Tom De Meester

Product portfolio

I am a student of Industrial Product De-sign at the Howest University College of West Flanders. Here I will graduate in 2013 with a Bachelors Degree in product design with a speciality in ergonomics.

In the spring semester of 2012 I took an Er-asmus semester at ESAPA in Avilés, Spain. Here the focus of the study was put more in engineering and working with work-shops rather than building own proto-types like at Howest. I like going through the entire design pro-ces, so learning about that aspect was very interesting.

This is also the time I started learning Spanish, with an intensive language course at the University of Oviedo and practicing my spanish in everyday life.

Who is Tom De Meester?

Software:

CS5 (Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign)CAD (Siemens NX 7.5)3DsMax (good)Rhino (basic)Vray

Crafts:

WoodworkingMetalworking (Milling, Lathing)Rapid Prototyping (Laser cutting, 3d print-ing,...)

Languages:

Dutch - native languageEnglish - fluentSpanish - basicFrench - basicGerman - notions

In my spare time I love being with friends, enjoying the little things in life. I like being active and outdoors, visiting new places, cycling, running. Also play-ing tennis is one of my big hobbies.

On rainy days I like to spend my after-noons tinkering on old radio’s, or creat-ing small Arduino projects. These mostly never last long as I recycle the parts for new projects every time.

I like to visit museums and I am a regular visitor of the museums in my home city Ghent. I have spent many sunday morn-ings in the design museum or the muse-um of contemporary art.

A new hobby I recently picked up is pho-tography wich I enjoy very much, even-tough I am an obvious beginner.

Spare Time

Skillset:

Contents

Mariana Coffeetable . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Park Bench . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Sofa-Desk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Pizzacutter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11Bycicle lighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Woodstove . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14Boardgame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

4Mariana Coffeetable

These tables were designed for a competi-tion by a local furniture company.The brief stated that 3 tables had to be placed together to form a single surface, when they were not being used, the ta-bles had to be able to be placed away.

From the start I wanted to make an el-egant piece of furniture, the idea was to make a modern looking table with a artisanal feel.This feeling would have to come from the materials used, the way it looks and pre-sents itself in the room and finally from the way it is produced.I was very much inspired by japanese woodworking and simplicity of living. The shape is inspired on a japanese arch that may be found in front of traditional houses.

The tables can be placed separately or together, to form a single surface. When they are not being used they can be placed on top of each other to form a 90cm high piece. This can be used as artwork or a small storage space.

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Tables stacked

The materials used are french oak and white ceramic. The french oak has a wonderful structure and when finished smoothly has a wonderful touch. It also makes the table look elegant, refined and durable. The top of the table would be flat, but the underside is milled at an angle so that the table looks very thin, even though it is a 20mm thick piece of solid oak. The legs are also made from oak pieces, turned with an angle of 1 degree, this makes them look finer and more elegant.

The ceramics are there to hold the table legs to the table top, they form the link between the vertical and the horizontal. The ceramic is finished in a matte fin-ish, this way it has a little more rough texture and it feels very solid. Polished it would give a more fragile look.

The white of the ceramic also goes well with the colour and feel of the oak from the table top and table legs.

Finally there is a small piece of ceramic at the end of the table leg, mainly to pro-tect the wood and to finish of the piece.

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Side view, with detail of the supporting beam

Exploded view

Park Bench

This bench was designed for a competi-tion issued by the university of Palermo. The brief was to design a chair/bench/sofa/... with a latin character.

After researching the latin designers and latin design in general I was very inter-ested in designing a simple and elegant piece using wood.

Going through the designprocess I tried to think about keeping everything as simple as possible, this meant thinking about materials, production, use, instal-lation, logistics,...

What I came up with is a bench made up of 4 pieces of dark wood, fitted together using slots. No nails, screws or other joints are being used, only the boards slotting into each other.

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Sketches

Frontal view

Because simple materials and techniques are used, this bench can be built by lo-cal shops or schools where they will be placed. This ensures that there is a social aspect involved aswel as an environ-mental, seeing the benches don’t have to travel around the continent to where they should be placed.

To accentuate the bench three colours are used to make it stand out from its environment.

These colours were chosen from the palet of paints made available by the sponsor of the competition.

I chose blue and yellow because they make the bench pop out of its environ-ment and the bright green makes it noti-cable from the sides.

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View of the sofa

Integrated lighting

This was an assignment to design a spac-esaving piece of furniture. I decided to take students as my target, this meant it had to be cheap, easy to use and have a double function to save space in small student housing.

What I came up with was a desk that could be flipped over easily to turn it in to a comfortable sofa. This way the stu-dents only have to buy one piece of furni-ture.

The backsupports can be stored in de tables legs, this way the supports don’t hinder the user while sitting at the desk.

Materials used for this were MDF and hard foam seats. To make sure the paint would be durable a boat varnish is ap-plied. This allows for heavy use without a lot of wear.

To ensure that the users don’t have to clear the entire table of appliances and such, herefore I had 2 solutions.

Sofa-Desk

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Detail of the lighting

Front view of the desk

The first solution is a small drawer in the tables surface. This allows papers, pens and other small items to be stored inside the desk.

The other solution are 2 lights that are activated once they pop up. When the user wants them activated he pushes the stainless steel squares found on the tables surface and they pop up, each light can be activated independantly.

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Render made in Autodesk Showcase

Showing the scale and ergonomics

This assignment was to design a freeform gadget in 3DsMax. The idea was to create a gadget like we know them from Alessi and others.

After some brainstorming and thinking of what I could improve, I came up with a redesign of a pizza roller. Most rollers are a handle with a wheel at the end, no protection to the user, wobbly cutting wheel, just not a well designed product.

With this design the hands of the user are protected, the cutting wheel can be retracted for storage, it is machine washable and has a face.

Because of the convexe shape of the products it is also very comfortable to handle while exerting force, this means people who have less mobility can still use it.

Pizzacutter

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Tablet and smartphone with the interface

Detail of one of the screens

This was a very interesting project, com-bining computer skill together with knowledge of ergonomics in to an inter-face for a home thermostat.

The initial briefing was that we got a screen of 1024x768 to design the interface in.

The interface consists of all the basic home features, the user is able to monit-er and interact with the heating, setting times for when the heater can be turned off or monitering the cost of the water being used in a monthly, yearly and his-toric view.

All of these settings can also be viewed in graphical screens.

When the user clicks on an icon in the main screen he goes to the menu of that Icon. Behind the current screen is the previous menu he was viewing, this is to make sure the user knows where he is while navigating through the menu’s.

Interface

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Light attached with velcro

One of the drawings to investigate scale and form on the bike

Bycicle lighting

Assignment to develop a bycicle light through quick and dirty prototyping, finishing with 3D models and renders of the finished product.

I started with about 25 prototypes and with mixing and matching different ideas form different prototypes to come up with the best solution I ended with the lights that you see here.

They lights are battery powered and chargable with a wall charger, like a cell-phone. Inside is a bundle of highpower LED’s that shine through a curved piece of plexi.

The big white button is to make sure that anyone can operate them under any con-dition. So that even when the cyclist sets of before dark, he does not have to stop to activate the lights because he doesn’t have to fiddle with a small button.

Above the powerswitch we can find a series of small LED’s, these indicate the amount of batterypower left, this way the user can see how much time he has left.

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Rear light

Cad model of the light

The lights are attached using 2 velcro strips, the housing’s underside has a rubbery coating so that it is anti-slip. Together with the velcro this makes for a good bond on most surfaces.

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Detail of the strap

Front view

This was an assignment for prototyping classes, where the emphasis was put on experimenting.

The goal was to design a woodstove that worked without using gas, elektricity or petrol as a fuel.

I started with looking at what kind of users actually use a woodstove. My pick fell on backpackers and campers. This meant that it had to be ultraportable, light and easy to use.

After a lot of experiments, involving different chimney designs, cookingware designs, experiments for getting air to the fire, etc.. I made a small and portable rocketstove. This stove would work on small twigs, branches, pieces of dead wood, etc...

The innovation lies in the chimney design, wich is a cone shape, paired with an oxygen supply provided by opening in the chimney’s mantle it gives a very efficient and powerful flame.

Woodstove

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Everything that was tested and researched was documented

Testing the first prototype

The stove is capable of boiling a litre water in under 4 minutes counted from when the first pieces of fuel are placed in it.

It is designed to hold a basic Quechua cooking set, wich fits easily in the top when folded.

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Design for gamecards

One of the longest assignments during my period at howest. For the class “Crea-tivity” we took an aproach that creativity is not something that comes at a flash, or that u have, but that creativity can be tought.

The assignment was given by a toy shop in Belgium called “Dreamland”. They are currently only selling but would like to look at manufacturing in the future.

We had 2 classes about the techniques used and then set of for a 3 month jour-ney in designing a board game. The only criteria were: it has to be for young fami-lies and it has to help them make choices in every day life.

This meant: brainstorming sessions about what is a young family, how many people, what ages, jobs, schools,...

But also a lot of observations, making photos, monitoring a young family, asking them questions, finding prob-lems they have while they don’t realise it themselves. This was very dificult, but also very interesting and fun.

Boardgame

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In the box prototype with wooden pawns

boardgame with cards

In the end we had a boardgame that gave parents a tool to help their children “open up”. With this I mean that chil-dren have so many influences, inputs and stimulations on an average day of school that our game lets them process this to their parents. For the parents it’s a great way to start a conversation or to get to know their children better.

The shape meant that we could package it very tightly, making it cheap for the producer to ship and store it.

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Here is a collection of drawings I made, from notebook sketches to renderdraw-ings.

Drawings

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