Needed to write this down.

After a particularly bad presentation the other day, my mentor came upto me and said:

" You had many sketches, perhaps too many. you see, if you imagine that there is a target in front of you, what you have done is shoot many many arrows in the periphery, i want you to shoot fewer arrows, but as close to the target as possible"

I felt bad, but it got me thinking.

In design, can/ do we ever 'aim and fire'? i mean, unlike the board exams, or a sales number, a new design is not a perceivable target, so one has to shoot blind. We shoot many arrows hoping one may accidentaly hit the right target. The target sometimes, if we are lucky, appears before us in the form of a mirage or 'inspiration' and we can only hope to catch that glipse of the mirage for long enough to be able to aim and fire!

...

There are two kinds of people in this world:

Those who sketch

And those who can't.

and this time it CARS!

Yesterday was a day dedicated to cars!

I had dropped over at a friends place for breakfast... though this time it was breakfast with sketching classes! So while my friend busily sketched car after car explaining the importance of contrast, variation in line pressure, and using perspetive rather than isometry... i was completely distrated by the TV in front of us cause 'Too Fast Too Furious' was playing...and though its not really MY type of movie, my dratted cousin has managed to condition me to like it!... so between looking at a car being sketched, and seeing some mad car chases on TV, we both realized that we were getting late for the 'Seoul Motor Show' !

So now we set off for the one hour long journey to 'Kintex' where the motor show was being held.
Reached Kintex, and after a long walk though the parking area ( which incientally was also like a motor show for me - except without the crowd and model!) ... soon ... we reached inside. It was ONE big hall as opposed to our Indian multiple hall Expo.

Well to be honest, going to a motor show ( for me) is a bit like visiting a zoo. Only that perhaps in a zoo i'm more familair with the creatures on displaywhile in an auto expo, i am a little more at sea! But on the whole, people behave pretty similarly in both these places!! so as we moved from cage to cage ( read 'brand to brand') i was really trying to get a fix on the design identity of the various brands and how they differenciated themselves from each other. I heard a lot about 'wheel arches', super-cars, hydrogen fule cell cars missing 'b' pillars from my friend, and also managed to notice a lot of whacky rear view mirrors and LED experiments with headlights... quite a mind swim!

All in all, it turned out to be a far better experiance than i had expected. Some cars actually caught my attention and amazement,like:

'Altica' Renault-Samsung concept car
http://aving.net/usa/Exhibition/default.asp?mode=read&c_num=41606&SP_Num=73&mn_name=exhi&BTB_Num=136

the hyundai QarmaQ - a full plastic body concept car in association with GE plastics
http://news.windingroad.com/concept-cars/geneva-motor-show-hyundai-qarmaq-concept-goes-for-whalebones-safety/

and of course... the mini cooper ( one of the few cars with a MALE model!)

Came back home feeling good and tired. So maybe cars arn't that boring after all!

Patterns

One of the scariest feelings is realizing how similar you are to your parents!

And whats even scarier is that one can never see this similarity until its too late! Similar mistakes, similar triumphs, and lives led almost on that invisible line of fate.

Fate? i NEVER believed in it. And who am i kidding, i still don't. But i think we are all programmed to see patterns,we love it when we detect a pattern in anything... differnt people do differnt things with the patterns they see... 'scientififc people' notice patterns in an accurate manner and turn their onservations into scientific theories, artists tweek and exaggerate the patterns they see in life so that they communicate better... and some of us see patterns and start forseeing the future... we take the pattern to its next predictable level, and know exactly
whats about to happen... or at least we would like to think so!

'markers' of time!

Been some time again since i wrote...
I did something yesterday which i had spared myself from doing for a long time... ironing clothes... i had left the jeans for the end bit... and while ironing then i noticed how much thier color had changed since i had bought the pair.. i could see around the seams how much darker they used to be... and how with all the fading i liked the pair more and more...
nostalgia...
perhaps 'markers' of time...are more valuable than we admit..
There are so many little things we look at, that are just affirmations that 'yes time has past'... like sandal tans.... faded scars... length of hair... white hairs...
This reminds me that while doing research on bicycle customisation... it suprised me how much a flaw like a dent or a scratch made people know thier bike more than any other means of personalisation! slowely i noticed that Many people actually know thier products by the product's flaw, a flaw that occuered by a mistake, or through some funny incident... anyhow, that flaw becomes a 'marker' of time.. and something 'of your own'... in a world of mass production, and identical pieces... perhaps the few things that we still have control over are flaws, and those flaws make things our own!