NICK SINCLAIR
CONTENTS
BACKGROUND FOUNDATIONAL WORK Basic Shapes Complex Form Sketching Composition Interface Sketching Color Study Storyboarding Mid-Fidelity Modeling
PROJECTS Ergonomics Proportion + Form
BACKGROUND
Everything about design is deliberate. That’s what I have told myself throughout my beginning years as an industrial design student. I believe that as long as every design decision has a reason behind it, then a good design will come eventually. My passion for becoming a good designer did not come until I was actually learning about design. I have spent the past few years of my life researching and learning what it takes to be a great designer only to find out that what I had learned up until this point did not necessarily matter. I had known that before I started school that design would not be easy; it never is, frankly. However, I have found that a good way to make it easier for me is to find what I truly care about when it comes to design. There are so many facets, it’s nearly impossible to know which one I want to pursue. With that said, I have made it a goal to try everything at least once. I find that the best way to learn is by doing. What I truly love about design is the fact that every decision has a reason pressed up against it. A good design is solid, with every possible outcome and every possible solution thought out beforehand and integrated into the design itself. No stone is left unturned, yet the act of designing is so liberating.
Foundational Work
BASIC SHAPES
As a part of my general coursework, I undertook an in-depth study of the geometry of basic shapes and learned how to use them produce more complex forms. Although it was very tempting to delve right into drawing complicated products, I needed to have a firm grasp of how each of the four primitives (cube, cylinder, cone, and sphere) moves in space. Reflecting back on the many weeks where all I ever drew were cubes and cylinders, I feel as though I am a much more confident and proficient sketcher because I know that I can build upon the foundation I worked so hard on early in my studies.
These types of exercises were especially helpful when moving on to more complex sketching. I now look at many products as decompositions that are comprised of the basic primitives, which makes it significantly easier to render those products accurately. While I understood these principles quite well, I often found it difficult to render each shape accurately for a period of time. In order to help fix this problem, I did my best to examine the way light falls on similar products at different angles so I could do my best to render my own sketches. Once I learned about raytracing, lights and shadows became much more understandable. Before, I would just draw shadows on products by eye without actually knowing how they should placed relative to the product. This was an extremely inefficient way of working since I would generally spend as much time thinking about where the shadows should go as I did drawing the actual product.
As I became much faster at identifying basic shapes in various products, I found that designing my own products was a much simpler process. I eventually began to think about how products are mapped in space with an infinite amount of constructed cubes. Since cylinders, cones, and spheres can all be derived from the structure of a cube, this made a great amount of sense to me. Building a structure comprised of cubes and slicing them into sections and drawing shapes within them felt like a puzzle that I solved by evaluating which shape went where in a given composition.
To enhance my understnading of complex form sketching, I researched speedforms and their strong character lines. One product that I found that is related to speedforms was the bicycle seat. I found this form interesting to draw since each character line was well defined and it helped me practice mirroring tehniques.
COMPLEX FORM SKETCHING
As time passed, I moved from drawing basic shapes to using those basic shapes to create more complex forms. It’s an amazing feeling to be able to draw all kinds of crazy shapes that my mind can create. However, this was defnitely not an easy skill to learn and came with its challenges much like the others. In order to draw coplex shapes, it is not only important to know how to break down the form into basic shapes, but also to be able to mirror lines and curves on a plane in perspective. This part made quite a lot of sense to me since I feel as though I’m keen to spatial relations. Despite this, I would always run into difficulty mirroring curves correctly. Eventually, I decided to abandon the more technical methods for mirroring, and decided to work more with my eye. By making logical and rational decisions as to where pieces should go, my drawings became much more accurate and convincing.
To me, the most fun part of this study was drawing out all of the many thumbnails that I created before finding the type of form that I wanted to redner. I always find entertaining thinking of all of the possible ideas before narrowing the final product down to one thing. While I found it difficult to render the product accurately, I definitely learned a lot by doing it multiple times. My final rendering is certainly far from correct, but I am much more comfortable with sketching complex forms than I ever have been in the past.
COMPOSITION
One of my favorite tricks that designers implement in their sketching is how they use composition to convince the observer that an idea is worth buying into. I always looked at industrial design sketches online and wondered how these designers would place their sketches so perfectly next to each other in a harmonious composition. The secret behind it all, my instructor told me, is that they don’t; they simply create underlays and piece each sketch together carefully with knowledge of good composition. I really enjoyed learning more about this topic since it is soemthing that can be mastered independent of sketching skill. Oftentimes, two concept sketches can be placed next to each other, and despite one having better technical qualities, the composition of the other is better organized. It becomes pretty clear at this point which would look better to an observer. What I often do when it comes to my own compositions is I take the most informative view of a product, and place that in the right two-thirds of a page. Then, depending on the type of product, I take other important features and make vignettes to point the smaller, less visible details. I’ve learned over time that some of the most successful compositions are simple and stripped down to only the most significant features of a product.
INTERFACE SKETCHING
Learning about this part of sketching was intriguing since it challenged me to think about how users interact with products on a different level. To start this study, I looked at a lot of common yet overlooked products that I have used. For example, the joystick (below) has been around for many years, but its interface is intersting in that it involves directional movement and coordination that has recently been simplified with buttons that serve the same functions.
On the other hand, guitar pedals (above) are intersting in that they require interaction with the foot, which is only really common in automobiles. Since I have a strong interest in interaction design and user interaction/experience, it was quite enlightening viewing these types of products critically. Looking at physical interfaces as opposed to the digital ones many people more commonly use nowadays helped me to see how human interaction with products can be enhanced to better accomodate the user.
On a more conceptual note, I find human interaction with products to be fascinating since it defines the whole reason people design things. No one wants to use a product that’s unintuitive and boring. We as human beings long for an experience that is memorable, which can be acheived easily through design.
Ocean Blue C=100 M=20 Y=0 K=0
COLOR STUDY
Colors and I never seem to agree; it has always been hard for me to distinguish certain hues from one another. The worst colors for to distinguish, and the most common types of color-blindness found in people, are red and green and blue and purple. For one assignment, each person in the class had to come up with a color using the CMYK sliders in Adobe. Then, we had to find three images that were close to that color and edit them to match it. The first part was easy, I just had to pick my favorite color. However, the second part came with some difficulties, mainly because the color I chose from the beginning was a blue very similar to some purples. The original three images I chose were of a wave, an iceberg, and a butterfly. I thought the whole project looked great. However, the day before it was due, my friend asked me why I put a purple butterfly in my project when my color was blue. I did not even realize that what I had placed as one of images was a completely different color. I frantically asked many others, and they all agreed. I wasn’t crazy, I was just color-blind. Eventually, I fixed the problem, but I ended learning that I need to work on distinguishing certain hues better. While color seems like such an overlooked detail in design, it can often define the way some people view the quality, integrity, and intent of a product, company, or individual.
STORYBOARDING
When it comes to user interaction, it is always assumed that any given user has no idea about how to use a product. With that in mind, storyboarding is an effective tool that I find to be beneficial personally when designing. For this assignment, we had to pick a product and describe how to use it. The only catch was that we could only use images; words, numbers, and other descriptors were prohibited. Due to these parameters, I found the assignment to be quite difficult. Reflecting upon my own work (which I must say, is not the best by any standard), I have figured out what can be done to improve upon my visual communication using storyboarding and sequencing. For example, it’s ridiculous to start the sequence off with plugging the device into the wall seeing as that the user may not have any idea as to what the device is yet. Additionally, the “start”, “pause”, and “stop” functions at the end of the sequence are placed so close together, implying that there is not time gap between the actions. It is as if you play the record, pasuse it, then stop it all within seconds of each other despite the fact that time is meant to elapse between each action. I find it important to better my skills in storyboarding seeing as that I would like to pursue a career in interaction design. Without this skill set, it would be virtually impossible to ever communicate with any client without causing some type of confusion.
MID-FIDELITY MODELING After learning the ins-and-puts of complex form sketching, I moved straight to the next most obvious step: modeling. While I had completed many low-fidelity models, many of them just some quick-and-dirties out of pink foam, paper, and foam core, I had not really worked with mid-fidelity materials before. Yellow foam is what I used to model this nonfunctional object due to its light weight and easy learning curve. It cuts and sands well and looks amazing when painted. This was likely one of my most enjoyable projects because I simply was allowed the chance to experiment with material that I had never used before. Not only did I learn how to work with the material, I also figured out how each model can be approached with an order of operations, much like how an algebra problem is done. By having a clear plan going into the modeling process (which I did not exactly have when making this model), it becomes significantly easier to make a well done model quickly and efficiently.
Projects
Ergonomids
ERGONOMICS
The intent of this project was to examine the way current products on the market that are advertised to be “ergonomic” can be further developed to be more intuitive for a user. As someone who is left-handed, I focused on the idea that products should be accessible to people regardless of their dexterity. Oftentimes, products are only made to work the way they’re supposed to for right-handed people and are less suitable for those that are left-handed. I found that plenty of products ignored the idea of usability regardless of dexterity, but I ultimately decided to focus on a shower squeegee because I figured I might as well have fun while I have some freedom in terms of the products I can design. Not only that, but many of these types of handles are inteded to cater to people of both dexterities, but they are simply uninteresting and uninspired as far as their design goes.
As this was my very first design project ever, I was a bit confused about what direction I hould take my research. I also did not know how to draw the way designers do, so I had to rely upon the type of sketching I would normally do before learning how to sketch . When going through the ideation process, I simply thought about the way fingers naturally fall around a cylindrical surface. I observed how different people held tools like brooms and hammers and based most of my designs off of those findings (top right page). Eventually, I procured a few simple yet effective designs that were very organic in form. I then took those general designs and sketched multiple configurations with minor details (middle right). After this, I went into a refined development phase. I began to create low-fidelity clay models (bottom right page) to understand the way way my designs would work in three-dimensional space. During this phase, I made some adjustments to the overall design to make it more apprpriate for the user group I was targeting.
Eventually, it was time for me to go toward the finalization process. After having created the clay models, I asked multiple people of different hand sizes to hold the models and asked them to tell me how they felt in their hand. Once they began to tell me my design was comfortable, I stuck with it. I now moved onto the final model, which I made out of pink foam (bottom right, left page). Though it is not exactly a high-fidelity modeling material, it was appropriate as I was simply trying to focus on the overall form of the handle rather than the function. The part of this project that I found most fun was the modeling part. I had never really worked with materials such as pink foam and modeling clay before this project, so it was fun figuring those out.
I think this project was a great way to build a strong foundational knowledge of project pacing. Additionally, it helped me to become more aware of deliverable dates as they are not always felxible. Also, I learned a good deal about how the design process actually works. I had always know that the basic cycle was based on ideation, development, testing, and repeating; however, I had no experience working this way until this project. I definitely learned many ways to manage time efficiently on a project by alloting the apprpriate amount of time for each part. While I could spent weeks comiong up with various ideation sketches, that would not necessarily work for certain projects where I need to turn out a final model relatively quickly.
PROPORTION + FORM
Our task for this project was to apply concepts relevant to proportional analysis and form interaction to a pair of products common in everyday life. I chose to focus on salt and pepper shakers since many shakers found in restaurants and houses never seem to interact. In addition, many of the designs of common shakers sets are outdated and uninteresting to use. I moved forward with the idea that products such as salt and pepper shakers not only can share an interaction, but also that they can enhance the experience someone has while making the visual design language of a restaurant tighter. To further this investigation, I also experimented with different textures that I felt were apprpriate for the concepts with which I was working. I explored how texture not only provides the user with tactile experiences, but also how it can give them visual queues when using a product.
I approached this project with more confidence than the previous given that I had already completed something similar just before. With that said, I went straight into ideation with many ideas in mind. After sketching for a couple day, I eventually became really keen to the concept of stackability (top left page). Products that can stack for storage purposes have always been interesting to me, so I decided to apply the idea to my first set of orthographics. However, after working with this concept for a bit, I grew tired of it due to its limiting nature relative to this project. I then decided to take a step back and focus on the overall proportions. Looking at the orthographics on the left, I designed the shakers to fit together in a very simple way, that way there could be more focus on the form itself. For both, I made the base one inch tall and the part on top two inches tall for a total of three inches. The square base is two inches, to complement the previous dimensions.
Once I had the orthographics done, I moved onto making numerous pink foam models (bottom left page) for the different concepts I had drawn. After examining them all in terms of feel, fit, and proportion, I decided on the final design for the project. I then moved onto a focus on the application of texture in my design. I wanted to focus on more naturally occurring textures as opposed to constructed ones. I examined materials such as the grain in wood, the patterns in rusted metal, and reflections on water waves. I then extracted these textures and applied them onto the pink foam model, as can be seen on the bottom left page.
I found it challenging to create the final model out of yellow foam because after making rough cuts in the foam, it was difficult to put it on a bandsaw. In addition, it was almost impossible to make the base exactly two inches on each edge, but I feel as though I did a good job making the models as true to the original design as possible. I think this project was significantly more successful than the previous because I had a much better direction when beginning. Despite abandoning a concept I had worked on for a long period of time at the beginning of the project, I was happier with the outcome overall. I learned that it is always better to throw out a bad idea at the beginning of a project than it is to carry it out for a long time knowing it’s bad.