By WONG SOW YEE
Roaming through the pathways and the alleys to get to your day-to-day destination will remain a mundane thing to do unless you come across fanciful surprises such as huge colourful hat designs that can make your heartbeat stop for that one very moment.
Fancy is the word of the day when first year Foundation in Design students took part in the ‘Crazy Hat Week’ project whereby every student had to parade their proud hat creations to the rest of the students on campus. They didn’t specifically set up a booth to show off their creations, but merely took the bravery of walking around campus showcasing them with their huge and heavy head gears all set on their heads. They chose a designated time which was during the lunch hour to parade their beautiful art works because that is when most people walk in, out and about campus.
“The aim is to encourage the foundation students to build their confidence by creating an outrageous design, have it publicly displayed and to see people's reaction to it. As a designer, your work has no meaning if people have no reaction toward your art. Even a negative feedback can be constructive as long as you learn, develop and grow as an artist through it,” Lecturer in Human Communication, Natasha Mohd. Hishamudin said.
Foundation in Design student Chanel Than Kah Yee, 18, shared her firsthand experience when she heard of the task, “Our first requirement was to sketch out our ideas and show it to out lecturer to be approved. It has to be huge and crazy enough, and a number of our ideas were rejected. The process requires a lot of planning, how to build it, where to get the materials, how to make it more stable and wearable, plus many others. It was a great but also very tiring experience for me, my hat was built completely out of wires and they are quite difficult to handle when it comes to building huge and round objects.”
The students were able to use any materials they wished for their hat designs as long as they are feasible enough to be worn over the head and not topple over when showcasing to the whole lot of students at campus, of course. The materials some of them have used are such as used wires, paper mache, bamboo shoots, sponges and lots of glue.
Having this project as a big project to complete within just a few weeks, the students have certainly gone through at least some kind of ‘time of their lives’, whether that turn out to be going through quite a difficult moment and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, or not at all.
Foundation in Design student Reid Ng Kah Yik, 18, said, “My hat piece was inspired by The Mad Hatter played by Johnny Depp in Alice in Wonderland. Having the want to improvise on the hat itself, I added the ‘death’ look to it whereby the end result became a combination of a bleach hollow mask and a tribal mask.
“Since the theme for the project is Crazy Hat Week I made mine creepy because I hung four skull bells around my hat that can sound ‘ting’ ‘ting’ to make it sound creepier. The problem I faced with my hat is definitely the stable issue because my horned head piece was too heavy and it slipped until my nose when I wore it. So I tried fixing it by putting four sponges around the diameter and luckily it stabilized.”
The purpose of the whole project and doing the parade after finishing the project off is undoubtedly to train and build confidence within design students to own their hard work of their own unique designs.
Natasha continued on, saying, “I started this project four years ago as a way to make people talk about the design school. I also wanted to start a tradition at the Design School where three times a year, with each foundation batch, we get to be silly and be graded for it! It became part of their orientation programme really and both the seniors and design lecturers always look forward to seeing fresh ideas. For designers, you’re not doing it right if your work is not being talked about.”
Design students will inevitably gain valuable insights and experiences through this project that trains a few parts of them, from skills to confidence and the accepting of who each of them are as weird individuals!
Than said, “We gained a whole lot of confidence and accepted the fact that we are all pretty weird people, in many good ways! We actually learnt that our designs must be good and also functional at the same time. For instance, some of the hats were coming apart during the parade and mine was quite unstable due to its size. This project was really fun and we were given the chance to exhibit our hats in CoDA over the weekend in conjunction to convocation week.”
The students have certainly done a proud job of showcasing their designs to the public and most of them have stories behind their creations, may it be an inspiration, a social cause, an idea from a movie or simply due to their infinite imaginary process.
“I’m super proud of them ‘cause the students always out do the simple brief I give them. Design students can be very competitive with each other when it comes to ideation.” Natasha added.
Congratulations to the first semester of the Foundation in Design students for taking up the courage to showcase your designs boldly. It was certainly an eye opening day for most of the fellow students at Taylor’s University and now let’s hope that your actions have become an inspiring act for other students to track on, being bold enough to showcase their art works to the world.
Fancy is the word of the day when first year Foundation in Design students took part in the ‘Crazy Hat Week’ project whereby every student had to parade their proud hat creations to the rest of the students on campus. They didn’t specifically set up a booth to show off their creations, but merely took the bravery of walking around campus showcasing them with their huge and heavy head gears all set on their heads. They chose a designated time which was during the lunch hour to parade their beautiful art works because that is when most people walk in, out and about campus.
“The aim is to encourage the foundation students to build their confidence by creating an outrageous design, have it publicly displayed and to see people's reaction to it. As a designer, your work has no meaning if people have no reaction toward your art. Even a negative feedback can be constructive as long as you learn, develop and grow as an artist through it,” Lecturer in Human Communication, Natasha Mohd. Hishamudin said.
Foundation in Design student Chanel Than Kah Yee, 18, shared her firsthand experience when she heard of the task, “Our first requirement was to sketch out our ideas and show it to out lecturer to be approved. It has to be huge and crazy enough, and a number of our ideas were rejected. The process requires a lot of planning, how to build it, where to get the materials, how to make it more stable and wearable, plus many others. It was a great but also very tiring experience for me, my hat was built completely out of wires and they are quite difficult to handle when it comes to building huge and round objects.”
The students were able to use any materials they wished for their hat designs as long as they are feasible enough to be worn over the head and not topple over when showcasing to the whole lot of students at campus, of course. The materials some of them have used are such as used wires, paper mache, bamboo shoots, sponges and lots of glue.
Having this project as a big project to complete within just a few weeks, the students have certainly gone through at least some kind of ‘time of their lives’, whether that turn out to be going through quite a difficult moment and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, or not at all.
Foundation in Design student Reid Ng Kah Yik, 18, said, “My hat piece was inspired by The Mad Hatter played by Johnny Depp in Alice in Wonderland. Having the want to improvise on the hat itself, I added the ‘death’ look to it whereby the end result became a combination of a bleach hollow mask and a tribal mask.
“Since the theme for the project is Crazy Hat Week I made mine creepy because I hung four skull bells around my hat that can sound ‘ting’ ‘ting’ to make it sound creepier. The problem I faced with my hat is definitely the stable issue because my horned head piece was too heavy and it slipped until my nose when I wore it. So I tried fixing it by putting four sponges around the diameter and luckily it stabilized.”
The purpose of the whole project and doing the parade after finishing the project off is undoubtedly to train and build confidence within design students to own their hard work of their own unique designs.
Natasha continued on, saying, “I started this project four years ago as a way to make people talk about the design school. I also wanted to start a tradition at the Design School where three times a year, with each foundation batch, we get to be silly and be graded for it! It became part of their orientation programme really and both the seniors and design lecturers always look forward to seeing fresh ideas. For designers, you’re not doing it right if your work is not being talked about.”
Design students will inevitably gain valuable insights and experiences through this project that trains a few parts of them, from skills to confidence and the accepting of who each of them are as weird individuals!
Than said, “We gained a whole lot of confidence and accepted the fact that we are all pretty weird people, in many good ways! We actually learnt that our designs must be good and also functional at the same time. For instance, some of the hats were coming apart during the parade and mine was quite unstable due to its size. This project was really fun and we were given the chance to exhibit our hats in CoDA over the weekend in conjunction to convocation week.”
The students have certainly done a proud job of showcasing their designs to the public and most of them have stories behind their creations, may it be an inspiration, a social cause, an idea from a movie or simply due to their infinite imaginary process.
“I’m super proud of them ‘cause the students always out do the simple brief I give them. Design students can be very competitive with each other when it comes to ideation.” Natasha added.
Congratulations to the first semester of the Foundation in Design students for taking up the courage to showcase your designs boldly. It was certainly an eye opening day for most of the fellow students at Taylor’s University and now let’s hope that your actions have become an inspiring act for other students to track on, being bold enough to showcase their art works to the world.