different aspects of the research and applying that to my design.

Hi I'm Harry Skinner, I'm a Product Furniture designer, just finished my third year. This

is my creation, Para-seat. It's a bit of parasitic design that is a bag that attaches to urban

supports and it can turn into a swing seat that I'm sporting at the moment. It was a

really fun project, I think the research process was kind of one of the funnest aspects of

the project.

At the start of this project we were given a word to begin with because I think a lot

of designers struggle with a place to start with, so I was given 'camping.'

Initially I was attracted to this stereotypical way of people camping with their family, in

the countryside in a tent, and they're all playing frisbee and stuff. I kind of

wanted to go away from that and I kind of brought camping to the city. So then I was

looking at how you could apply that way of thinking, of adapting to a new environment

and how that would work in a city environment.

So I took seating as one of the main areas to look at. What I want to do is have

bags and to make the bag multi-functional almost, and for it to become a seat with a

simple kind of unzipping it and strapping it on to things.

The urban environment has so many different areas that can be kind of, can be inhabited

and I think if, to find a seat, a seat in the city is, is difficult enough so I think,

I mean this has the potential for you to relax and take a seat wherever you want.

What I want to do is, is have almost a collection, themed on this idea of adapting to the urban

environment. It is Product Furniture Design so this is kind of, almost very fashion based.

I had a lot of help from upstairs in the Fashion department in terms of techniques and using

their, using their facilities in terms of the industrial sewing machines and it

was a really interesting insight into how stuff gets made in different kind of disciplines.

Another project I've been working on is called the Placebo Project. It's very different

to the bag project that I'm working on at the moment where it's very based on research

and also it's almost like a kind of packaging and graphic project. The Placebo Project is

kind of based on this really interesting research I found out about the Placebo Effect. Initially

I was looking at medicine and the history of medicine and then kind of latched onto

this really cool theory that potentially people could be taking kind of fake dummy pills,

like sugar pills, and they could be working and be more effective than real medicine.

Using all this research into how colour has an effect on people's healing, how the shape

of a pill and the intensity of the colour can have the effect on its performance. I

kind of played off that, so I'm offering no side effects. I'm almost trying to sell

it now! I'm offering no side effects, it's drug free and it's cheaper. It's kind of this

idea of the power of the mind over healing other than the power of drugs.

Working with tutors who are in the field of design at the moment, and some of the tutors

we're working with are very experienced and they've been in the industry for like ten/fifteen

years and getting information from them about what they did, how they got set up and stuff,

I think that was really interesting and we got to work really closely with our tutors

throughout all, both of our projects. I think they had, they had some really useful information

about how they might have got started and you kind of see some of their first work as

well and how it's changed and I think that was really useful as well.

And as well as new designers where we get an opportunity to showcase our work to more

of a kind of industry business environment I think that's kind of very beneficial. I

think Kingston has set us up to be prepared for that sort of thing.

I think right at the beginning like, I initially thought I was going to be doing furniture

but I've had the freedom to kind of obviously do something like a bag and then I've been

working on my other project which is very graphics based and very research based and

it was almost a packaging project so I thought I'd end up with kind of a chair and a table

but I haven't and that's the good things about this course, you have the freedom to explore

all these different disciplines.

At this point in time I'm kind of just setting up a blog so that's where I can showcase my

work. It's almost like an online portfolio, so if anyone asks about my work I can say

this is my link and you can find it on here.

Kingston really helped me out in that way. I think especially in the final year you become

a bit more kind of minded that these creations and these projects are going to be something

that you're going to use as a stepping point into industry or into selling yourself. I

think the first two years are more kind of finding yourself as a designer but I think

in the last stages, I mean we got opportunities to work with Pascal who's a tutor here, that

really kind of helped us set out our portfolios and sort out our business cards and blogs

and everything so it was almost a bit frightening at first, I think it still is a bit now for

some people, that this is the time where you're using these projects almost as an opportunity

to kind of get your foot in the door.

Experience in the workshop I think was really good for our course, especially with use of

all the machines we learned a lot of new techniques and materials as well.

All round it's a very good experience - we have some really interesting lectures that

John Harrison has set up called the Toolkit Lectures, and we get a lot of designers that

he worked with at the RCA to come in and speak to us about what they're working on and stuff

and I think that's been a really good insight into what we might have to prepare ourselves

for.