Michael Roller

Dyson DC24 Blueprint

We recently upgraded to a Dyson DC24 Blueprint. Rather than the traditional golden and metal colorway, the blueprint comes in white and has added printed details about range of motion, stress testing, and more technical information. It’s a beautiful product, inside and out, so I decided to document some of the less expected angles and share the design.

Admiring Dyson’s from afar, I always imagined that part of the beauty was in a “secret” level of detail where the appearance of deceptively simple volumes with tangent intersections were actually more sophisticated curvature surfaces (like an Apple laptop). In reality, they’re really just the simple forms we’d expect. Why do you think this works? Is there something cognitively “right” about assigning this vocabulary to tools like a vacuum cleaner? Looking at the Dyson in person reminds me of Gray Holland’s hypothesis on surfacing can relate to functionality. It will be interesting to see how Dyson products evolve now that they’ve become a lifestyle brand. Anyway, here are the pictures:

Tags: dyson, strategic aesthetics

2010 DAAP Student Merit Finalists

This week, the top industrial design students from UC’s DAAP program presented their work as a part of the IDSA student merit awards. A group of professionals judged the work and selected Tracy Subisak to represent UC at the upcoming district conference in Grand Rapids. Having worked with all of these students, I’m sure it was a difficult decision, even just to narrow it down to this group of seven. This is an extremely talented group of soon-to-be graduates, and I wish them luck as they prepare for their capstone presentations at DAAPworks this June.

Tracy Subisak

Cody Stonerock

Sylvia Spencer

Jeff Engelhardt

Kristen Beck

Dave Heyne

Sam Amis

Tags: daap, presentations, student work, transportation