Series Form and Design Languages

This sort of follows on from this post here, where I was talking about trying to rationalise a design and form language for the MAG-100 universe…

I literally have pages on pages of doodles and scribbles of forms for spacecraft and vehicles. What’s common about them all, and has been for some time is at some point (I actually remember when) all the forms started to collate into a few very distinct groupings; and just in case you missed it, none of the forms adhere to the current norms you’ll find in the majority of concept design. But as I have touched on in previous posts, with so many things going on between the various projects, ideas kept on bleeding into one another, so it just became impossible to separate the ideas.

The above pages (mostly the first two) are the result of sitting down and making a conscious effort to go through all the pages and attempt to sort the different ideas out into themes that I could then apportion to the various projects…

The first image shows where I settled for the MAG-100 narrative. Over the past 6 months or so I have been playing with a range of forms and details (you can see more in previous posts) that have revolved around a similar set of ideas. Designing a language for MAG-100 was always difficult, as I needed a language that not only represented intended but also time and technological advancement. At the same time though, I wanted elements or commonalities that became identifiable between the various points, helping to express a level of  ideology in design that was carried through over time.

The second image shows a far more singular language that I am working up for ‘The Silent’. Here the goal is vastly different – the designs needing to create a feeling as part of the overall when you look at them in situ within the image. The designs for The Silent are intentionally vague and sculptural, rather than detailed products, their forms being intentionally somewhat identifiable and alien at the same time.

What you can’t see here, but is something I have already identified, are the surface materials that I will be using when modelling the various designs. When I have been thinking about these, I have been doing so very much from a design and manufacturing point as much as a societal one. What I have decided on I am sure will surprise some out there.