Vision to Visual Part 1

The largest part of selling design is through the use of visually communicated ideas. It doesn’t matter if it is a system, a product, a service or whatever–you will need to visually communicate your ideas to the bajillion stake-holders that will sign off on your mega-awesome concept.

Thanks to an ocean of countless books on the topic, you can pretty much learn how to conceive just about anything. I have 10 pieces of media that I refer to almost every time that I take on a project for either inspiration or application. Most of these are specific to industrial design, but all are relevant to me when designing:

• Cosmic Motors by Daniel Simon
• Mechanika by Doug Chiang
• Design Sketching by Erik Olofsson
• Alberto Giacometti: Sculptures, Paintings, Drawings by Angela Schneider
• Process, Materials, and Measurements by Daniel Cuffaro
• The Measure of Man and Woman by Henry Dreyfuss Associates
• Materials and Design by Mike Ashby and Kara Johnson
• Rapid Viz by Kurt Hanks
• Visual Explanations by Edward Tufte
• Techniques of Scott Robertson 6: Industrial Design Rendering – Bicycle by Gnomon Workshop

Additionally I visit dozens of websites like Core77, DesignBoom, and CtrlPaint to get motivated, have dialogs with other designers and learn specific techniques.

In this series, I’ll be using my entry from the DesignBoom and Columbo “Hands on Doorhandles” as my example design challenge.

Here is where I start. I break down the design problem to its most simple question or hurdle. In this case, the question was pretty straight forward-“Design the next versatile interior door lever handle to suit contemporary forms of surrounding architecture, for both residential and public projects.”

In the next part of this series, I’ll go through my thumb-nailing and thought process to capture the initial idea.

-G