Illegible Expression Methods in the Design Process of the Upcycled Product

Abstract

(Background and Purpose) Plastic waste or scrap metal thrown into the sea or land accumulates for decades, beginning to become a disaster for humans. To cope with this, the importance of utilizing recycled resources continues to increase, and much effort is being made to increase the recycling ratio. Most upcycle designs attempt product disassembly and reassembly for a new purpose. In the upcycle design process, the forms that appear while reassembling discarded products to suit the current purpose use expression methods that attract people's attention. From the illegible perspective, this study tried to find the expression methods. As upcycle design creates a new value by partially transforming the form of waste, research was conducted to find visual expression methods that add new values. (Method) As a research method, it was approached from the illegible perspective of design regarding the fact that objects are being sold at high prices with completely strange and new shapes and purposes without any major changes in form. Illegibility is difficult for people to understand, but methods such as visual camouflage and deception are used as ways to stimulate the other person's interest. In other words, the illegibility in this study is an important measure of design that reflects the emotions of the recipients who encounter the design and is a unique delivery technique used to stimulate the emotions and sensibilities of the recipients, and it is a method that induces curiosity & interest and leads to rethinking about the design. Accordingly, based on various upcycle design cases, it was analyzed how illegible expression methods are revealed in the product design, and then explored methods that are mainly used. (Results) As shown in the form of upcycled products, the most frequently used illegible expression methods were deceiving, hiding, and blending influenced the unique image-making of product design. However, in the case of some household goods, illegible design characteristics were hardly visible as the original shape was not maintained due to the harsh processing and washing of recycled materials. It means that the unique properties that can be revealed through the shape of the raw materials have disappeared as simplified designs are preferred when people wear or use them in daily life. (Conclusions) In upcycled product design, with the exception of some designs for household goods, illegible expression methods were mostly used, and among them, blending, deceiving, and hiding are used in large proportions. In the future, more specific research should be conducted in the area of product design development using illegibility as the expression methods can be mainly used in the process of developing upcycle design.