PRODUCT DESIGN
Directly Relevant to the Course
Five things you should be doing when you think you have finished all your work!
After you have completed all set work you should engage in activitiesto make you a more successful designer. Below are some suggestions to help.
- Develop your background knowledge and understanding of materials (woods, metals, plastics, composites). You should investigate how they are extracted, refined and processed. Use the ‘How it’s made’ series to select appropriate videos and make notes after you have watched them. Watch the video again with no sound and see if you can describe the process.
- Develop your background knowledge and understanding of industrial production and processes: injection moulding / blow moulding /steel forging / aluminium metal spinning / metal plating / metal rolling/ heat treatment quenching & tempering / composites e.g. GRP / milling timber / wood turning. Use the ‘How it’s made’ series to select appropriate videos and make notes after you have watched them. Watch the video again with no sound and see if you can describe the process.
- Research the OCR website and read through the specification for Product Design. Identify any technical vocabulary you do not understand and investigate the meanings of the words.
- Practise modelling techniques. Use materials at home to model different products, for example using card and tape to model a chair or plasticine to model a door handle. Modelling also includes drawing, so you should do lots of sketching using isometric crating.
- Disassemble products to find out how they work, what they are made from and why specific materials were chosen. Take photos of the disassembled products and add notes that explain your findings. Make sure you don’t take apart anything that is still needed!
Additional Enrichment Ideas
Wider reading
The Design of Everyday Thingsby Don Norman
Designing Design by Kenya Hara
Universal Principles of Designby William Lidwell, Kritina Holden and Jill Butler
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Thingsby William McDonough and Michael Braungart
Design Secrets: Products 1 and 2: 50 Real-Life Product Design Projects Uncoveredby Lynn Haller and Cheryl Dangel Cullen, and edited by Industrial Designers Society of America.
Product Designs from Concept to Manufacture by Jennifer Hudson
Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature by Janine M. Benyus
ProductDesign and Development by Karl T. Ulrich and Steven D. Eppinger
Presentation Techniques by Dick Powell
Creative Marker Techniques: In Combination With Mixed Media by Yoshiharu Shimizu
Sketching: Drawing Techniques for Product Designers by KoosEissen and RoselienSteu
Useful websites
TV Documentaries
The Genius of Design - a five part series about the history of industrial design from the BBC
Places to Visit
The Design Museum
Any Product Design degree show!
100%Design – Earls Court, Sep 2012
Product Design