Dear all
I just want to share how I see and teach design drawing (i.e. design sketches) for my industrial design students.
Just as musicians use a musical instrument as a channel to express their musical inspiration and ideas, designers often use drawing / sketches as a channel to explain and develop their design ideas and thought. Through drawing, designers could externalize design concepts that would be difficult to explain through verbal / written language. Because it is their language, designers must be fluent with it so that they could have better communication with others as well as among themselves.
If a designer thinks of a Rubik’s cube in his brain, but the thing he /she draws is a shoe box or a container, for example, he/ she literally provides wrong information for herself as well as others. Therefore, it would be critical for design students to know how to draw things they have in their mind on a piece of a paper.
As we need to know some fundamentals like grammar, words, and intonation when we learn a new language, there are some basic things design students need to learn and practice to communicate their ideas and thoughts through drawing. Without having full confidence and fluency on the basics, it would be difficult for them to use drawing as a channel or a language to communicate with others.
One of approaches that I am emphasizing in my 2nd year studio at school of Industrial design in Carleton University is to increase students’ confidence on drawing the basics. Teaching how to draw the quality of lines (no chicken scratches but long lines with confidence), shapes (no potato but circles, no fishes but ellipses, squares, etc.), volume (cubes, cylinders, organic shapes, etc.) and human interactions with an object(e.g. hands, gestures) is one of ways to increase their confidence and I give them things to control, “speed, pressure and accuracy”(called SPA). Also, some rubrics that I developed are provided for them to assess their performance of the basics by themselves because the fluency comes in differently for individuals.
Love to hear other's approaches as well.
Best,
Dr. WonJoon Chung
Assistant Professor
School of Industrial Design
Carleton University
Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6
Ph: 613.520.6606
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