Especially if teaching Product Design at A-Level, this is one of those omni present questions which has a tendancy to make an appearance at exam time.  I came up with this recently along with my A level students studying product design in relation to Iconic design. You know how much I love anagrams and acronyms!

We tended to focus on Iconic rather than classic as the term classic is a little open ended. A Morris Minor is a classic car but it is not an Icon. Whereas the Beetle is both classic and Iconic. All old cars are labelled classic cars, few are Iconic.

ICONIC= SPUR

S: Symbolic, can represent a movement, a time, fashion,ideals, design beliefs or principles

P: Provenance, it has a rich and important history, it changed things, affected the users

U:Unique, different when first released, since copied but still seen as the original, genesis

R:Resonance, people remember it, evokes passion, is still relevant or even still used

See what you think, my pupils can now tell you exactly why a Barcelona chair is an Iconic design and why the W.W Stool by Phillipe Starck is not.

Spencer Herbert

The TES online resource service is a fantastic place to pick up some new and exciting ideas but also somewhere that you can find entire schemes of work, free of charge at the click of a button. We are not talking about your average topics of study here, we have superbly put together projects which are challenging, engaging, presented to an extremely high standard and are both current and relevant. With this in mind I have decided to include, on a regular basis, a review of those resources I have found the most interesting. After reading the review why not log onto www.tes.co.uk and go to the resource section on the site and head for Design Technology.

Spencer Herbert

TES Design Technology Advisor

Introduction to Branding

A quick and easy way to get pupils thinking about brands and branding, aimed primarily at KS3 but could quite  easily be extended for application in KS4 lessons.

• What is it? – It is a resource that contains a PowerPoint with an accompanying worksheet. It has had some 10,000 views with over 9000 downloads, so it is fair to say it has been trialled by a number of you. The resource kicks off with some brief lesson objectives, very useful for your planning and moves swiftly onto a timed activity. The pupils are given five minutes to simply identify the logos and brands they see on the screen. Really good starter I feel, because it sets the context and tone without as much as a word from the teacher. Furthermore promotes a level of familiarity within the students and no doubt illustrates that they know more about the topic than they may have first thought. The lesson then looks at colours in branding and its associated uses, followed by a really clever piece where students are once again timed but now have to identify brands by just using the colour bars provided. We move on to how colours may be used to promote luxury and how they can typify economy or budget items. Colour is also linked to “natural” and “fun”.  The lesson moves onto to a brief explanation with examples of ambient and stunt media/ guerrilla marketing with focussed and timed tasks. 
• How could it be used? – Judging by the number of downloads, it seems most of you would be better placed to make the call on how it could be used. However after using this resource a couple of times myself, I must say how very easy and quick it is to implement in a real classroom. You do not need any real depth of graphics or media knowledge to deliver and to be fair the learning is student led. Preparation is minimal and the lesson runs in a logical fashion so it is hard to trip up. Most of my students found the task good fun and engagement was high throughout. The second time I ran the lesson I decided to produce my own colour bars, I found the examples on the PowerPoint really useful for my higher ability Yr8 students but my Yr7’s struggled. I simply found the purple and white nearest to Cadbury’s and the red and white of Coca Cola and printed them separately but also had a dairy milk and can of coke at hand just in case they needed a prompt, well that was my excuse anyway. I also decided to run this lesson with my Yr9 students and introduced an extension to the stunt media section, using Banksy the East London graffiti artist. This style of media was and still is relevant and is evident in various music videos and also adverts. I focussed on some of the social and moral messages portrayed in Banksy’s artwork and also introduced them to a number of more underground artists such as D Face who uses a similar media. 
• How have you used this resource? – I found this resource very useful and have used it as a base, something I can extend from. I only have my KS3 students once a week and for 50 minutes at a time and in some cases have found it difficult to run the whole unit as supplied. However, when I introduce this item again I will no doubt incorporate my own ideas and additions and run it over two or even three lessons. Do not just take my word for it, read some of the reviews given for this great resource.
• Uploaded by littlemissraw

We are always on the look out for great ideas or products here at Accessfm.com and can announce that we are proudly in association with Simmoe Design.  We are able to offer for sale this great new product, Designed by David Simpson, the owner and manager of Simmoe Design. This quirky pencil holder is designed to fit into a bookshelf, between the books themselves. You simply remove it from the shelf by grabbing hold of its small tab, get it to stand by passing a pencil through the tab itself, rather clever idea. The pencil holders come supplied with a full set of colouring pencils and retail for £8.99 which includes free postage anywhere in the United Kingdom.

You can order the pencil holder direct from http://simmoe.co.uk/simmoe/Product_2.htmland be sure to quote accessfm when ordering in order to achieve this introductory price offer.