Emily Liu
Applied Design
Prompt: Based on how Ph affects the color results in natural dye, develop an original design application to create awareness toward water pollution. The design can be in any media.
Through the data collection and the experiment on natural dye, I decided to apply these elements to a product design. Holo Dew is an umbrella designed to bring awareness toward water pollution. I chose to use umbrella as the application because it is an important item in our daily life with no targeted audience. Since umbrellas are essential when raining, this product pushes the user to acknowledge pollution issues. And the product itself act us an advocate that help spread the awareness even further.
Starting from sketch, I tried to create an umbrella that directly shows the visual representation of the affect of ph level in rain. I also decided to keep an overall light and airy atmosphere to it. So as a result, I made the edges of the umbrella to be cotton based, containing anthocyanin – the ph indicating pigments in red cabbage – that reacts to water. The center portion will be made by the usual materials of a transparent umbrella. The flowy motif that separates two materials echoes the imagery of water. The logo is designed with 3 bubble like form that reflects the flowy motif of the umbrella. The color of water under different ph level also made me think of the color of holograph. And this is where Holo Dew got its name. For the packaging of the umbrellas, I combined the logo and three splatter of color with similar form. I also did further exploration to see how my idea can be applied to other water related products such as rain coats and water resistant phone pouch.
Overall, this is also my response to what we should do to help the ecosystem. We, as designers, must help bringing it directly under audience’s eyes, and not wait for them to search for it themselves.