1st Year Studio Project | Industrial Design

Decoding Form with Foams

The purpose of foundation studio is to break down the elements or considerations involved in the innovation process, into relatively isolated topic for students to get start with. here's the topic of form transition.

Resources

Rethinking the hairdryer

core77 Prototypes Award

WHY

There is two reasons why this project is designed. the first is to study current product by taking a close good look. the second is to prepare students for their design thinking and making process in future studios. Blue foam is a easier way to conduct 'thinking through making'. Rough models could be made to test out hand drawing ideas, to get better idea of proportions, transitions, ergonomics. If designers are getting lazy by going from sketch straight to CAD. unfortunately, the essence part of thinking through making was just missed.

This project below explains how to utilize rough model to facilitate design thinking.

HOW

2 Steps

Decoding Form 1.0

Choose a current product. Use sketch and blue form to construct a simplified 3D representation
of the “building block” volumes and forms. see the reference photo on the header. It helped to understand

how a product is created from simply geometry
how black box (mechanical parts) inside the form worked.
how form transition is relevant to functions.

Decoding Form 2.0

Despite the current form transition on the simple geometry components, try to think of other possibilities of transition on those defined building blocks.

use sketch storming and blue foam to exhaust the possibilities.
be perfectionism
document them every step of the away

Here comes some visual inspiration to get you started