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Letter of Application
See Garry’s hit BBC TWO history,
science and technology television clips at: www.youtube.com/garrylavin
Product Design : Vehicle Design and Construction : Furniture Design :
Graphic Design : New Media Design : Applied Art and Workshop Practice :
Design and Technology Education : Market and Product Research
Introduction
The headings conventionally encapsulate what I do, but to give a
fuller impression of my expertise I have divided my recent areas of work
into sections.
The interiors of my ambulances would probably provide many faceted
examples of ergonomically considered environments. However, in order to
provide an example of hands-on engineering development, I have outlined
the consultation and construction processes of my groundbreaking wildlife
film camera vehicle and provided links to video clips from the
internationally acclaimed film.
My view would be that the products I produce, 3-D, 2-D or theoretical
are part of the same singular process of design and manufacture which
might vary in its use of various skills of perception and realisation.
From simple mark making decisions to heavy-duty engineering, the main
concern is usability, solving problems / creating opportunities for human
interaction.
This approach was also crucial in my market research for industry when
in 1997 I projected the development of Internet / Digital TV trading on
the high street (convenience stores) and logistics providers and how now
opportunities could be created, many of which have now been implemented
(Transport Development Group PLC).
Television - Presentation and Design Education
The following sentence issued by BBC publicists at the time of the transmission
of my factual television programmes about design, might go some way
towards providing some background information:
'His principle interest is in applying design principles to everyday
objects, finding out why we have the machines we have in the shape and
form we have them.'
I could just as easily condense that into 'How the history of comfort and
convenience changed the world' or 'Do we shape materials or do materials
shape us?' or 'Creating the public and domestic environment - individual
synthesis and expression or user generated formal approach?'
We improved things a little as far as a wide audience is concerned
with my hit (and much imitated) six part BBC2 primetime series 'Every
Home Should Have One' (now regularly shown on UKTV and throughout the
world ).
It built on my studio and contextual studies work on BTEC and B.A.
courses and was a platform for my innovative and illustrative
communication of concepts that didn't fit into the usual genres of
science; design; history.
The series began as a social history concept, which was bound to favour
the history of technological development even before I made it a virtual
history of industrial design.
The producers concept of the programme narrative, choice of products
and design of images was quite conventional compared to my analysis,
since the late 1980's, of methods of communication in new media. Maybe
years of developing narratives to engage students of varying abilities
made writing for TV seem easy but I have been surprised at the conventionality
of television and the late arrival of notions of convergence, both in
using available technologies and conceptually.
I gave the BBC the opportunity, having created an audience, to develop
two lines of investigation that initially seem in opposition but the
paths of which, by dealing with design from a human centre, converge on
more than a few occasions.
The design future of totally integrated and interactive domestic
environments was hinted at in the series but was restrained by producers,
anxious to fit with their notion of a particular television product niche
and anxious to keep such images within a broadly recognisable tabloid
grammar of luxury and excess.
Directing the researchers demanded varied approaches as the science
graduates had surprisingly different notions of human relationship to
products and environments than the art graduate. Some saw the
interconnectivity between materials and use while others enthused equally
about style and the places of products in a western iconography and the
synthesis of technology and human development.
The Sunday Mirror picked up the automated home feature and asked me to
comment on the design of the new house of famously rich footballer Wayne
Rooney. The article took the form of a fun look at easily identifiable
'space-age' status gizmos such as self-closing curtains; drop-down plasma
screen TVs; mobile phone triggering cookers; body sensing lighting.
Coincidentally, the house was being built on the site of a newly
demolished cottage and I knew the 'interior designer'. I wished in vain
for a Renaissance patron equivalent to develop, to use this man's wealth
to design from the centre rather than to 'bolt-on' technology in a
post-market way.
I contacted The Sunday Mirror (and the broadsheet newspapers) and asked
to do a story on how this thinking might be applied to blue-sky design of
whole communities as a totality as opposed to individual purchase and
ad-hoc use of individual labour-saving devices. The use of such devices
inevitably substitutes human labour with fossil fuel based energy, so we
would examine how the domestic condition of the consumer could be
improved at the same time as reducing energy dependence at source.
Which was in effect my second line of investigation into programme ideas.
I had used the programmes study of the development of the fridge as an
adjunct to a piece about international transport of food and subsequent
costs etc. The producers again asked me to make the points less
stridently and not to dwell on environmental issues. The whole global
marketplace for food and the technological processes involved in reaching
the table was in part boiled down to me producing a huge illustration
along the side of a 44ft refrigerated container truck whilst narrating.
My own informal research tells me that this was a successful piece of
information through entertainment. The strong narrative and image
demanded attention and the expectation of more kept attention.
In just a couple of years, these notions of sustainability are now a
mainstream part of current BBC philosophy.
My treatment for a follow-up series, 'Every TOWN Should Have One'
applied this thinking to urban and community development but still with
reference to historical development and individual 'inventions'.
I returned here to my own blue-sky work on alternative urban transport
(e.g. cable car system) and the perceived need for commuter transport and
the whole notion of city design.
My cable-car concept and aerial station / cities had been exhibited at
the 1993 North West Regional Association of Lecturers in Art and Design
exhibition in Liverpool.Others have since expressed a similar concept of
vertical transport in the lift system at Urbis museum in Manchester
and in Medellin in Colombia.
My 'How Graphics Changed The World' treatment (2003) for a BBC2 series
was based on my supporting lectures for Graphic Design studio work in
education.It was a way of showing a nation with a strong literary
tradition, how mankind has communicated through image making from
pre-historic times to the sophisticated design and delivery of images
today. From megalithic carvings; cave paintings; Trajan's column; the
development of typefaces; poster art; comic strips; propaganda; Britain's
road signs; it would show how graphics have been an integral part of our
daily lives and development.
This narrative and ideas were broadcast as 'How Art Changed The World'.
Unfortunately the producers missed my point about using the word
graphics. My rationale was that the use of images was an everyday
workmanlike societal language, as opposed to high Art.
For most of 2006 I have been involved with the 'Marmalade' division of
Soho Studios London in developing a television and new media production
company specialising in science, technology and design factual content
with analysis of emerging opportunities for delivery.
Soho Studios is the largest radio commercial production and studio
complex in Britain and the expanded operation will be known simply as
'Jungle.co.uk' (Jungle is one of the studio complexes).The idea is to
develop an ideas lab which can develop sound and video concepts outside
of the usual media but the results of which will generate new ways of
delivering information to create a groundswell of interest in design and
technology - that will in turn, motivate a new generation of thinkers and
doers in this area.
To this end, we have earmarked the group's substantial public relations
budget for the design and build of a mobile studio that will visit
schools and children's' hospices nationwide as an extra learning facility
and which will become a TV project in itself.
During 2005 I worked with 1A Productions Ltd. In Glasgow on a CD-ROM / DVD based
learning aid to counteract declining orchestral music education in
schools.
Expected Government funding for schools music had not materialised, so
we introduced the instruments of the orchestra in a cultural framework
that would engage the target audience and with strong presentation from
me.The DVD format means that teachers can select appropriate 'chapters'
and length.
The package will eventually link with the web and other media.
Funded by the Scottish Arts Council, it is shown only in Scottish schools
and has so far been very effective.
I have a current project in development with the Forestry Commission,
begun in 2005. I recently made a short video for conference presentation
on award winning innovative structures being built by Forest Enterprise,
the engineering arm of the FC.
The FE is no longer really about selling timber but is really concerned
with land management, tourism and heritage. I am in talks with senior
management to run exploratory multi-disciplinary hands-on workshops so
that foresters, engineers, planners, and landscape architects can work
creatively without preconceptions.
Product and Vehicle Design
I am interested in how materials, processes and technologies, when
shifted across contexts often provide new opportunities and unforeseen
social changes.During the 1980s, my own workaday design included a range
of office furniture, which had to be flat-packed in corrugated packaging.
[The form of my most recent product - an elegant coat hook 1998 - for
this company suggested the manufacturing process - initially modelled in
wood, it was digitised and rapid prototyped direct from the information -
extruded and sliced by laser. This technology is now becoming available
to my BSc product design and manufacture students at the University of Central Lancashire.]
Because corrugated board was so economical, I also experimented with
furniture and alternative products in this material. In the end, the
obvious solution - packaging technology used to create extra large,
heavily branded waste bins was developed.
The aim was to bring rubbish out of the closet (i.e. overflowing silly
little buckets under the desk) and encourage re-cycling by 'green'
identification, separation at source and income generation to facilitate
the re-cycling process (its all about trade).
I developed these bins as marketing tools with Coca-Cola and now
almost everyone is aware of recycling procedures and the bins (or
similar) are in use in offices all over the world.
Like Sellotape and paperclips, variants and imitations can be found in
offices all over the World and some institutions are still using bins
purchased over ten years ago.
The product looks so obvious, why hadn't it been thought of before?The
current government imperatives for re-cycling need a re-examination of
this area (not just in reducing packaging but as part of complete
neighbourhood systems design).
This is the simplest of solutions / opportunities but one of my
vehicle design / build projects of recent years began with a client need
and led to innovative camera technology and innovative wildlife
television developed from user research and basic engineering.Small
design businesses can be fresh and innovative.My special vehicle designs
had some consideration for elegance in form following function,
especially in my research unit / ambulance for the British Medical
Research Council in Papua New Guinea.Apart from the provision of comfort
and space, my design for the production vehicle for BBC1's wildlife drama
'Pride - Talking With Lions' and 'Elephants - Spy in the Herd' is a
particular example of function driving vehicle form from the inside
(please see below for links to video clips and other special vehicle
work).The production company, John Downer Productions, is the World's
leading wildlife film company and as such continually looks for
innovation in its products. Modelmaker Geoff Bell had developed model
aircraft based airborne camera mounts for shots of herds etc.The new task
was to get close-up and intimate shoots of dangerous animals using
ground-based mobile cameras.We worked together on how best to deploy
microwave-controlled remote camera platforms in the Bush with minimum disruption
to wildlife.The original cameras were lowered at arm's length from the
door of a Landrover, these machines became too heavy to deploy safely, so
the whole operation had to be re-thought.The primary consideration was
that the usual crew on a shoot would be driver and cameraman hanging from
various ports on the 4x4 vehicle. The main cameraman would have to drive
while the second crewmember would be Geoff, who would deploy and operate
the remote vehicle.The existing standard Landrover cab design constrains
the cameraman's frame even without a filming requirement. His special
need is to be able, on spotting animals and stopping, to lift his
£100,000 camera from the front passenger seat area and swing it around to
his right and out of the door port.I worked with the crew on the
ergonomics of his total driving environment. The top edge of the
windscreen and the top of the door are at eye-level when the seat is
raised to increase legroom.My solution was to solve this and other
requirements by building an exo-skeleton steel frame, onto which was hung
a special high top windscreen and unique cab roof sliding hatch system
and dummy GRP removable side panels so that the camera port would be
bigger than the regular door area. This same frame then supported an extra
large foldout balcony to the right side of the vehicle, which supported
camera mounts and the robot camera deployment system.The whole vehicle
was subsequently much larger than a normal Landrover and thus allowed the
incorporation of sliding, air sprung seats and a Directors area with
monitors. This meant that the microwave camera links could be viewed in
real time and the cameras moved accordingly - a big innovation. The frame
also meant we could use huge sliding windows and could mount roof cameras
right up to the edge of the vehicle and operate through hatches with my
specially designed sliding camera mounts (as recently seen in use on Big
Cat Diary etc.).One other requirement was that the vehicle had to
withstand impact from a bull elephant charge.There was no way of testing
the result - until it was driven off a 40ft. cliff and hit the ground
after a full summersault and two rollovers. My bodywork and the driver /
equipment were intact but the front Landrover panels were shredded.As a
small designer / manufacturer I would have liked to have been able to use
a cost-effective product testing support lab.
Multi - Disciplinary Design Philosophy
Although I suspect that 90% of design work does not have the benefit
of long lead times and research support from applied sciences, it
survives by innovation.I see innovation lab possibilities on several
different levels. For instance;
1. Supportive mentoring and facilities for small enterprises;
2. Ongoing general research into trends and design methodologies;
3. Monitoring British innovation and extrapolating industrial and
cultural possibilities;
4. Cross-referencing technological and academic progress and disciplines;
5. Big, blue-sky lab projects in which non-commercially driven actual
user situations are created and non-specific futures scenarios evaluated.
See a list of possible areas of research at:
www.safari.org.uk/cv/researchlist.htm
Having developed and managed several multi-disciplinary design courses,
I have tried to provide students with the option of confidence building
specialisms, having first experienced the commonalities of the design
process and the differing parameters of disciplines.
This experience helps in my identification of designers and academics
who think across boundaries and those at home in the confines of a
particular discipline.
I think that there is a place for fun and experimentation for the sake
of it, in all sensory areas - to help reacquaint us with stimulating
forms, colours, multi-sensory experiences.I also support rigorous
research and evaluation.
I strongly advocate keeping an eye on Intermediate Technology and design
for the real world at the same time as more exotic developments,
especially when our notions of products, services and the provision of
skills are dependant on economies and availability of resources and
labour.
Sometimes sensual desirability and the promise of the saving of labour
results in products the only function of which is to fly off the
supermarket shelves.
But trade generates income and jobs and business is a design process in
itself and thrives on stimulation. The market is one barometer of
consumer need.
Design in HE, to a large extent, consists of a high degree of social
betterment at the expense of knowledge of the world of commerce. This is
no bad thing, the profit and loss imperative and the dilution of
creativity by committees can compromise an endeavour, stopping the
project short of reaching its potential to the end user. An independent design
and production lab can be free of these constraints.
Mobile phone texting (previously a telephone engineers secret network
communication language) has shown how design and development resources
can be wasted if users determine an unpredicted direction.
My own experience also informs this area in that my 1995 development and
research into Internet business and retail potential was met by so much
resistance from large organisations. The predicted consequences for high
street trading and associated logistics my research team and I presented
to TDG, however, have largely materialised and TDG / Sainsburys have
acted on them.
Until recently, the Internet was the world's biggest library, with the
pages scattered all over the floor. New filtering software will automatically
read a users music preferences and download similar music. This is a big
area for development and a far cry from the days of the brand-less web,
with businesses desperately looking for ways to add value and turn an
anonymous screen, driven by user choices and the anarchy of cyberspace,
into a product.
What is the future of creativity and the balance between individual
expression and global realities?
As a designer, I can see the opportunities for flexible info screens,
self-auditing domestic support systems etc., products that combine my
'traditional industrial design mind-set and with outsourced or
collaborative electronics designers.
My informers in the automobile industry have long since given me the
future developments in integrated personal vehicle monitoring systems
(but I can still enjoy the weight, balance and tactile qualities of a
well designed piece of cutlery).
As communication platforms converge (and about time too), products
become 'intelligent' devices and industry / and environmental issues
shape current thought, the boundaries of design activity change from a
blurring to full osmosis.
The internet has shown how existing technologies can be re-configured
to create new communication opportunities with the users determining the
possibilities themselves.
Communications, interactivity and unforeseen consumer drivers have
created corporations from nothing and are now pushing the boundaries for
technologists. New technologies create new opportunities but the human
interfaces evolve and re-inform the process of invention.
It is eighteen years since the MIT team that were to become The Media Lab
showed our PICKUP computer course at Wakefield College a world of
digitally stored information and multi-site access and we are still in
the early stages of this revolution. For instance, paying parking charges
by mobile phone is a great lateral use of available technology. So let's
let the imagination free and make more connections.
The Web is a thinking revolution more than it is a technological
revolution.
The work of British Designers such as Bruce Archer, David Mellor and
Jock Kinnear in the 1960s and 1970s revolutionised the design landscape
and synthesised intuitive elegance with modernist influences, rational
research, ergonomics and cognitive theory an Industrial Design discipline
valued by industry and society. Their work was born of Britain's
industrial heritage and in turn formed an intellectual and visual
benchmark for later generations of designers.It is interesting to note
that many of those designers took their first steps at Saturday morning
classes run by the art schools in most major towns and cities (my work
with letterforms and spatial relationships learnt during Saturday classes
in signwriting and lettercarving is still at the heart of my design
sense).
When I joined Wakefield
College as a
lecturer in graphic design; packaging; drawing for communication and 3-D
design, Principal Ken Ruddiman transformed the fortunes and branding of
the college by putting the Art and Design department art the centre
within a new facility. This area provided a focus for the college and the
invigorated Art dept. led the way nationally by co-ordinating emerging
computer aided design across all areas.
This experience proved extremely rewarding and has helped in my
discussions with Yorkshire Forward for industry generation around
vocational training in interactive television and new media.
In Conclusion
Throughout my career I have worked in several disciplines in parallel
and have accessed expertise from extra disciplines and professionals as
appropriate. I have worked with inquiry, creativity and realisation in a
wide variety of media.
As a designer, innovator and educator I have long seen the benefits of
a facility for imagination that can be informed by scientific research
and in turn influence ways of seeing and thinking across many areas of
expertise and in educational development. I have a broad vision that
progresses my work within my limitations or expands experience by
co-operation with other technology specialists and applied psychologists
etc.I have the educational and industrial experience to make a
significant contribution to this institution.
Perhaps more importantly, I have personal and media communication
abilities to confidently to inspire and promote all areas of work both
nationally and internationally.
Although my research is primarily based in industry, it has been my
business to be aware of the RAE and contributions being made by
institutions around the world (self-funded trips to major American and
Australian university design departments).
The roles of Professor and Reader at Lancaster would appear to be the
formalisation of my approach to activities that are loosely known as
design and the logical extension of my multi-disciplinary experience in
design, communication and education. Whatever the most appropriate
definition of design may be, it remains elusive because the designer's
combination of cerebral, experimental and physical is spread across an
ever-widening spectrum of applications.
That drive to understand, improve / change and enjoy the physical world
has been with me since childhood and has given me a unique ability to
work within particular disciplines but not be restricted by them, i.e.,
my experience of other disciplines outside a particular job remit
cross-fertilises the project in hand.
Technologies change rapidly but the elements of the design process to
exploit them may remain constant although perceptions change through the
passage of time and differing cultural visions.Envision possibilities,
create the knowledge gap, then fill it.
I remain excited and enthused about Art, Science and everything in
between and I have already made and hope to continue to make a
contribution to the development of design and design education. I would
relish the opportunity to help create the new environment for development
at Lancaster.
I hope you will give me the opportunity to discuss ideas in person.
Garry Lavin 27-10-06
01706 370273
The first part of my biography as written by BBC publicists begins
thus:'Designer, sculptor, engineer, cartoonist, Garry Lavin has done a
bit of everything; ornamental steelwork, casting, forging, illustrating,
inventing - the list is endless. He has lectured and taught art, design
and technology at universities, colleges and schools around his home on
the edge of the Pennines between Manchester
and Leeds.
Major projects and practical work can be found at:
http://www.safari.org.uk/cv/cv.htm
Television Showreel and design work pages can be found at: www.safari.org.uk/designwork.htm
TV History of Graphics treatment
www.safari.org.uk/cv/history_of_graphics.htm
Link to Industrial Research
www.safari.org.uk/cv/industrial_research.htm
BBC Wildlife vehicle www.safari.org.uk/cv/wildlife_vehicle.htm
Medical Research Council vehiclewww.safari.org.uk/cv/MRC_ambulance.htm
Garry Lavin AAD Safari Ltd. vehicle design webpageswww.safari.org.uk/
Garry Lavin Showreel design work web pages
www.safari.org.uk/showreel.htm
John Downer Productions web page
www.jdp.co.uk 'Every Home Should Have One'
www.safari.org.uk/cv/every_home_should_have_one.htm
A full list of major projects and papers can be found at: http://www.safari.org.uk/cv/cv.htm
Television Showreel and design work pages can be found at:
http://www.safari.org.uk/designwork.htm
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