FabLab@School in Bangkok, Thailand

We're about to finish setting up…

Mike and I had the privilege this week of interviewing Roy, the baddest 4 year old in town. This kid’s plain cool. With his fingernails painted pink, his loud, unabashed love of his baby sister, and his collection of dolls, Roy marches to beat of his own drum. And so it was an absolute treat to brainstorm with him ideas for a learning toy.

During our 45-minute conversation with Roy, Mike and I learned a lot. When asked his favorite activity at preschool, Roy proclaimed his love for…

Making Mr Wormy Burmy

The full set of manipulable and tactile pieces with Mr Wormy Burmy (blue) as the centerpiece. The play set comprises manipulable pieces…

http://youtu.be/mDlmC7Y5YlY

Megan and I interviewed Ariah, a 7 year old girl who is passionate about animals and stories. Ariah has an impressive ability to create, and, with her age, she already has a collection of stories written by her, where animals and colors are the most prolific source of inspiration.

From the different possibilities that we raised after the interview,…

We interviewed two boys that are of age 7 and 9 and observed their casual home activities. The boys love to play outdoor sports, writing, and storytelling. They also have a large box of approximately 200 plastic animals.

When we first observed them, they talked about forming different teams of animals and creating sport-themed stories. In a playful way, each boy would have his animals compete with his opponent’s animals. The animals will “fight” until one winner is…

We interviewed Yasmin, a smart and enthusiastic eight years old child. She is in third grade and loves arts and writing. Our first meeting with Yasmin was quite fun. We met online and were able to play with “Google Effects”, a feature on Google Hangout that allows users to add visual and sound effects to the video chat. The child felt more comfortable after we started playing with headwears from Google effects.

We asked several questions to Yamin…

When we first interviewed Tucker, he had a wide range of interests. He told us he loved baseball, recycling, electronics, circuits, computers, software, and renewably energy. This meant we had a lot from which to draw inspiration. We wanted to create something for him that would embody some of his biggest interests, and allow him to play, explore, and even modify…

We designed a “shadow storybook” for Sajni, a cheerful and imaginative three year-old girl. 

Here is our video documenting our design process:…

In my quest to start a Makerspace here at Balboa, I have joined forces with the Animation teacher. We are going to hopefully recruit more people and get more people interested in the field of Design and 3D fabrication. We are now starting to use Blender after several weeks in Sketchup. I am new here and I will begin to post lesson slides and possibly Design Files for anybody who wants to teach Blender. I am going to try and do this weekly so I can have a rolling view of what I have been…

In this election year, I was inspired by Shepard Fairey's popular Hope poster that was heavily used during the 2008 Obama presidential campaign. The poster was influential in helping recognize street art as a form of artistic expression. Prior to this street art was just seen as graffiti by most. 

I uploaded a version of my image into CorelDraw. My…

For my artsy name tag, I was inspired by the impressionism art movement and notably two paintings by Claude Monnet: "The Cliffs at Etretat" and "Impression, soleil levant".

First, I did a cardboard prototype to check the validity of the design. The prototype was a very good idea and it…

Our first assignment for the lab class BBA Fall 2012 was to design an artsy name tag, taking an artist that we love/admire/disgust/etc. as an inspiration. But which artist to pick?! The artist that popped up in my mind was Jean Tinguely, a sculptor who - in my opinion - creates some of the most exciting machines as they are close to what you as a kid might have designed. And he happens to be Swiss, like I am too. So, why not…

When I was thinking of ideas for my name tag, I settled on the idea of seeking inspiration from Marvel comic book artists. I've always had a love for superheroes. I decided that I wanted to make a name tag that included a superhero that could fly. What first came to mind was to create a sort of zip-line for the superhero. Then, I thought about locks that slid across while attached to their chains and decided to model my flying mechanism after that.

First, I created a superhero…

Inspiration

The inspiration for my name tag: The Dissecting Table, comes from a book I've been reading, The Order of Things by Michel Foucault, and my inspiration reflects the overall objective of the book: to discuss how…

One of my favorite artworks of all time is James Turrell's, "Meeting" at MOMA PS1. It's a site-specific installation where visitors enter into a space to look up at an abstracted blue square in the ceiling. After a moment of time, visitors realize that the blue square is actually the sky.…

My piece of work for the first lab assignment is an adaptation of Marcel Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel ("Roue de Bicyclette"). When I started thinking about ideas for my project, I remembered of my art teacher from high school. He was fascinated about Duchamp. I thought about reproducing his famous art piece "Fountain" but it'd be very hard to do a replica of it using only the laser and vinyl cut. I did some research on his works and found the "Roue de Bicyclette". I decided to pay homage to my…

My project was inspired by the work of Alexander Calder, an american sculptor that became famous for creating the mobile, a kind of sculpture that is carefully designed to balance its several pieces.

The initial idea was to…

I am a fan of things that move -- cinema reels, merry-go-rounds, gyroscopes or kinetic art sculptures made by Lyman Whitaker. So I knew I wanted to build something that moved.

I doodled around a bit and decided to make a game that allowed users to create not just 1, but over 1000 names.

The final design consists of 4 concentric donuts. Each donut can be moved in a clockwise or anticlockwise…

For my name tag, I looked to the de stijl designer Gerrit Rietveld for inspiration.  I've been fascinated by the Rietveld Chair since I first saw it in an architectural history course, and I'd always wanted to make one for myself.  So, what better way to create it than in miniature and as the canvas for my name tag!  With that as my starting point, I began mapping out my plan – first in Adobe Illustrator to pick the "right" font, and then in AutoCAD.  I worked off of drawings of the original…

Brainstorming:

My initial brainstorming session was challenging. First, I have a short name, so I needed to think of some creative ways to either stretch out my name, or give it some greater depth. Second, I don’t have a lot of background in art or art history, so coming up with good color schemes and designs, as well as a viable artistic inspiration will require some…