Isaiah Trotter
Undergraduate
My design philosophy is: Innovation > Iteration. Read as ‘innovation is greater than iteration’, I derive the most fulfillment as a designer when I create completely novel products, not incremental changes (or iterations) on what already exist. Currently I’m building a novel product every 30 days for the freelance economy.
Orbit Ellipse Templates
Solo Project
I had long been in the understanding that I would get internships in college, graduate, and become someone's employee. It was a safe, reasonable, and prudent way of looking at the future. It offers security... right? Well, a thought began to nag in the back of my head during the summer between my sophomore and junior year.
"I'm a designer, dang it. If I have the skills to innovate and make businesses, why don't I just do that?"
It was an epiphany that, as I would soon find out, was going to alter how I viewed my place in this world as a designer. The movie Inception gets it right when it says that ideas are the things that cause the most change. A way of thinking — a framework of thought — is the foundation which influences your decisions. It was at that point that I realized my design education isn't really about teaching me practical skills. I'm being taught how to think. Logically, the next question was:
"What am I going to do with this way of thinking?"
This new way of thinking resulted in Orbit Ellipse Templates. Five months since its conception, and I've created a successful Kickstarter campaign, now ripe with ideas to expand it. It doesn't just end with Orbit, though — this is the first of many projects. Next is to build a design firm from the ground up.
The white picket fence equivalent of design, at least how it appears in school, is to graduate and land a stable job. If you're really lucky, you'll work for a big name. Why not become that big name? More importantly, why not build a vision others want to get behind?
If you're interested in more of the story with Orbit, you can check out the completed Kickstarter project here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/isaiahtrotter/orbit-the-new-ellipse-template
And if you want to buy a template or two, I'm opening up an Etsy and Shopify page soon. Updates will be made on the Kickstarter page, so you can stay up to date there.
TL:DR, this YouTube video I made just about sums it all up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cLJbFqtBp4&ab_channel=IsaiahTrotter
SCAD Lamp
Class: Sophomore Studio | Instructor: Herb Velazquez
For this project, students were tasked with determining a location, assessing the design language of that area, and then designing a 6 foot tall lamp to fit in that environment. This lamp is intended specifically for the SCAD Fashion Museum in Atlanta. It form is meant to be reminiscent of falling fabric. Designers love to juxtapose seemingly contradictory design principles in order to create a product that subverts expectations, and I thought it would be an interesting challenge to create "soft metal" by appealing to the quality of smooth flowing fabric.
Force 11
Class: Sophomore Studio | Instructor: Herb Velazquez
This product is called “Force 11”, and it’s a smart product that forecasts muscle growth and encourages good exercise habits. Lifestyle habits that a student develops in college are very likely to carry over into adulthood. So the Force 11 using a force-sensitive resistor to calculate muscle strain over multiple workout sessions in order to forecast muscle growth for, in this case, the biceps. Since working out can take a couple of weeks to see genuine results, this product gives more immediate feedback into the growth of a muscle to encourage continued exercise.
Bacaro
Class: Sophomore Studio | Instructor: Herb Velazquez
The Bacaro cheese grater intends to solve three main problems with traditional cheese graters which are, an unwieldily grip, excess cheese that gets stuck inside the grater, and accidentally cutting your fingers when the cheese gets too small to grate. These problems are solved through the tilted and curved handle, the thin slicer in the bottom to cut excess cheese, and the small top grater with finger guards for protection.