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Product Design

New Books

Drawing for Product Designers

This is both a practical and theoretical guide to the visualization techniques used by contemporary product designers, including freehand sketching, digital rendering, information graphics, and presentation skills. Hundreds of hand-drawn sketches and computer models have been specially created to demonstrate critical geometry and show how to develop sketches into finished illustrations. Practical tutorials give guidance in creating simple and complex forms, as well as rendering and providing context using scenarios and storyboards. Insightful case studies of leading designers illustrate the full range of different visualization options available.

Design: A very short introduction

John Heskett wants to transform the way we think about design by showing how integral it is to our daily lives, from the spoon we use to eat our breakfast cereal, and the car we drive to work in, to the medical equipment used to save lives. Design combines 'need' and 'desire' in the form of apractical object that can also reflect the user's identity and aspirations through its form and decoration.This concise guide to contemporary design goes beyond style and taste to look at how different cultures and individuals personalize objects. Heskett also reveals how simple objects, such as a toothpick, can have their design modified to suit the specific cultural behaviour in different countries.There are also fascinating insights into how major companies such as Nokia, Ford, and Sony approach design. Finally, the author gives us an exciting vision of what design can offer us in the future, showing in particular how it can humanize new technology.

The Beauty of Everyday Things

The Japanese philosopher and aesthete's definitive, hugely influential exposition of his philosophy of folkcrafts, setting out the hallmarks of Japanese design as we know it today - anonymity, quality, simplicity and honesty - and, of course, wabi-sabi, the beauty of imperfection Our lives are filled with objects. Everyday things used in everyday settings, they are our constant companions. As such, writes Soetsu Yanagi, they should be made with care and built to last, treated with respect and even affection. They should be natural and simple, sturdy and safe - an aesthetic fulfilment of our practical needs. They should, in short, be things of beauty. Long revered as the authority on craftsmanship and Japanese aesthetics, Yanagi devoted his life and writing to defend the value of craft. In an age of feeble and ugly machine-made things, this now-classic book is a call for each of us to deepen our relationship with the objects that surround us. Inspired by the work of the simple artisans Yanagi encountered on his lifelong travels through Japan and Korea, it is a heartfelt defence of modest, honest, handcrafted objects, from traditional teacups to jars to paper. Objects that exemplify the beauty of everyday things. "Radical and inspiring ... Yanagi's vision puts the connection between heart and hand before the transient and commercial" - Edmund de Waal "Soetsu Yanagi's unerring eye has influenced generations of makers. His notion of Zen and the art of design continues to inspire all those involved in shaping our everyday world" - Jasper Morrison

Speculative Everything: Design, fiction, and social dreaming

How to use design as a tool to create not only things but ideas, to speculate about possible futures.Today designers often focus on making technology easy to use, sexy, and consumable. In Speculative Everything, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby propose a kind of design that is used as a tool to create not only things but ideas. For them, design is a means of speculating about how things could be-to imagine possible futures. This is not the usual sort of predicting or forecasting, spotting trends and extrapolating; these kinds of predictions have been proven wrong, again and again. Instead, Dunne and Raby pose "what if" questions that are intended to open debate and discussion about the kind of future people want (and do not want). Speculative Everything offers a tour through an emerging cultural landscape of design ideas, ideals, and approaches. Dunne and Raby cite examples from their own design and teaching and from other projects from fine art, design, architecture, cinema, and photography. They also draw on futurology, political theory, the philosophy of technology, and literary fiction. They show us, for example, ideas for a solar kitchen restaurant; a flypaper robotic clock; a menstruation machine; a cloud-seeding truck; a phantom-limb sensation recorder; and devices for food foraging that use the tools of synthetic biology. Dunne and Raby contend that if we speculate more-about everything-reality will become more malleable. The ideas freed by speculative design increase the odds of achieving desirable futures.

Design Is Storytelling

A playbook for creative thinking, created for contemporary students and practitioners working across the fields of graphic design, product design, service design and user experience. Design is Storytelling is a guide to thinking and making created for contemporary students and practitioners working across the fields of graphic design, product design, service design, and user experience. By grounding narrative concepts in fresh, concrete examples and demonstrations, this compelling book provides designers with tools and insights for shaping behaviour and engaging users. Compact, relevant and richly illustrated, the book is written with a sense of humour and a respect for the reader's time and intelligence. Design is Storytelling unpacks the elements of narrative into a fun and useful toolkit, bringing together principles from literary criticism, narratology, cognitive science, semiotics, phenomenology and critical theory to show how visual communication mobilizes instinctive biological processes as well as social norms and conventions. The book uses 250 illustrations to actively engage readers in the process of looking and understanding. This lively book shows how designers can use the principles of storytelling and visual thinking to create beautiful, surprising and effective outcomes. Although the book is full of practical advice for designers, it will also appeal to people more broadly involved in branding, marketing, business and communication.

Super Normal: Sensations of the ordinary

The designers Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa have compiled 204 everyday objects in search of "super normal design": alongside examples of anonymous design like the Swiss Rex vegetable peeler or a simple plastic bag, there are design classics like Marcel Breuer's tubular steel side table, Dieter Ram's 606 shelving system, or Joe Colombo's Optic alarm clock of 1970. With products by Newson, Grcic, the Azumis, and the Bouroullec brothers, it also represents the generation to which Morrison and Fukasawa belong. The phenomenon of the super normal is located, as it were, beyond space and time; the past and present of product design both point to a future that has long since begun. The super normal is already lying exposed before us; it exists in the here and now; it is real and available: we need only open our eyes; Fukasawa and Morrison make it visible for us. 264 illustrations

Thinking: Objects: Contemporary Approaches to Product Design

Thinking: Objects: Contemporary Approaches to Product Design discusses influences on modern product design such as globalization, technology, the media and the need for a sustainable future, and demonstrates how readers can incorporate these influences into their own work. The book also discusses how readers can learn to read the signals an object sends, interpret meaning and discover historical context.Thinking: Objects provides an essential reference tool that will enable you to find your own style and succeed in the industry.

The Age of Low Tech: Towards a technologically sustainable civilization

People often believe that we can overcome the profound environmental and climate crises we face by smart systems, green innovations and more recycling. However, the quest for complex technological solutions, which rely on increasingly exotic and scarce materials, makes this unlikely.A best-seller in France, this English language edition introduces readers to an alternative perspective on how we should be marshalling our resources to preserve the planet and secure our future. Bihouix skilfully goes against the grain to argue that 'high' technology will not solve global problems and envisages a different approach to build a more resilient and sustainable society.

AAD, Algorithms-aided design : parametric strategies using Grasshopper

Algorithmic design is not simply the use of computer to design architecture and objects. Algorithms allow designers to overcome the limitations of traditional CAD software and 3D modelers, reaching a level of complexity and control which is beyond the human manual ability. Algorithms-Aided Design presents design methods based on the use of Grasshopperά a visual algorithm editor tightly integrated with Rhinocerosά the 3D modeling software by McNeel & Associates allowing users to explore accurate freeform shapes. The book provides computational techniques to develop and control complex geometries, covering parametric modeling, digital fabrication techniques, form-finding strategies, environmental analysis and structural optimization. It also features case studies and contributions by researchers and designers from world's most influential universities and leading architecture firms.

Woven and Worn: Wearable crafts, the search for well-being and sustainability in the modern world

Woven & Worn offers a fascinating insight into the workings of innovative global craftspeople who create environmentally-conscious clothing in a bid to protect the planet from the ruinous effects of a toxic industry. Within this book, talented artisan makers such as weavers, dressmakers, dyers, and jewellers give consumers the power to alter the tired fabric of the fashion industry and embrace the energetic campaign for a sustainable circular economy. Marking a potential revival of themake-do-and-mend era, Woven & Worn showcases the variety of materials and processes used to craft wearables with both longevity and soul. Demonstrating the diversity within sustainable garment making, this title highlights ground-breaking renewable materials created from by-products of the food industry, such as banana and fish skins, as well as ingenious techniques, and "zero waste" production methods, including utilising offcut materials and upcycling vintage fabrics. Discover tactile vegan leather rucksacks, painterly plant-dyed textiles, and intricate reclaimed plastic adornment alongside traditional repair techniques such as darning and sashiko. Delve into the unseen creative workspaces of skilled crafters; admire their unique tools and processes, and absorb their intriguing stories. Sustainability is tightly woven into their creative practices as they tackle the wasteful industry, one beautifully-crafted garment at a time.

Gather and Nourish: Artisan food : the search for well-being and sustainability in the modern world

Food is not just a way to fill our stomachs but is representative of the culture and time we live in. It tells a story and can act as a catalyst for social engagement. As the impact of mass food production on the environment becomes ever more apparent, movements advocating organic farming and local, small-scale food production are finally receiving an ear. The appeal of exotic, imported foods is fast becoming less popular than a preference for being able to meet the producer and quicklyfind out the processes and supply chain involved. Gather & Nourish presents a chance for you to meet some of those makers and discover more about how they cultivated their business and why they believe ethically sourced and produced food is important. A smorgasbord of artisans - including a beekeeper, a distiller, a dairy farmer, and a winemaker - enthusiastically share their appetite for food and creativity while offering an insightful and tasty slice of the world of urban agriculture, small-scale farming, and sustainable living.