Personal Development Plan 3

Luke Anthony Firth 1011091

March 2013 Not displaying correctly? If so you can view it online at: bit.ly/lukefirth-pdp3

Involved With Since Last PDP

In Work
Developing a new pendant LED fitting. Trialling new materials and methods for achieving even dispersion of light from an indirect linear LED light source. Monitoring the assembly and manufacture of new B Line LED product and updating the assembly manual and instruction sheets to reflect any changes in methodology. Completing photometric studies and liaising with clients on lighting specifications. Creating and maintaining a Fluorescent/LED Economy calculator.

My main areas of work whilst at Aktiva over the past few months have been mainly focused around two roles firstly to develop a new LED pendant to add to the Aktiva catalogue and secondly to work closely with clients to produce a lighting scheme using our fittings that best fits their needs through photometric studies. The major work I have been involved in is the development of a new LED pendant for Aktiva - collecting and photometrically testing samples of new materials designed for high even light diffusion through edge lighting with minimal transmission loss and developing possible housing options. Also I have been involved in liaising with clients to help them determine their final lighting specifications through photometric modelling of different scenarios for their projects using DIALUX then producing documentation and instruction sheets detailing fixing centres etc for the chosen setups. If required the scenarios would be ran through the LED/Fluorescent economy calculator I created earlier this year which details how long in years it would take an LED scenario to recoup its higher initial cost through the energy saved.

Outside Of Work
Daily sketch practice. Had a personal project featured on a number of design blogs. Started to organise work into a portfolio/blog ready format. Now a member of both the Society of Light and Lighting and CIBSE. Had a number of my icons used in professional presentations by others.

After identifying my sketching as an area I would really like to improve upon, I have bought a roll of A3 paper on which I try to spend at least 30 mins every day sketching one or more products and dating them so that I can easily look back and see any incremental improvements. Doing this has helped with motivating me to pursue my personal projects better and in February a personal project of mine of rebuilding my broken old speakers was featured in some design blogs. This project is still undergoing whilst now I am dealing with quotes to complete the necessary work that forms part of the project that requires specialist tooling. As well as this, I have been using illustrator to turn some of the icons I have sketched into vectors and uploaded them to thenounproject.com - an open source website dedicated to iconography. From here my icons have been used for presentations by the state of Dallas local government on recycling1, an app/website about trust funds and a economic presentation by USfunds2.

Goals From PDP 1 Results So Far

How far have I come towards reaching my goals? What do I do next in order to progress?

Goals

Next Steps

As set in my previous PDP

Better time management.

Completion:

Purchased a moleskine to record work daily to get an overall view of how I use my time and to detail future projects and started to use tabs to indicate project deadlines. Effective at recording but not so much keeping to deadlines. The tabs however are beginning to help a good deal. Some real improvements have started to show. Sketching (almost) Improve my sketching every day has helped a lot with my line confidence and Im starting (Especially organic forms). to reduce the amount of hairy lines that used to be everywhere Completion: and these improvements have been noticed by peers. Branding has not come a long way. Ive trialled a number of logos Form my brand and self but am still unhappy. However by luck a design on of mine has been promote. written about on a number of internet magazines such as yankodeCompletion: sign3 and the cosby press4 with a readership over well over 100,000. The self promotion part of this goal I feel has been met. Finish my side projects and start Very little improvement. I seem unable so far to finish a project before deciding to take on two more. Since the last PDP I have comnew ones. pleted my speaker project but almost abandoned my original lamp Completion: project that was the subject of my goals in the original PDP. A non starter. In the past few months I have used Illustrator only a Improve my Illustrator skill. Completion: very small amount with no tutorials. The only notable improvement has been the discovery of the 3D tools to allow vectors to quickly be extruded and revolved into accurate 3D images. Be ready and waiting to get a beProgress towards this goal has been made only in the last few days. spoke project if one comes in. A bespoke project that requires something very similar to a project Completion: I was already working on for Aktiva has come in and I have been assigned to it. Goal completed for now! Learn about engineering drawings so Completed a number of drawings that have been sent out to quote that I can better communicate with by manufacturers based in France and Italy. Also been learning the manufacturers. importance of consistency in layout.

I still havent started making any partial goals. I know I want a project done by a certain date, but I still cram into the last few days. I will now try and incorporate mini goals and put up a calendar.

Completion:

As long as I keep up with this regime of sketching most days, I believe this goal is completed. Possible further action could be to try sketching more with pen as to force me to be confident with each line. Now that the brand has been created to a degree under the name Luke Anthony Firth my next steps should be to create a platform to fill it out. Business cards, a website and the development of a signature style will be what I will next target. Writing down things I aim to do and keeping them together so that I dont feel the need to start them right away then forgetting them. Also, perhaps think of a way of prioritising the ones I really like. To give this goal a sense of direction I should decide what I want to achieve from this. Then find and note down tutorials to complete to further myself towards that end goal. Not much can be done to this goal now that I actually have a bespoke project at work so this will be removed from the next PDP but I should return it when this project is finished. My housemate has began completing a large number of high quality engineering drawings to spec for his work. Asking him for guidance will be very useful. Look for other examples online too.

Cultivate new contacts for the future.

Completion:

Keep in touch with important contacts that have been made via email as not to undo existing progress towards this goal.

Improve my solidworks assembly skill.

Completion:

Thanks to the publicising of my speaker project, I received a good number of emails from other designers and a few business owners. A big portion of contacts have been within the American Homegating sector. This has put me in touch with a few interesting contacts that could be used for advice and critique from a business standpoint for a large scale and very different audience to what I am used to. At work Ive began practicing with making full scale assemblies of jobs before they go out to clients in order to check that all fixing centres and fittings line up correctly and can be installed without on site alterations by contractors. This has enabled me to much better understand the tangent mate that I had never previously used.

Utilise linkedin to find new contacts that are relevant to me within the UK. Continue creating assemblies of any orders at work that require non standard set ups - especially those that include emergency equipment.

Use the existing contacts such as metal platers to aid in development of my own lamp project.

Look into functional assemblies that actually work as well as look like the final product. No progress. Goal has been superseded by other projects and will be Print project overview and file away so that I can removed from future PDPs for the time being. come back to it in future to complete it.

Completion:

Make changes to existing products As part of my work on the deployment of the B Line LED product, I Now that my work at Aktiva has shifted focus to have made a number of changes to the way that it is assembled such new product development as well as the new bethat make things better overall.

Completion:

as the use of low profile cable grips when there is a large distance between the power connector entering the fitting and the LED arrays. As part of my Speaker project I learnt a good deal about altering Work on rendering - Learn more about Keyshot materials. existing materials on keyshot to create variations such as different colour leathers. Also I was able to create a so-so concrete material Completion: from scratch using a HDR photograph. Start doing some graphic design. Some progress has been made towards this goal. I have created a Completion: new template for Aktiva for sending out Photometric test results to clients as well as renovating old projects to ready them for portfolio.

spoke project so this goal will have to be shelved for now at least. The MD of Aktiva has asked me to produce a small number of renderings of plausible solutions to the new bespoke project I am involved with which now provides an opportunity to practice this goal. Complete the overhaul of completed projects to make them portfolio ready. Use Behance to find good examples of graphic design layouts and practice emulating them.

Presentation practice.

Completion:

Very little progress has been made with this. At work I have organised Take the opportunity presented by the new bemy work on different projects into folders ready to talk through and spoke project to practice presentations to both the have created a few pages ready for presentation. client (Oxford University) and the MD.

Learn more about thermodynamics Especially that associated with heatsinking LED lighting.

Completion:

Through practical testing and internet research I have been able to Conduct physical thermal tests of all Aktiva LED build a small library at work of thermodynamic data and its relation fittings under different conditions in order to derive to the different products in the Aktiva range. trends into what effects the heatsinking and why.

Design and get some business cards printed.

Ordered first batch of 50 from moo.com as a test.

Completion:

Can be integrated into my Form my own brand and self promote goal in the next PDP due to similarity.

New Goals Added In PDP 2 Achievement Realisation Action Plan

What Im going to do to achieve these goals.

New Goals

Reasoning and Implementation

How will I implement what Ive learnt in the future?

What do I want to achieve?

How to recognise when the goal is met?

Update / Start new Portfolio ( Term)

When my portfolio is up to date with new work that is relevant from over the past year and in a format that I would feel confident showing to employers.

Create folders of work and organise I feel this goal will be achieved when I existing work. have all of the work and semi finished ( Term) projects that are currently scattered around everywhere organised into usable folders that I can reference back to in future. Improve currently poor handwriting. An extremely long term goal - my ( Term) handwriting has always let me down. I will consider this goal complete when I feel that my handwriting is at least on par with the rest of my work in terms of quality of presentation.

Continue to rework projects into a format that can be added and start to update my current whilst keeping an eye out for possible new graphic layout to apply to a new Portfolio. Go through and try and date work as well as separating it out into the relevant projects and print overviews of some projects held on my laptop and sort them into hole punched folders.

From this I will be able to confidently show potential employers and other contacts my work in a professional manner.

This will provide a framework to help keep track of the work I have done towards all the projects I keep starting and quite often failing to finish so that I will be able to go back and reference for new projects/complete them. Firstly find out the best ways (aside Although most of the time handwritfrom drudging practicing) to improve. ing can be dodged due to computers, when creating concept design and deWork the handwriting practice into velopment pages it detracts from the my routine - possibly hooked onto the concepts themselves. Improving it will sketch practice I have taken up. mean I can confidently display my raw development work.

Action Planning
At work: Prepare for and make a real push to get all of the work done for the bespoke project completed both quickly and correctly to give the project a higher chance of going through and being given the go ahead. Continue thorough thermal testing of Aktiva LED fittings under different circumstances in order to get a better impression of what affects heat sinking within actual applications so I can make better informed decisions about the design of the products I am currently working on. Now that Aktiva has already started to receive applications for the next years placement students, I have been asked by my senior designer to organise parts of my work and any research into such a way that I can hand over to my replacement in such a way that they can pick up where I left off. At home: Keep up my daily sketching practice in order to try and improve, whilst now adding in handwriting practice to the routine too. Get my house in order, in terms of design. As noted in the tables, a big clean up and organisation of my work is well overdue.

Notes Since PDP 2

I had expected that after almost 8 months at Aktiva, work would settle somewhat into a routine. I have realised however that this is not the case at all as the bespoke nature of the products that Aktiva as a company produces means that the time of the design team is largely taken up by adapting our products to fit exactly what the client needs within constraints and reacting to often a high number of changes in brief. I had also underestimated the power of specific jobs over the design process. Numerous products have been completely designed at Aktiva but often will be stored and wait for a large enough number in one or more orders to justify a complete manufacturing run.

Keyshot Render of Ecko speaker design.

Partial collection of icons created for The Noun Project5.

Photometrics work screenshot for London Library Project at work.

1: http://projecttransformation.org/dallas/files/2012-10-PT-Infographic-ForPrint.pdf 2: http://www.usfunds.com/media/images/investor-alert/_2013/2013-03-08/COM-Dow-Then-and-Now.pdf 3: http://www.yankodesign.com/2013/02/15/bespoke-audio/ 4: http://www.thecrosbypress.com/2013/02/15/ekco-surround-sound-is-a-custom-leather-home-audio-solution/ 5: http://thenounproject.com/lukefirth/#

Thank you