balance and not crack instead. However, it failed the second time and I was slightly disappointed as the rest of the class managed to save their eggs within their first try :(

However, as there were no more materials and time left for my third try, I could not try out for the third time.

If I could have done differently, I would have taped the eggs all over, to thicken the shell and to prevent it from cracking. I would then wrap it around with tissues and then straws to cushion the impact.