Form & Senses

Thanks to the assignment Basic Formgiving Skills I made a lot of growth in this competence. I made a number of models in a process of sketching, making models of foam, creating a final model of mdf and giving it a nice finish with (spray) putty to seal the mdf and make it smooth, and spray primer and -paint to give it a shiny color. I learnt about the importance of good material to get a high-quality result.

“The finish is well done. The connection between the different parts is seamless and,

apart from some dust particles, the paintjob is nice and smooth.“ – M. Bruns, assignor

Another important set of skills consisted of lots of small things: putting a sheet of paper in a contrasting color for a nice presentation and adding lines to sketches to give them a hint of context for example.

I also got more insight in the theoretical part of this competence. I learned is to evaluate a design, by giving feedback on the points clarity definition and finish. I learned about form families and the affordance of a design. This improved my capability to analyze the good and bad things about my designs. To illustrate this: I know now that in terms of affordance, the hidden rotary switch in my final design for the assignment was not a handy idea

In future projects I will certainly use the things I learned for this competence, because I obtained an open attitude towards creating physical objects and experimenting with materials and I have a solid set of skills and knowledge to build further on.