"Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived." Helen Keller
Justin Maguire and Ralph Bremenkamp from Frog Design in Munich were invited for a one-day workshop with the Advanced Product Design programme on Friday December 10th. The challenge was to explore the possibilities of designing with olfaction in mind - the ability to sense and experience through smell.
The highly anticipated visit and the inspiring and abstract theme of scent gave the opportunity of mixing the first and second year students. Justin Maguire and Ralph Bremenkamp, who both visited Umeå for the first time, introduced some of the creative brain- and workshop exercises and methods from Frog Design&s FrogThinkTM. Besides hands-on activities like "need-finding", "random entry" and "provocation", Justin and Ralph also shared personal as well as professional advise with the students, based on their own experiences of how to keep "the flow" in the ever-evolving profession and discipline of industrial design.
Among the good advice from the two designers were to work with specialists from other fields to avoid failure, to broaden yourself and not focus on being a specialist in just one skill, and finally to leave as soon as you find yourself to be the smartest person at a workplace.
Bremenkamp and Maguire&s visit, their creative contribution and warm personalities were appreciated by the students, and later in the evening they invited the two guests to join the annual Christmas celebrations at UID. In January the Frog designers will come back to see (or smell?) the APD students& presentation.
