Student Work

The process of making this outfit was to make and solidify a template of the jacket, papercutting designs onto the jacket, sewing the jacket together, to then adding the fur, vinyl, and snap details onto the jacket.  \ I started to laser-cut the floral design onto a pre-bought jacket and it was going great until…

This week I am going to go through the design and fabrication of my final project I crafted over the last 3 months. As a reminder, my project is an American modern minimalist coffee table that has a hidden bottom table that can swing in and out to extend the surface area of the table.…

For my main project, I am thinking about making a chess board with a drawer to hold set the game pieces. Throughout this course, I have been trying to expand my personal arts and crafts into functional woodworked crafts Because my mother collected antiques, most of the furniture in the home was reclaimed and restored…

Recap: PCB Lamp PCB lamp panel backlit to show final effect Over the course of this semester and some of my previous post, I have been documenting the work done in order to design, manufacture, and assemble a lamp which utilizes PCBs as the main building material. More details can be seen in my previous…

Throughout this course, I was able to learn new skills and improve my artistic abilities. I learned how to build things using wood, got to meet new cool people, and was able to use recycled materials and turn them into something new. I also got to learn many different aesthetics and explore ways of incorporating…

For my final project, I had originally wanted to build a new desk with a minimalist aesthetic, with a small hidden drawer, wireless phone charger, and outlet strip mount. Unfortunately, when I did more research into this project, and the materials required, I determined that this project would be well over $300 to make, and…

The aesthetic I have decided to explore is the aesthetic of american-traditional tattoos. American traditional tattoos are characterized by the limited color palette these tattoos utilize, the bold black outlines on these tattoos, and their minimal shading. They all typically follow very similar motifs, many of which come from their history of influence from American…

This semester I worked on two projects, a trumpet lamp and a stunt kite. Trumpet Lamp The only requirement for this project was that it use mostly upcycled materials. I used a trumpet that was donated to me by Rocky Mountain Music Repair because it was deemed beyond repair. The lighting portion I did buy…

The process for developing the was broken down in several steps. First step was tearing the CD player down to see where I needed to design mounts for existing features. I then took measurements of the length/width/height of the device and designed a enclosure for it based on 1/8″ acrylic. Then became the tricky part,…

For my final project, I am going to be converting my standard CD player to a fully transparent enclosure. My existing model is the Sony DVP-NS325 shown below. [1] This design is very utilitarian but also quite boring. Based on the 90’s craze of adding translucent enclosure to technology, I felt like it would compliment…

Design Preview Report: Minimalist Interchangable Photo Collage By: Michael Gray Project Vision For my project, I will be designing and manufacturing an art piece: The Minimalist Interchangable Photo Collage. This project is inspired by various iterations of the photo collage frames seen below. The Minimalist Interchangable Photo Collage will include eleven ‘mini-frame’ assemblies and one…

To create my electric guitar body with a Viking aesthetic, I had to do a lot of wood working techniques I was not aware of. Here’s a detailed description of my actual fabrication process: I spent the first week trying to figure out what type of wood I was going to buy because I needed…

Hello everyone, this is the final post of the semester and will cover the “how” of how I made my Minimalist Catan Board. First off I made a timeline to explain the general order in which the Board was created. You can see that it all started with an initial CAD sketch and ended with…

Alex Fitzgerald Project Portfolio In the Aesthetics of Design course I created two artifacts. The first was an upcycling project using recycled materials in order to create a minimalist metallic wall sculpture. In the second project I created a dynamic wind sculpture following a similar aesthetic to my first project. Upcycling Project: Alternating Waves For…

For my project, I will be building a bird house in a suburban style. The bird house will have a moving front door, and a back panel that can be opened as well, so that the user can reach in and remove any nests at the end of the season. Additionally, I have decided to…

Summary of Project Steps My last post describes the inspiration, conceptual design, and final outcome of my Brutalist Desk Lamp project. This post will describe in detail the manufacturing process and steps that I took in order to execute my vision. This is my timeline graphic, and it shows the actual order in which I…

Before starting on the final puppet, I wanted to conduct some tests to make sure the materials I was using would be suitable for the project. First, I ran a test to see which brand of clay would be best for the head sculpt. It would need to be durable enough to have an articulated…

Deciding the opposite aesthetic for this project was slightly difficult as the ‘fairy tale’ aesthetic could be perceived in multiple ways. In the traditional sense of fairy tale stories, sensibility and reality would be the opposite. I understood this sensibility as utilitarian minimalism. In contrast to a fairy tale, utilitarianism does nothing in excess and…

Hello everyone, as a quick recap for my final project I up-cycled an old elementary school desk into an end table in the Bauhaus aesthetic. I chose Bauhaus because I felt I could use the bright color schemes to cover the imperfections in the desk, and because the legs would be made of steel round…

Background and Purpose Growing up in a family with German roots, I developed a fondness for sparkling water, finding its refreshing taste irresistible. However, this preference led to accumulating numerous aluminum cans, all destined for the recycling bin. The sheer volume of cans occupied significant space, necessitating frequent emptying of the recycling bin. In contrast…

INTRODUCTION My vision for this project was to combine modern and natural aspects with organic abstract aesthetics to create a wavy mirror. The modern elements would be displayed through neutral color pallets and materials and the organic aesthetic would be carried through with textured and layered designs within the frame. Overall, I was not able…

The fabrication process of my cooler fan went better than expected. I was able to get a good first 3D print, my measurements were nearly perfect, and I was able to complete all my tasks on time. Overall, the project went very well from the design process to fabricating. A few issues did come up,…

Kinetic Wind Sculpture by Alex Fitzgerald Kinetic Wind Sculpture in Vertical Configuration Project Timeline Project Timeline for Final Project This project spanned 9 academic weeks. The first few days after being assigned the project I spent a few days brainstorming ideas for what I wanted to see as my end product. This included spending time…

For my main project I decided to build an xbox controller steering wheel adapter. I got the idea last semester when I was playing a modded version of GTA that allowed you to adjust settings and drift cars. The game was fun, but I thought I could make it feel more like a drifting simulator…

I would like to begin by recapping my plan for this project. I planned to make a desk lamp with a sunrise/sunset feature. This would help me quite a bit both waking up and falling asleep. I want my lamp to slowly darken over time at night to help signal that I need to be…

I wanted to do something with circuits and coding for a project. Originally I wanted to build a nightstand in the mid-century style, but realize I lack with projects on my resume…I also just want to get better with circuitry and coding. Therefore I will tried to great some sort of arcade game. A small…

Throughout my projects in Aesthetics in Design, I utilized my current skills and learned new ones. I also learned a lot about aesthetics. In the past I would tend to stick to the one aesthetic that I enjoy most, surrealism. This class taught me that there are other aesthetics that I like and can incorporate…

Introduction My vision for this project was to combine elements of the whimsical and steampunk aesthetics to create a mechanical wooden puzzle. The whimsical elements would be displayed through the design and embellishments of the carousel and the steampunk aesthetic would be carried through in the exposed mechanical pieces. In the end, I was not…

I knew from the beginning of the class that I would want to make a large sculpture regardless of the prompt for the final project. The prompt for the final project was to make something ‘dynamic’ which made me take a step back to think about how I would combine my idea of a large…

Project Overview For this project, I endeavored on designing a cube shape lamp made out of PCBs (printed circuit boards). The final outcome is shown below: Image of the fully assembled PCB Lamp while turned on. The goal of this was to create an ambient light lamp designed according to a PCB aesthetic, something quite…

Blog Post #7: Main Project Aesthetics: Plans and Alternatives In this post, I look into possibilities, sketching my programmable LED display project in two distinctly different aesthetics from my initial rustic-modern design.  Quick Overview  My current idea is to create a led matrix of 64×32 and encase this in a wood frame. I would like…

For my final project in Aesthetics of design, I created a couch that faces both forwards, and backwards in my Van, and it also easily converts into a full size bed! Inspiration for this build came from watching essentially every small size van and mini van build video on YouTube, and selecting design elements from…

Introduction My journey to craft my own artifact with a moving part to it is finally coming to the final stretch.  Though this journey was filled with challenges and learning curves, it has been a very fun and interesting experience and I am satisfied with what I gained.  My original roulette-inspired wristwatch initially inspired by…

A couple of years ago, I came across a DIY project on YouTube where someone repurposed an old iPod to run Spotify on it. This inspired me to create the Raspberry Jam, a Spotify music player integrated into a retro TV. The aesthetic that I aimed to capture was cassette futurism. This style implements boxy,…

Hello everyone! This project has ended up being a lot of fun for me, and I’m excited to share what I’ve come up with. From the very start of class, when I learned that the parameters for the final project were basically gonna be ‘make whatever you want’, I knew I had an opportunity to…

My final design is a Bauhaus end table, made out an old school desk. For context I was looking to do an end table for my room as my final project, originally I was going to try a gothic style end table, but the designs I was coming up with weren’t very aesthetically pleasing, or…

What and Why For the final project, I’ve decided to clean up a prototype I made last summer and hopefully create a nice housing. The prototype is essentially a swamp cooler, but ideally my version will produce less humidity. The inspiration of it came from camping in New Mexico during the summer. When I went,…

Hello everyone, Since the last post I have completed the epoxy and sanding. Since this is one of the final posts I’ll go through and summarize the entire process up to this point, covering the What and Why of the project. The main idea of the project was to revamp the classic Catan board with…

For my Aesthetics of Design final project, I made a large format pinhole camera in a toyshop aesthetic inspired by the iSpy books of the 1990s and 2000s. Introduction: What is a pinhole camera?: A pinhole camera is a very simple image making device that relies on the “camera obscura” effect. They were heavily utilized…

Inspiration A big sewing project was something I was excited for and was also outside my comfort zone so most of my initial ideas were sewing related. While the sewing process was something I was looking for, a piece of clothing or quilt were not very interesting to me. After trying to pay attention to…

Figure 1: Original Design CAD Drawing For my final project I am creating a dynamic wind sculpture. The idea is to string a number of reflective, mirror like, mylar disks in columns between a wooden frame. A CAD drawing is shown above. Originally I was going to built the frame as a square with 16…

INTRODUCTION My vision for this project was to combine modern and natural aspects with organic abstract aesthetics to create a wavy mirror. The modern elements would be displayed through neutral color pallets and materials and the organic aesthetic would be carried through with textured and layered designs within the frame. Overall, I was not able…