 Drawing For Designers |
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Tuesday, October 02 2007 @ 11:39 AM BST
Author: Dan. Views: 721
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 Drawing "makes you pay attention to what you're looking at" says Milton Glaser, "which is not so easy". With Drawing For Designers, you'll be glad to hear, putting pen to paper just got a little bit easier. And not just pen to paper, but stylus to tablet, too.
Alan Pipes' book covers the history of design drawing, and provides comprehensive, clearly written information on the process from concept sketches to final production drawings. And Drawing For Designers is a handbook that's not only right up to date, but includes a chapter on the future of the design drawing as well. It's essential reading for anyone involved in the design of 3D product or industrial design, from student to professional, but could also be a useful tool for artists and makers who want to explore new ways of working.
The book covers everything, from George Sowden's shaky roughs for a toaster design to complex computer visualisations of mechanical part by Bjorn Holmgren. Drawing For Designers even includes a rough sketch on the back of a brown envelope, a mobile phone design by Michael DiTullo. Often, it is the simplest sketches that say it best - Tokujin Yoshioka's sketch for the Boing chair, and drawings for the Land Ho! seat and planter by Nola, for example.
There's no disputing that many of the examples included blur the boundaries between traditional product design and contemporary sculpture; take Karim Rashid's Plomb umbrella stand, shown on the cover as loose concept sketch and later on in more detailed computer models and technical plans and elevations. It's a sculptural shape that, with the application of the right skills, has been developed into a desirable multiple. Lamps from King and Miranda Design are similarly sculptural.
Of course, the line between art and design has always been a bit fuzzy, and drawings from Da Vinci, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Voysey, the Bauhaus and Pentagram remind us of this throughout the book. And Pipes reminds us too, that designers should study the work of Picasso, Matisse and Degas to find out 'how to convey a message with an economy of effort'.
Perhaps, as the 21st Century's technology shortens the distance between an initial sketch and generating final designs for manufacture (wherever in the world the product is made) we'll see that line getting even fuzzier. In the future, Pipes predicts, we'll see the product and industrial designer having the power that the craftsman has today when making a one-off object, 'overcoming the alienation and separation of designer and machine that has existed since the Industrial Revolution'.
But maybe, just maybe, with the help of well-written books like this one, we'll see the artist-craftsman having the power to control the machine directly.
Whatever happens, as Pipes rightly points out, 'the act of drawing [is] one of life's exquisite pleasures: the ability to communicate an idea to another human being by means of a few choice lines on paper' - and because of that, there will always be drawing.
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