Aesthetics Portfolio: Alex Jessop

Aesthetics in Design taught me about sketching, art aesthetics throughout history, and gave me the opportunity to make art myself. The class was broken into two main projects: the first being the Upcycle Project, where recycled materials are used to make an art piece, and the second being the Main Project, where the project scope was raised to require dynamic movement. The projects in this class allowed me to apply my knowledge of design from my engineering classes into the real world with the intention of making art, which made for a truly amazing class.

Upcycle Project: Old Western Cowboy

Link to Full Post

This project was about using recycled materials to make an art piece with a chosen aesthetic. For this, I elected to use aluminum cans in order to create an Old Western-style cowboy statue. Empty aluminum cans are easily recyclable and extremely plentiful in a college town, so they offered a wonderful base for my project. Combining this recycled resource with wire, glue, and several different paints allowed me to create a decoration themed for the summer time.

The warm rustic colors enhance the cowboy features to be much more than just recycled cans. I am very proud of how this came out and had a lot of fun finding ways to add to and shape the design.

Main Project:

Link to Full Posts: Part 1  & Part 2

For my main project I really upped the scale. I decided to create a buildout for my car that is able to fold to accommodate the seats in the car. I also used recycled materials for this, but the main focus was on the folding mechanism and of course the overall appearance of he project. Most car buildouts are done DIY and all end up looking really trashy and cheap. With this project I wanted to explore a fun design idea and also make something visually appealing that I could be proud of.

The chosen aesthetic for this project was cabincore, this meant that the goal was for the finished piece to be made up of smooth filleted edges and warm wood colors. I am proud of how this project came out, and I feel that it is much more visually appealing than any similar project you might find online. However, this is a project that I feel could still be improved. The supports still feel too blocky to fit the target aesthetic and the folding panels are slightly too thin for me to really trust this as a bed. This was however an incredibly fun and exciting project that I am more than happy to show off.