Reddit reviews Sketching (12th printing): Drawing Techniques for Product Designers
We found 14 Reddit comments about Sketching (12th printing): Drawing Techniques for Product Designers. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
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Well I still go to school for Industrial Design, well I should say Transportation Design. I can tell you some of my ups and downs. I went to the Academy of Art in San Francisco and basically hated it. I didn't think the teacher were qualified enough and the school was run like a for profit. Then I left and took Art Center College of Design night classes and I fell in love with design all over again. I kind of regret not knowing of this program earlier. After taking a couple classes their I recently got accepted to their school and I'm going to start next semester. This school is insanely good, it's also insanely expensive but it's a top notch education. I would recommend if your into product design to start looking into your favorite products, see who designed them, find their biography and see what schools seems to come up again and again. Go to that schools website and see what type of things they require to enter their program. After the Academy I started doing research and the two schools that kept coming up was Art Center in Pasadena and CCS in Detriot, but these are better known for their transportation programs. I'm not entirely to sure on product design. You should buy some books on product design, I love this book and this book. A lot of schools don't like portfolios that show you can draw, they want to see that their is a purpose to your design. Why did you do it, what was the market, why is it better, is it innovative, try to put a lot of thought behind your ideas. Ofcourse you need a certain level of drawing ability but they are looking for people that have great ideas, then they torture you for 2 years making you an artist, then they torture you for 2 more years making you a industrial designer. It's insanely hard at school but I honestly love every moment of it. I mean you get to draw all day, then do clay or foam models, then do 3d models, then make working prototypes. It's crazy to go into this room see all these awesome renderings on the walls, so much creativity and artistic ability. It's honestly the best career you can chose, that's not even a joke, it was like ranked 9th on best career choice. My only real advice is do a ton of research before you commit to a school and never give up.
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In terms of hand sketching? If so, I've found this book to be super helpful:
https://www.amazon.com/Sketching-12th-printing-Techniques-Designers/dp/9063691718/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1498808723&sr=8-1&keywords=product+sketch+for+product+designers
Whenever I'm stuck on a sketch or idea, and either need inspiration or need help visualizing a form, I'll flip through the pages of a book like this and find one of the sketching styles or one of the many products listed in books like this to keep things moving.
Here are just a few recently recommended to me. Thought I'd share and bring some pulse to this subreddit.
Cosmic Motors: Spaceships, Cars and Pilots of Another Galaxy
Lift Off: Air Vehicle Sketches & Renderings from the Drawthrough Collection
Syd Mead's Sentury II
DRIVE: vehicle sketches and renderings by Scott Robertson
Sketching (5th printing): Drawing Techniques for Product Designers
The Art of District 9
Experienced designer here. The best way to learn to sketch by yourself is to watch tutorials and to practice a lot. The Gnomon Workshiop is an amazing ressource for basic sketching in industrial design. I strongly suggest that you check out the "Basic Perspective Form Drawing" DVD. A lot of student try to make awesome photoshop rendering before they know the basics of perspective, dont fall in this trap.
There is also ID Sketching which is a cool website with tutorials
A good book on the subject
Drawing Techniques for Product Designers
As for design theory, one of the most common reads in university is the The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
The Design of Everyday Things
I remember a teacher saying that to be an expert at something you have to put 10 000 hours in it, so you better sharpen those pencils ! Tell me if you need more information.
You need to draw through. That means drawing every side of the cube, even if you don't see that corner.
None of your lines are straight. Practice one movement of your arm that results in a perfectly straight line. it's hard to make yourself learn this but practice is important. once you have that one perfectly straight stroke just rotate your paper around and do the same motion every time.
You also need to work on your perspective.
these are some great books to start with: 1-2-3.
Start by doing lots of sketches in black and white with a pencil or bic biro. Don't be afraid to make mistakes, overlap sketches, make notes and show your construction lines. Sketch in 2D and 3D, sketch details and forms.
Sketch faster. Sketching is exploration and your hand should be working fast to keep up with your brain! Here's a good example of black and white sketches with a little colour, note how they're not clean and perfect and you can see how they've been built
Only use colour where necessary - you're sketching not rendering. Use it to make the best ideas stand out, or to add detail such as material selection and exploration of colour choices.
Save up and get some decent marker pens. Magic markers or Letraset pro markers are good. 3 shades of neutral grey should do to start say N1, N3, N5. These are buildable and can be layered to create darker shades and the shades (C2, C4) in between. Use these to add simple shading and a group shadow, shading should be used to help communicate form. Sharpies are ok for outlining or adding a line of colour, not for colouring in areas.
Get an A3 marker or layout pad, the paper is semi transparent so you can trace over other sketches or use an underlay to speed up the sketching process. They also don't soak up the ink or bleed so your images will look crisper and marker pens will last longer. I say A3, because generally this is the paper size ID's use, so get used to filling that page! The brand doesn't matter but I usually use Goldline layout pads as the paper is whiter.
Practice, practice, practice. Copy other peoples sketches, a good book I always advocate when people are looking for sketching feedback is one called Sketching for Designers by Koos Eissen. If you can get a copy then try to recreate the sketches and emulate some of the techniques, your own style will come after. Otherwise look on Behance and try to recreate any ID sketches you like for practice.
Good luck :)
Source: I'm an ID. Edit: Spelling/grammar
This is a personal favourite of mine on sketching, and the two you mentioned on thinking about design by Don Norman are also great.
/u/LeadGenDairy:
> GO TO SCHOOL
This is good advice. Before I did some career counseling to figure out what to do with my life, I didn't know industrial design was even a thing. (I figured you needed a degree in engineering to do that sort of thing, but learned that it's common for a company to employ engineers who figure out how to make the thing work as well as designers to determine how it should work and, moreover, how it should look.) Once I realized that ID was definitely what I wanted to do, I looked up programs in my city, and found a good one. It was at an art school. I decided to apply.
"Apply with a short statement and a portfolio of 10-15 images of your recent work."
Welp.
I had never even taken an art class. I had no recent work. I had no "work" at all. So I made some. It took a few months, and I had some late nights, but by the application deadline, I had 12 pieces, including a few pretty solid drawings and some screenprints that started out in Illustrator. Got in, and got my degree.
If you're looking to learn drawing skills good enough to get into school, get a good book - I recommend Sketching: drawing techniques for product designers and Rapid Viz - and practice the techniques therein. You can also find a lot of tutorials online for programs like Illustrator, Photoshop, SketchUp, and Rhino if you're interested in building those skills too (and can get your hands on the software).
If your background is in CS, you probably have a good bit of experience coming up with weird creative workarounds for tough problems. This kind of problem-solving comes in very handy in ID. I wish you the best of luck!
This book is great at developing your basic sketching skills. Mastering the basics is the secret to becoming a master designer. like /u/Methylene_Chloride said, some of you perspective is off, which throws some of the pictures.
There are plenty of books and resources out there to help! So sketch until your fingers bleed. Learn some drawing techniques like 3 point perspective drawing.
http://www.portfoliohandbook.com/
This website will help with structuring and presenting your work in a professional manner. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. You could be the greatest car designer ever, but if your portfolio is shit you wont get the job. Learn how to present your work, employers won't read any text you put with sketches or work, you need to present it in a logical order so it tells a story they can follow as they flick through your portfolio.
You could also take a year out, try and get an internship somewhere to see how the actual industry works. I wish i did this before i went to uni, as it would have given me more drive to succeed. If you do, do this you will definitely see a difference in how people work ina professional setting and at uni. Uni will be a lot more laid back than a job.
Good luck
3rd year product design student here, so I'm offering what knowledge I have.
>What sketching exercises are helpful?
I'd say getting into the habit of drawing on a daily basis is probably the best. There is no way you won't get better. Watch some youtube videos or get a good textbook (I use this one)
>What things should I start noticing around me every day to build a designer's mentality?
Literally everything.
>What habits should I work on cementing into my daily routine?
Scott Robertson - How to draw is starting from the scratch. How to render is about putting color on.
http://www.thedesignsketchbook.com/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sketching-Drawing-Techniques-Product-Designers/dp/9063691718/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462128277&sr=8-1&keywords=sketching+product+designer
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Drawing-Product-Designers-Portfolio-Skills/dp/1856697436/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1462128277&sr=8-2&keywords=sketching+product+designer
Anyhow. You also need to learn somethings about aesthetics, form and function.
There are a lot of people recommending certain books and videos, but personally those suggestions never worked out for me and arent the best start since they concentrate on being too flashy or don't teach the basics. The 2 books you want to buy are
Sketching: The Basics - Koos Eissen, Roselien Steur
Sketching: Drawing Techniques for Product Designers
Both are hard cover at a price of $29 and are by far the best sketching tutorial and reference books I ever purchased.
And as a starting point to sketching, buy a batch of fine point ball point pens (I recommend the Bic Ultra Round Stic Grip Black Ink Fine purchased at Staples), a ream of paper, and just start drawing straight lines across the pages.
Draw with the pen to build confidence, draw straight lines because it's the basis of product design sketching.
Then take those 2 books I recommend, and start copying page by page while practicing straight lines every day (2-3 pages a day)
While at Uni we were recommended to buy this book:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sketching-Drawing-Techniques-Product-Designers/dp/9063691718
Its pretty good to read through, from basics up to more advanced techniques.
Also, you could take an object (whatever product you like) and study its form (you can clearly do this already if you can draw well from observation).
Set yourself a mini project to sketch out variations of the same product, they could be small changes to the details or slight changes to the shape. This way you are using a skill you already have and using it to develop one you want to work on.
Unfortunately there is no substitute for practice so give yourself realistic targets and stick to these, e.g. 10 concepts a day.
You don't have to show these to anyone and don't be precious, just get your ideas down on paper and you will begin to see improvements :)