Representation of Industrial Products in the Early Stages of Design: Drawing and Artistic Expression in Industrial Design

Abstract

Hand drawing is a basic tool for industrial designers, as it allows them to represent and communicate concepts in an agile way during the initial design phase. Although we can find subjects related to drawing in the first years of all university degrees in industrial design, the way to implement the necessary activities is not always the most appropriate, and it may happen that, despite having practiced sketching, at the end of the course the students do not have the necessary skills to communicate their ideas effectively or adequately represent the reality that surrounds them. This paper proposes twelve groups of activities designed to help industrial design students acquire skills related to hand drawing. The activities were implemented during the second course of the Degree in Industrial Design and Product Development Engineering at Universitat Jaume I, improving those implemented during the last course. The paper analyzes and discusses the positive results of the innovations introduced, which improved the mean grade of the course by 4.48% with respect to the grade obtained the previous year.