Design-bites - Illustrated product design booklets by Andrew Taylor
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Background Info
Introduction
Anyone who has ever taken apart a domestic appliance has witnessed the work of the Product Designer. (The author habitually dismantled products as a child, and occasionally reassembled them for his long-suffering parents). Many practicing designers can ‘read’ the way a product has been designed to the point that they can deduce the skill level of the designer and even the financial pressures under which the product was designed and made. Yet product design is seen by many as a black art – a view based on the perception that it does not fit neatly into classical subject streams, seems to rely heavily on experience, and is often shrouded in commercial secrecy. In fact, product design requires a spectrum of skills from aesthetic sensitivity to engineering logic, the product designer often being described as ‘Jack of all trades, Master of One’.
There are two traditional approaches to product design: Product Design Engineering, which takes a functional approach, and Industrial Design, which places greater emphasis on the human dimension. At the detailed level, however, these distinctions blur and designers of both traditions face common challenges, notably:
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Capturing product requirements and translating them into viable proposals.
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Meeting the physical and psychological needs of users.
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Addressing product safety, maintainability, reliability, survivability, and environmental issues.
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Selecting suitable combinations of material, forming process, and joining technique.
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Sourcing proprietary components and executing design details.
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Selecting appropriate finishes and applied graphics.
Product design is an information-hungry activity, yet much of the necessary supporting information can be hard to find - a common cause of frustration for designers and students. Experienced designers collect and jealously guard fragments of information, often in the form of distressed photocopies or hand-written notes. Design-bites places these most frequently sought pieces of information – design hints, cautionary notes, example solutions and design data – in a structured framework of ten booklets, to illustrate solutions to common design problems, and to provide a practical reference source for practicing designers and students alike. Materials and manufacturing processes are covered from the product designer's perspective. Data is extracted from world-class sources (with permission) and has been filtered for relevance.
The guides are down-to-earth, occupying the middle ground between arts and engineering approaches, and will be of particular value to Industrial Designers, Product Design Engineers, and those involved in product design drafting. To cater for product designers from both arts and engineering backgrounds, the material includes key points from both traditions, and is presented in an undemanding style. Occasional mathematical calculations have been included where absolutely necessary. The latest international standards are identified in each subject area, along with numerous web links to further information, relevant organizations, materials sources and major suppliers.
The guides were seven years in preparation and now sell to students and professionals worldwide.
Andrew Taylor, April 2007
About the Author
Andrew Taylor has a BSc degree in Engineering and an MA with distinction in Industrial Design (Leicester, 1979, assessors Bill Moggridge and Roger Jones). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Taylor has straddled the line between industrial design and design engineering throughout his career, starting life as a QA manager in lighting products, before graduating and working in a number of product design roles including that of Industrial Designer in the aerospace industry, before joining a Product Design Consultancy in the UK Midlands, serving household name brands in telecommunications, IT, consumer electrical, DIY, transport and food vending sectors.
He joined British Telecom shortly after privatization, managing multi-disciplinary teams of in-house specialists, external consultants and manufacturing partners, while mentoring post-graduate students from British design colleges. Taylor steered a succession of product design and development projects including domestic, public, and mobile phones, and was responsible for the design of a number of futuristic products including mobile videophones and multimedia kiosks. He left BT in 2000, since which time he has been preparing material for the ‘design-bites’ guides.
To contact the author, please use the 'Contact Us' link on the website.
Acknowledgments
The author gratefully acknowledges the following contributions:
Contributors:
Permission:
Rob Mitchell, BMW Motorrad
Formats
Where grades of material are tabulated, international equivalents are based on similarity of chemical composition and should be regarded as ‘near relatives’ rather than exact equivalents.
The metric system of measurement is given as the preferred system throughout the booklets. For readers familiar with imperial units, or where legacy hardware is likely to be encountered, appropriate sections of the booklets provide data in both metric and imperial units. Conversion tables are provided in the Miscellaneous Design Data booklet.
Worldwide Web addresses (URLs) are valid at the time of writing, but may change from time to time.
References to international standards are correct at the time of writing, but such standards are subject to periodic review and change. This is particularly the case in European countries, many of which are currently engaged in a major harmonization program, changing from single-country standards to pan-European or ISO standards where appropriate.
Each booklet consists of a zip file containing cover artwork and text in PDF file format. The PDF files can be read using Adobe Acrobat (or Adobe Reader). The zip files vary in size from 750KB to 2000KB.
Download Winzip from here: www.winzip.com/prod_down.htm
Download Adobe Reader from here: www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
Home page: www.design-bites.com