EDUCATIONAL STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPING FORM LANGUAGE IN PRODUCT DESIGN

DS 93: Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education (E&PDE 2018), Dyson School of Engineering, Imperial College, London. 6th - 7th September 2018

Year: 2018
Editor: Erik Bohemia, Ahmed Kovacevic, Lyndon Buck, Peter Childs, Stephen Green, Ashley Hall, Aran Dasan
Author: Castro, André; Vicente, José
Series: E&PDE
Institution: 1: Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Arquitetura, CIAUD, R. Sá Nogueira, 1349-055 Lisboa, Portugal; 2: UNIDCOM/IADE – Unidade de Investigação em Design e Comunicação, Av. D. Carlos I, 4, 1200-649 Lisboa, Portugal; 3: Universidade da Beira Interior, Faculdade de Artes e Letras, LABCOM, R. Marquês de Ávila e Bolama, 6201-001 Covilhã, Portugal
Section: Design and Engineering Education Practices
Page(s): 74-79
ISBN: 978-1-912254-02-6

Abstract

This paper presents educational strategies for improving student’s skills regarding form language development in product design. This was made by developing and testing educational methodologies in exercises with product design students in three Portuguese universities. Form language and visual recognition of products has become a central competitive factor within various product categories and design presents itself as the main tool to answer this demand. Companies must develop products with designs that carry distinctive references to the ‘character’ of the brand identity. To prepare students for design practice in which they are able to develop distinctive products for brands, the authors developed an exercise in which students have to design a product within the framework of a brand form language, but one from an unrelated product universe. The exercise was developed and has been tested in 1st and 2nd cycle design degrees with more than one hundred students in three Portuguese universities, from 2012 to 2018. Results show that the exercise enables students to deconstruct the form language of a brand and build a library of design elements, which then enables them to incorporate them in a newly designed product. The paper will present results of the exercises, examples of the students work and discuss the main findings of using this methodology.

Keywords: Product Design, Education, Form Language, Brand Identity

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