Post 6: Main Project Plans and Inspirations – Retro

I had to ponder for a while about what I consider to be my personal aesthetic. For me, the 80s/90s vintage/retro aesthetic was the aesthetic that fit best with my personal habits, interests, clothes, room decor, etc. There are a few 20th century design movements that the retro aesthetic draws upon depending on what period of time the aesthetic draws upon. One example is streamline moderne, which features aerodynamic shapes, rounded corners, smooth surfaces, and pastel colors. Similar to this is the Googie, with Space-age optimism, exaggerated angles, bright neon colors, and futuristic themes. Another example is Memphis Group design movement, with characteristics such as bold, clashing colors, abstract shapes, playful asymmetry.

The 80s/90s retro theme has always been apart of my life. With my parents growing up through their teens to late 20s in these decades, I’ve been around a lot of retro items from the 80s and 90s including clothing, artwork, old relics, and film pictures. I remember being able to go through my parents old things in my home and at my grandparents home. I was always fascinated with the feeling these objects gave me, knowing they were 20-30 years old, but having no concept of time, these relics felt ancient to me. Staring at old film of my parents, old kids toys, a colorful vintage Colorado Avalanche poster, etc made me curious about the past. I always wondered about what these times were like, what things, buildings, signs, clothes, technology looked like.

*pic of retro avs*

I’m still debating on whether to incorporate my personal aesthetic into my final project, or go out of my comfort zone and do an unfamiliar or even opposite aesthetic. When writing my blog post for my opposite aesthetic of my western theme, I found I could come up with more ideas in the opposite aesthetic brainstorming phase. I feel like I went further outside the box when I chose a different or unfitting aesthetic to my project, so it might be worth trying to do the same with the final project.

For the end of semester project, I have two ideas so far: one idea is to create a roulette table from scratch and model it after the retro aesthetic. I was thinking I could even take it as far as creating a quarter machine for it, dispensing money if you win and taking it if you lose. Another idea is to make a ski boot warming device, or some sort of ski related project that makes my life easier. Let me know what you guys think of these very basic, general ideas.