Thanks 
9 x 12 Bienfang marker/tracing paper.
Developing it further…some bits that I want to tighten up but I think it’s really getting to what I want.
Ran out of pens so I had to go with pencil, which is always messy for me. 
If you took the last sketch I did (with the blue) and transfered it directly to a side view, you would get this;
So I developed that a bit and took it to this;
I don’t like the nose area and the sweep over the lower fuselage - everything from the bottom of the yellow area back to about the bottom of the wing I’d like to tighten up.
From another thread on a forum for developing homebuilt aircraft;
I tried to draw this so that the crease line in the front (the bottom of the yellow area) goes about midline between the upper and lower doors - so the upper door’s lower frame and the lower door’s upper frame would lock into a frame on the front and rear of the cockpit, transferring the load across the whole thing and providing minimal structure disruption.
The angle of the wing is wrong (it’s negative), I think, so that’d probably have to be changed.
There is a show going on in NYC right now on all of Marc Newson’s transportation work. A hike from Rochester, but relevant to what you are doing.
If I didn’t have so much going on with school and work I’d do it…sucks being in New York state but 5 hours away from the city.
Went at it a different day with a clean sheet of paper, I like the direction it’s heading towards now. I’ve just got a way oversized vertical stabilizer atm so I cut that part out. Apologies for the messy tracing paper.
EDIT: Properly sized and dimensioned as a work in progress;
Wow.
He was already a hero, that that exhibit looks amazing…
http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-09-14_marc-newson/publications/#/images/6/
Wish I could go myself. Of the “Rock Star” types, he really consistently doing something for me.
I dunno…I don’t think any other famous art piece annoys me as much as that jet posted earlier…I know as a student I’m not supposed to question the “great designers”, but I seriously think most of his stuff is simplistic to the point of insulting, and his grasp of mechanical design to be inspired by silly putty instead of Tecnics or some other building block - basically, I think his mechanical forms are either extremely simplistic or way, way too organic.
Really? That seems an odd statement.
To the point of insulting? That seems a bit overly dramatic don’t you think. The 021c is a fantastic vehicle and much of his furniture is also very good. Do you know the story behind the aluminum chaise chairs he hand made that ended up bein bought by Luftansa?
As a student and as a desiner, you should always question, but start with yourself. What makes you react in such a manner?
Partially the reason is because his style of design is so renowned, when I personally don’t think it’s deserving of it; my sense of aesthetic is based on things like the art deco style of the 1930s, the warplanes of the 40s, or the art of video games like Homeworld (below).
In terms of self examination, I think this here is one of the reasons my sense of what’s cool is so 90 degrees off of what a lot of people I talk to - the reason for that being that my original port of call was video game art - and I mean video games from 1999, where we were just starting to get 3D graphics that kind of resembled real life - so everything was still pretty abstracted. I think in polygons, not smooth forms, so when I make an object I love chamfered edges, because polygons in these games cut at very sharp angles, and smooth forms were a relative rarity. Combined with me loving Legos at the same time, I built up this very solid, angular aesthetic. I still do spaceships for fun, I find them to be the best sort of design for getting really awesome shapes, and I love to play in the Y axis, which is something with vehicles on Earth you don’t typically get to do.
And then the current state of my art when it comes to that stuff, a 3d model I’m making for a contest (still work in progress) - notice that there are curves, but you can track where they are - I could probably make most of this in Solidworks with fillet, extrude, cut, etc, operations;
So this is the sort of aesthetic I’m coming from, this sort of quasi ultra modern (polygonal, very digital based), but at the same time very old school (flat sides, bent sheet metal, rivets), when I critique his stuff.
So I see his design for that jet, and frankly think it looks terrible; squashed, none of the forms really playing off of each other - you’ve got this big squashed intake underneath this bubbled canopy with a clear division between the two, by a wing that looks like it belongs on a Buck Rodgers saucer. I don’t appreciate making curvy metal shapes; I love metal objects that are flat and look like they’re made of something hard and tough - that’s why when it comes to aircraft I appreciate the 109 or the P-47 more than the usual Spitfire or Mustang.
And yep, I know all about his furniture; I don’t like his stuff because I had to do a report on it and again, found everything to be too bulbousy and lacking in form - to me, form is made up of clear, defined shapes, and all of his stuff lacks that - it’s all organic and squishy. That seems to be the trend these days, which is also what annoys me about him, is that we went from something that I really liked (hard lines, hard forms; muscle cars, slab sided airplanes), to this blobby swoopiness that we have today.
I agree that we should have some swoopiness, but I just don’t like design where it looks like I drew a squiggly line and then puffed it up with a bike tire.
That being said, I did like his embryo chair;
- the shape is definable and he accents it well with the metal - the legs are straight and easily readable. I really do not like that aluminum chair that he’s famous for, I know it’s a big deal but once you get past the interesting technical achievement I find it lacking in shape.
In summary, the big reason I’m so bitterly against his stuff is because I see it as a prime example of what’s really “in” these days, and I really don’t like having to be told over and over again (in class) to make things more organic, because that’s what’s in. I don’t mind critiques, and a lot of the stuff that I posted earlier in this thread is just plain ugly (me failing at making it flat sided) - and I don’t mind being told that. What I do mind is that I’m constantly being tugged off into this really smooth aesthetic direction that I really don’t like to be a part of.
EDIT: I’m getting ready for work so I’m still wandering around thinking about this. The other thing I have issue with is that I love detail; I love objects that you can stare at for hours and find new ways of how it’s put together, or objects that you can’t take in all at a glance. So things like Apple are fine because they do keep to the blocky aesthetic, but I’m really sick of the minimalist trend in how it makes every object I pick up really…plain. Like I mean it’s well designed, it is pleasing, I like holding it…but I don’t love looking at it. Again, I grew up on spaceships, so I love seeing a greebled mass across a deck or looking at loose piping and wires hanging out and sticking into new places and bolted to the side - and while I know that’s not what a “new” product should look like, I still love this idea of objects that you find really hard to get tired of. This aesthetic bent leads me to prefer Bang and Olufsen over Apple, because the former has something really interesting about it’s objects - there’s things in there or shapes in there that are put in just because they’re fun to look at or watch move.
This whole minimalist thing really comes into play with our society today, I think, because at this stage in our development a lot of the stuff we use daily - phones, computers, etc - their function is almost completely separate from their form. Like, you don’t have a real dialpad on an iPhone, and you don’t have a computer that you drag a physical corner across the screen to read the next page in your ebook. So this complete seperation of form and function in a lot of our digital devices is something that I find kind of sad, to be honest, because these devices we use now won’t age like the old ones will - there’s no constant reassuring tactile feedback, there’s no mechanism that you can point to and say how it works or why it’s broken now - there’s just a really thin nondescript object with a screen that you glide your fingers across. How does it work? I dunno. It shows me a lot of cool things but it takes away from the actual feeling in your hands of what it does.
There’s been a break in how we think of our possessions; before, when we bought a product we were buying this object to use and do stuff with. Now we buy things to give us access to something that’s completely seperate from the product itself - and that’s what’s driving the design now. The objects aren’t important today, at least, not in the same way (I swear if I meet another slobbering iPad nut…), they’re important because they’re unobtrusive and don’t distract from the real reason you’re buying them - to access content. We’ve moved from this physical based product world to a very content driven, ethereal one, and that’s spread out into all of our design - none of the objects we build or design now have personality, they’re completely smooth and devoid of imperfections, planned or otherwise (you could argue that a shoulder line on a car is a flaw in an otherwise smooth surface, no?).
So how is the chair about “Giving us access to something completely different than the product”
Or flipped the other way, how is an iPhone giving you access to information technologies any different from an airplane giving you access to flight?
As far as your aesthetic assessment, you seem to criticize Newson for being inspired by shapes that do not relate to mechanicals, but you are inspired by video game spaceships… which have no relation to mechanicals?
I’m not trying to get you to personally love his work. For me, personally, there are very few of his pieces I would want for myself. What I am trying to get you to do is to respect the work he has done, and to evaluate it in a manner that is more respectful.
There is Good design, and bad design. Then there is what you like, and what you don’t like. Sometimes those things overlap, correlate, and form subsets, and sometimes they don’t line up at all.
hmm, I forgot about that show. think I’ll stop over there after lunch.
I’m not trying to get you to personally love his work. For me, personally, there are very few of his pieces I would want for myself. What I am trying to get you to do is to respect the work he has done, and to evaluate it in a manner that is more respectful.
I’m going to reply to this part first, because you’re right, I could be more respectful. If he was here and he really wanted a critique from a nobody like myself (because I realize that he’s a mover and shaker in the design world and I am most certainly not), then I would give it in a respectful manner; when speaking of it though, it’s easier to get a point across via exaggeration and hyperbole. To wit; I would be respectful in his presence, because he deserves that. Since he’s not actually here, I see no reason why I can’t say “I really think his work is awful”. That’s not even entirely true, because I recognize the technical merit of a lot of what he’s done - it’s just that it’s easier to say the former. So my apologies for the rudeness (it probably came out ruder than I intended), but I still don’t like his stuff and I probably never will like stuff in the same vein. But I’ll make sure to be a little bit more diplomatic about it.
I didn’t say that’s what it was doing. I just said I thought it looked neat. Or at least, that’s what I thought I said, apologies if it didn’t come out that way (I’m running on two hours of sleep and a headache).
Or flipped the other way, how is an iPhone giving you access to information technologies any different from an airplane giving you access to flight?
Well, because an airplane has to have certain things for it to give you access to flight - it has to have wings that generate lift, it has to have a place for you to sit, etc - I was talking about the function/form relationship…I wasn’t saying it was necessarily bad, I was just saying that these days products are meant to be unobtrusive, because the point isn’t the product, it’s what you do with it. With an airplane or a car, it’s both; you appreciate the flying or driving experience, but you also appreciate the sculptural forms of that object, that perception of it as a finely tuned machine. And don’t get me wrong, we still do this, the reason I said iPhone or iPad in my examples is because I was referring more specifically to electronics. When we appreciate these device’s sculptural forms, I think we do it more because they’re ignorable; we’re not focused on the device, we’re focused on how we use it, so we don’t want it to be particularly obnoxious (you’re not going to get an iPad with accent ridges running down it’s back, for instance).
As far as your aesthetic assessment, you seem to criticize Newson for being inspired by shapes that do not relate to mechanicals, but you are inspired by video game spaceships… which have no relation to mechanicals?
But they DO have relationship with mechanicals - look at the engine of any sci fi spaceship. You’ll see it’s littered with pipes, tubing, etc- things that give the impression that all of this is so that this can propel the object. You’re confusing the point I was trying to make (which wasn’t explained clearly to begin with, I’m sure) - it’s not that spaceships necessarily have to work - they just look like they’d work. Homeworld does that really well, the ships look like they only belong in space - they have high amounts of Y axis movement, they have a lot of draggy bits that wouldn’t work in an atmosphere, etc - they’re not boat shaped hulls with cannons on top like a lot of people do. They look like industrial workhorses that were built for an environment, and they can’t exist anywhere else.
The reason I don’t like Newson’s work is because it’s blobby, it has no relation or appreciation for the beauty of a piston or a crank shaft - it’s all hidden under a slick skin that’s attempting to be as featureless as possible. I love the beauty of a machine; I love motorcycles, because everything that makes it work is exposed and you can see it. So yea, this is a subjective thing (explained below), but that’s why I think he has very poor design - because what he designs often either tries to hide what makes it functional or coats it superfluous cladding that’s attempting to hide what the object really is. I haven’t had a knock down, drawn out debate about why I don’t like his stuff before (usually the teachers in the department are of the “this is what’s amazing, like it” variety so I don’t really get to debate it), so that explanation is likely to change, but I’m feeling decently happy with it right now.
There is Good design, and bad design. Then there is what you like, and what you don’t like. Sometimes those things overlap, correlate, and form subsets, and sometimes they don’t line up at all.
IMO, usability is the only factor where you can objectively judge what is good or bad design - all the aesthetic bits are up to the viewer (hence it being art/design). So I find it hard to split between bad design and what you don’t like - you don’t like it because you most likely think that it’s bad design (and I’m referring to the aesthetic component). Conversely, I can’t say that you’re wrong if you say it is good design - in fact, you’re probably more right, because that’s the majority viewpoint when it comes to his stuff. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s automatically granted the right of being called “good design” by everyone.
Well stated:
on point 1) you can be quick, effective, honest and still respectful. I’m not saying I always succeed at this, an I have gotten much better over the years, but I do strive for it. I would’t assume he is not reading. Most firms have sophisticated tracking capabilities to pick up even the slightest mention online, I know we do… and even without that, you would be surprised who reads these boards and doesn’t comment. Manage you personal brand. Also, your not a nobody. You are in the early phase of your professional life, but your opinion still has value, make sure you present it in a way that merits a conversational back and forth.
On point 2) what I’m pointing out is that you are contradicting yourself here. You say things should subside into the background in point 3, but that they should be celebrated in points 2 and 4. If you are going to sling the strong POVs and exaggerations, you need to be consistent to have credibility… at least be consistent within the same post.
On point 3) not buying it. The iPhone could be a chunk of plastic like a Blackberry, it would in fact fade away more. But it is glass and metal. It might not have much form, but its materiality goes way beyond function and pull it out of the shadows. It is a “notice me” product from a physical point of view the same way a vehicle is. A Porsche with a sheet metal box over it still drives like a Porsche… but it is so much nicer with that beautiful shell. Sometimes the physical design is an avatar for the experience.
On point 4)I think you might be totally off here, the mechanicals you refer to are complete fictitious. There is not function there… it is essentially masturbatory. I love a good spaceship as much as the next designer, but saying that a CGI spaceship is more functional aesthetically than a prototype jet because it has pipes that have no basis in reality is a pretty unsound argument
Point 5) off again. If that were true, when MOMA needed a new curator they would just throw a rock and give the job to the person it hit. You might not have developed the eye yet, and trust me, no student has, but there is an expert level of subjective judgement of aesthetics based on a combination of historical context, the greater cultural lexicon, and pure intuition. You don’t have to believe me for it to be true.
All that said, lets stop this conversation now and return the thread to the original poster. If you want to follow up, start up a new topic and I’d be happy to continue.
I realize some of my points are contradictory, which is because I haven’t really had a chance to think through and codify a lot of this; that’s why I do debates like this, which affords me the opportunity. I just know what I don’t like, being forced to explain that is what forms coherent arguments IMO. But yea, there’s a lot of things you’re right on and a few I still disagree with; but agreed, let’s drop it and I’ll just try to learn from the experience 
That being said, I am the original poster of this thread 
I just haven’t had any time to work on this because of other class and work obligations. I mean to this week though.
Ah, didn’t realize you were the original poster.
So, I have an idea for you that might be an interesting self experiment. Try dual developing two directions in parallel. The first as close to your personal aesthetic as possible. The second, as far from your personal taste as possible but still in the realm of good design in terms of thought out and resolved form work. It may provide some interesting learnings for you.
Thanks, that sounds like fun, I’ll do that. Do you think I should stick to the requirements or allow myself some leeway (nothing super unrealistic, just something like using an inline engine and tandem seating instead)?
A pure and true comparison would be using the same requirement set. A third option could be to change some of the requirements though…
Unknown if you have some free time I’d check out the BBC documentary on Newson called “Urban Spaceman”, if you haven’t checked it out. You can find it in 5 pieces on Youtube.
There are only a few of his designs that I would personally buy, but I have a huge amount of respect for his process, his commitment to executing his vision by any means necessary and his childlike inquisitive nature.
Watching now.
EDIT 1:
Actually, to be honest so far (about 3:34 in), I really respect the guy and what he does - although I still think it looks terrible. But I recognize his process and can relate to it (from what’s been said so far) - it’s just like the people you dislike the most are the ones who think in the same direction, just come to different conclusions. In the last conclusion of an art piece, it’s the work, so if that’s really 180 degrees from what you would do, then it’s quite annoying; at least to me.
I think I’m coming to the conclusion that the other half of the reason I disliked him (and other design “rock stars”) is because of the critics and fan following that they seem to attract; I loath the pompousness of a lot of the art community, and idolized designers were guilty of that by association in my mind.
EDIT2:
Like for instance, when he talks about using metal and no one doing that anymore, I’ve thought the same thing. But whereas he wants to take it and make it look strange or really smooth - like plastic or something else, like cloth, I want to make it look like metal, as in, I like metal as a material, and therefore want to make it look like what metal is typically associated with; hard, sharp edges, continuous, blocky forms, etc.
EDIT3:
I also really agree with his idea of the future, like everything I create is also trying to be part of this future or whatnot; it’s just that my vision of the future comes from a few things, one of the biggest of which being those video game shots that I posted earlier. His vision of the future was shaped by the Apollo landings, grainy footage of people floating every which way and water droplets forming bizarre shapes, very similar to things like the Lockheed Lounge (try looking at a bit of water in Zero-G on a black and white TV, you’ll see what I mean). My vision was shaped by big, hulking ships made of blocky, angular polygonal forms on a screen with really fine resolution.
For instance, I think the rapid prototyping machine has so much more aesthetic potential and ideas in it, and a lot more indicators of “futuristic”, than the stuff he makes. So I see the sketch and I see how he’s developing the forms on paper, but to me, developing lines like that (wavy, never straight or tangent or anything like that), shows a lack of control and skill, as opposed to mastery of it.
Or, and this has always been a problem of mine when it comes to “finishing” pieces; I think the look of the unfinished mold is more interesting and more exciting than the finished piece; all the little scratches and crosses show the development of the process and tell the story of the work, more so than this completely clean slate of a molded featureless part.
EDIT 4: Oh man, I said all of that right before I started #3, and in the next 30 seconds all he talked about was that long process, those many iterations, etc; and that’s just what I meant - an object that shows all of those markings or whatever, parts of that process, may look worse and I won’t want to sit on it, but I like to look at it on a screen more because it has more detail to keep you interested - whereas without the experience of the 3D form in front of you, it’s really plain. So I guess my problem is that I design for the screen, whereas he designs for the form (and I didn’t get to build stuff when I was a kid like he did, so that’s why I learned how to do it on the computer).
Basically, all his shapes are really wavy; they’re the 3D shapes that result when your hand slips or loses control when you’re drawing; with more control, you draw straighter lines, so it’s more challenging and therefore interesting. To me at least.
Apologies for the long winded posts, I’m just enjoying teasing this out, as I think it’ll help me get more of a handle on this project - after all, aircraft are the arbiters of futuristic design in my mind.