Get to the model as quickly as you can

[sanjy009]

My studio lecturer was giving me assignment feedback yesterday, and he said something that really struck me:

“Get to the model as quickly as you can”

It dawned on me that ID is mostly about physical things, so having a physical thing in your hand is invaluable, to then refine, sketch some more, take those sketches back to the model, work ideas back and forth between sketches and models. Holding a product in your hand can tell you different things than a sketch can.

I can now articulate why the ‘design as pretty renders’ can get me angry, and why I like the actual prototypes so much when someone has made that next step from pretty render to working concept.

[IDiot]

I would add in that “the model” in this case, the one you get to as quickly as possible, needs to be a low investment model (time, energy, cost, etc)
so that it is more of a 3 dimensional sketch for evaluation of an idea rather than a specific direction for refinement, anytime you invest a lot of
time, energy, or money in one place it becomes much harder to stray and try something completely different.

In our studio design decisions and evaluations are done with some resolution of physical 3D model and at this point I’d hate to do it any other way. The conversations are generally much less speculative, and much more valuable.

[_YO]

exactly IDiot, the model needs to be a similar fidelity to the sketches you are doing. Rough, quick, exploratory. Learn from it and keep moving…like this:

Project Modai: Process thread [FIN.]

whoa tons of stuff here…very ambitious project regarding your foams, grab a thin black pen and sketch your part lines onto the foam, or glue black paper onto the front, or sketch details on to show texture and material break up, or do a quick mask and paint them… mobile CE is all about materials and “in-hand” feel right now; and not a lot of companies are getting it right (mostly because it’s really hard). I’d think deeper into materials and construction and let that help inform your form fact…

[sanjy009]

Thanks for pointing me to tarngerine’s fantastic post.

Sketches (on paper) and sketch models- quick ideas, communication, evaluation, refinement.

I can fall into the trap of seeing a ‘finished’ piece, and thinking it came out of the top of someones head. Tarngerine is a good example of all the work that goes into coming up with a design solution.

I saw an exhibition of Picasso’s Guernica in the Reina Sofia in Madrid a few years ago. One room was the painting, which was great in itself, but in the next room was the hundreds of drawings and sketches and plans he needed to make it.