This isn't so much a product for measuring but a technique which I learnt in Vis Comm about two years ago. Our teacher was absolutely obsessed with pyramids and Egypt (don't ask me why) and one class, he set us a task to draw a circle. Most of us launched straight to the compasses and circle templates but none of them were big enough for his scale. He then handed each of us a length of string and told us to attach the end of it onto a pen. Afterwards, he asked us to place pressure on one end of the string and drag the pen around, forming a rough, but accurate circle. Apparently Egyptians used this technique to form the measurements in constructing pyramids or other artefacts. This method doesn't just limit to drawing circles but can rule the straightest of lines by dragging or extending a piece of string from one end to the other.
I'm either easily amused or this is just simple stuff everyone already knows and I'm just a late bloomer, but, what I admire is the simple logic behind it. Most designers nowadays aim to go beyond the present; designing futuristic appliances with the highest technology available. On the odd occasion, I have found myself using rulers and still create crooked lines (again, don't ask me why) so I've concluded that even modern tools have a possible loophole for mistakes. This, this seems pretty fail proof to me. If you stretch a piece of string or a rope, you can't really get straighter than that unless you use a laser-but that's for another blog post.
I guess what the message is behind this post is to not overcomplicate things and take a step back because just using simple logic can achieve the best results.
-Karen Ly
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