My Visual Product

Entry 1: Idea

For this Product I am going to develop a sofa chair inspired from the faculties of art, design and film from the start of the 19^th Century onwards and focused on the theme on movement or a lack of it in particular. After looking at a number of works by other artists I have come up with a basic idea.

I started from looking at designs of various chairs, in particular cantilever chairs to look at what other artist did and if there is anything that will inspire me or make me think of something different and particular as much as possible. The first idea that crossed my mind was to have the chair a cantilever chair but unlike the usual kind, I would like it to have the supports at the back side of the chair rather then the front. While going through then I noticed that most of the cantilever chairs do not have seating capable to be sat on for hours which did not suit my needs for a sofa chair. Hence I deviated from cantilever chairs and looked at other chairs to get an idea for cushioning. An other design I came across hanging benches to which I liked the idea of swinging on and if I can I would try to include it in the final design.

Till now the design has a concept but nothing factual and so I looked at artworks for inspiration. To keep on the idea of movement I mainly looked at art works that related well to the subject. From this I managed to collect a basic design pattern to give to the sofa chair a proper form. I also needed a texture to put on to not keep the chair plain and by looking at even more artworks I concluded to put up a rectangle based pattern to give it more life.

Last but not least I chose that the product would have only one colour but the client would be able to choose this from a pre set colour scheme. This means that I have to adapt the pattern I talked about earlier to fit to each colour so that whatever colour is chosen the product would be equal in effect.

To brief everything up, I have to create a cantilever chair supported from the back rather then the front, which can move similarly to a hanging bench, has a design inspired from paintings which follow greatly the theme of movement, has a cubic pattern and can be produced in different colours.

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Entry 2: Sketching

Here I perfected the shape of the sofa chair to the final result. Starting from a variety of ideas I evaluated each and developed them to get to a last shape to take to develop further.

• A computer generated further developed sketch of the product.

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Entry 3: Support Materials

To start forming the chair I first looked for a material suitable for the support/legs. After doing some research and took a closer look at the materials used to replicate some of the most famous chair designs I found out that chrome plated tubular steel, chrome plated flat steel and birch wood.

Since these material are used to fabricate chairs worldwide I can rest assured that they can suffice my need, although I'm still a bit worried about springing joint, since

it will be holding the weight of the person sitting. Fortunately, this problem can easily be solve. Steel can be treated in such a way that makes it capable to not break. Spring steal has a relatively high Shear Modulus meaning that it can withstand heavier loads and that means that no problem would be encountered about the joint.

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Entry 4: Support Making

As I said in the post before I am going to form the supports of the chair from steel coated with chrome

to give it a shiny look. The springing joint should be solid to avoid any insecurities but the rest can be made from hollow tubular steel to decrease the weight and material cost.

The shape of the support should be as shown in the following image and folds the chair in the space in the middle part.

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Entry 5: Seating skeleton

As for every sofa, the first thing to start with is to make a frame. The frame needs to be strong to carry a fully grown man's weight, yet light to ease thing when moving it around, and taking the least material possible to reduce material cost.

In the usual crafting of sofas, the frame on which the cushioning and fabrics are attached to is made from White Deal solid wood since it has the properties I mentioned above. But showing the design to a professional carpenter, he suggested that since the metal frame is going to support the back the seat and arms, I do not need to use such a material and I can go for something even cheaper and lighter. He suggested the use of plywood boards; 3 ply boards, 10 mm thick. This will be enough to do the job.

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Entry 6: Seating Making

The seating is obviously one of the most important aspect to take care of since it what a sofa chair is all about. I would like to have the seating soft to allow for seating for lengthy time periods but not extremely soft that one would sink in it and find it hard to rise back up.

For foam I would like to go for something on the grade of 29% (36/125) to provide this seating properties.

And for the covering, from the research that I did, I suggest the use of Broadcloth. It is strong yet soft and can withstand the frequent use that a sofa chair would go through. This cover would have a pattern on it inspired from cubical patterns of De Stijl, as depicted here:

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Entry 7: Completing

Connecting all of these bits and pieces together I get the final product. That is, a cantilever, well cushioned chair inspired from other chair designs, which communicates movement through its shape and pattern inspired from great painting, and which comes in bright and vibrant colours inspired from the genre of Family films.