tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23274226251236644982011-07-18T03:44:56.543-07:00Fancy designing a glass roof as big as a swimming pool? Some of your classmates did just that. Follow the progress of their artwork from initial ideas to final installation here...Millyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06714943967581727550noreply@blogger.comBlogger141100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2327422625123664498.post-54415333679417449172011-07-18T03:37:00.001-07:002011-07-18T03:44:56.555-07:00

The design is finally up! Because of the size (32m long) it took nearly two days to install, but it was worth it... It really lifts the central dining room area of the school and when the sun shines it throws shadows on the floor and brightens the sky.Due to the stairs and the walkway at the back of the space you can see the window up close and personal. Here's a detail of the design to give you

Millyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06714943967581727550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2327422625123664498.post-9139013141774972882010-03-31T00:08:00.000-07:002010-03-31T00:13:46.237-07:00

My work on this project is pretty much done now. I had to send the final file off to the company who were producing the adhesive film, and they divided it into sections that matched the beams and structure of the rooflight. Here they are in yellow - they used that colour so that they're immediately visible and different to the other colours in the design. The printers then know where to divide

Millyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06714943967581727550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2327422625123664498.post-47815470946920107872010-03-12T02:40:00.000-08:002010-03-12T02:58:46.237-08:00

The right result, at last! This is part of a full size sample - it's bold, it's colourful and it 'sings' - perfect.This small sample is at the other end of the scale - it has 25% white behind to back up the colour. This looks fine, so I take it to the Alec French, the architects who drew the original designs for your school and they are happy with it too. Now I have to ask for a full scale sample

Millyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06714943967581727550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2327422625123664498.post-9188932869908991662010-03-04T03:18:00.000-08:002010-03-04T03:37:55.387-08:00

The next thing is to make sure that the printer gets the colours right. The printer has to digitally print all 96 panels on a transparent material so that it can be stuck onto the glass in the rooflight - so it's really important that this stage is done properly. The photo above is the first sample I got back. You can see that it's nearly invisible, so I needed to somehow get the colour deeper

Millyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06714943967581727550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2327422625123664498.post-76941277444346785622010-03-02T01:31:00.000-08:002010-03-02T01:42:55.203-08:00

The next step is to put all these elements - lines, shapes and gradients - together, to create the final file. As you can see, I've changed the colours so that they look more like the original colours that your schoolmates chose a very, very long time ago!

Millyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06714943967581727550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2327422625123664498.post-47767869161647620892010-02-17T01:43:00.000-08:002010-02-17T02:18:35.052-08:00

As the students and had done the artwork as a hard - not electronic - copy, the next task for me was to translate this paper drawing into a vector file in Illustrator, so that it could be blown up as big as a swimming pool with out pixelating, or going 'blocky'.I started by scanning the lines from the original drawing in, to make it as true to the original drawing as possible. Then I 'drew' these

Millyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06714943967581727550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2327422625123664498.post-10337860281010576052009-09-11T06:24:00.000-07:002009-09-29T23:21:27.731-07:00

It's all starting to look like a proper building up at your new school, instead of gaping holes and cement. Now you can really get a sense of where the glass is going to go, and how your design will look. To help you along, I've transposed the design into the atrium with the help of Photoshop. It's not perfect, but it does give you some idea about how it will look.

Millyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06714943967581727550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2327422625123664498.post-89556515146124686282009-05-27T08:20:00.000-07:002009-05-27T08:40:23.770-07:00

My next job was to get more students involved in the whole thing, so I scaled up two final designs agreed on during a meeting with your head teacher Ann Duff and head of art Sue Lovell.I decided to do a full size panel of each design, so that you could get some idea of the HUGENESS of the finished project. You can see these hanging off the balcony in the top photo.Well. The result was an

Millyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06714943967581727550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2327422625123664498.post-72568746370671896142009-05-12T01:35:00.000-07:002009-05-27T08:20:38.007-07:00

I worked up the design - as you can see in the top three above - changing the shapes a bit and deciding how to do the 'shading' so that the coloured shapes linked with the clear parts in the design. I always design with the structure of the building in mind - in this case there's 48 X 2 sections of glass, so the beams are an important part of the design. When I was happy with the result, I scaled

Millyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06714943967581727550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2327422625123664498.post-87396514089395674972009-04-24T02:49:00.000-07:002009-04-24T03:15:58.775-07:00

You all liked the bottom two design ideas best (see below), and split into groups to scale the designs up 25:1. That means the atrium roof light is 25X the size of these - still huge!Scaling up designs gives you a chance to make changes, and to see if they 'work' on a bigger scale. Sometimes designs look good small, but don't look very good when they're big. We made a fair bit of mess in the

Millyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06714943967581727550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2327422625123664498.post-841743022788189252009-04-22T00:26:00.000-07:002009-04-22T00:33:22.766-07:00

Here are the four design ideas Striking Glass came up with after seeing your classmates designs from the first workshop (see post below). The bottom two were chosen by the students as their favourites. They were seen as a lively and fitting centre piece for the dining space in your new school.

Millyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06714943967581727550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2327422625123664498.post-84259447331303251622009-04-07T07:54:00.000-07:002009-04-07T08:05:40.744-07:00

First of all the obligatory Health and Safety saw us all putting on welly boots, hard hats, bright yellow waist coats and even gloves (yes, in case we fall over and put our hands onto something sharp...) I think everyone looks rather dashing myself.This is your future dining room space. The space above everyone's head, right down to the green digger at the end is where the atrium window is going

Millyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06714943967581727550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2327422625123664498.post-1761508413378430782009-04-01T00:07:00.000-07:002009-04-01T00:34:36.806-07:00

So what didn't you like about your current dining room? It's always good to find that out first, so we can work towards creating something you do want... I learnt that it was dull, cramped, sometimes cold, used for everything under the sun - and even smelly! The things you wanted in the new dining space sounded much more positive - colourful, lively, upbeat, yet also relaxing, orderly and calm.

Millyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06714943967581727550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2327422625123664498.post-30273373155014688862009-03-31T03:04:00.000-07:002009-03-31T23:58:29.997-07:00

This is what your new dining space will look like. See that glass roof? That's the atrium. It's as long as Easton swimming pool - 32metres - and needs an exciting design inspired by students to make it special to your school. Once the design has been chosen, it will be carefully scaled up and digitally printed onto transparent film, which will then be stuck on the underside of the glass in the

Millyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06714943967581727550noreply@blogger.com0