Does the imitation of the sketch style of good industrial designers influence students' drawing skills?

The importance and value of hand drawing and sketching activity in the early stages of the design process has already been extensively argued. Ideation sketches are used as a source of inspiration and the whole process of iterative sketching helps in structuring, developing and communicating the design process. The act of sketching and the number of sketches made during a design process have a positive effect on the quality of the design outcomes. But also the quality of sketches has its influence: an explorative design presented by a high quality sketch is more likely to be ranked as the most creative idea when compared to a sketch of the same idea drawn with lower quality [1]. And in an industrial design educational context, the better sketching students are more likely to score higher for design projects [2]. The statements above support largely the importance of sketch courses in an industrial design educational curriculum. This paper describes an experiment with 2nd Bachelor year students product development, where students, in the sketch phase of their design project, were encouraged to imitate the sketch style of good industrial designers. The main aim was to test if the regular practice of imitating the sketch style of professional designers may or may not have a positive effect on students' sketching skills over time. Based on the results of a survey conducted after the experiment, one can assume that this approach improved the sketch-confidence of students and, according to their subjective assessment, the quality of their sketches as well.

Jaar van publicatie:2017

Trefwoorden:P1 Proceeding

BOF-keylabel:ja

Authors from:Higher Education

Toegankelijkheid:Closed