Drawing for Industrial and Product Design

In this lecture you will learn how to think differently about what it means to make a "mistake" when drawing. It also covers the 3 line weights used by product designers to create their drawings. Lastly, it gives a basic overview of the concepts and elements of how to draw in 2-point perspective. The exercises taught in this lecture are quite simple, but can only be mastered by practice. Once the concepts and implementation are mastered, a new world of drawing your product designs will open up for you.

One of the fundamental skills of a product designer is the ability to draw in 2 point perspective without the need of the structural elements of a traditional perspective drawing on the page. This is a skill you must master to create convincing, believable product design drawings. In this lecture, the concept of how to achieve this is shown.

The greatest weakness for many aspiring product designers is in how well they draw their circles in perspective. Mastering the art of drawing a circle in a single gesture is paramount. Mastering the art of drawing a circle in perspective in a single gesture, otherwise called an ellipse, is mandatory. A clear method for practicing these skills and learning the technique for drawing perfect ellipses is shown in this lecture. Once mastered, your product design drawings will take a giant leap forward.

Drawings that look animated and describe our designs where something is happening are much more interesting and intriguing to the viewer. In this lecture, you're going to use all the skills you have established so far to unfold a box in space on the page. The 3 line weights, wire framing, perspective by approximation and using your knowledge of ellipses all come into play in the demonstration in this lecture. It all adds up to the new skill of using multiple vanishing points to create your design drawings. Not every drawing you do will utilize this understanding and skill, but you'll have it in your arsenal for when you need it.

Design drawings in just line work are fine but the fun really begins when we start to add color to our sketches. Because most of the things we design will be 3-dimensional in nature, it's important to understand how light will affect the form and how we go about representing that in our drawings. In this lecture, a simple 3 cube demonstration is shown, with each cube having a different local color. Each cube is lit with ambient light. This causes each visible side of the cube to have a different hue of the local color. Understanding this concept is very important as we move forward. 

Now that we can draw our designs with ambient lighting, it's time to try direct lighting. With the addition of direct lighting comes the introduction of cast shadows. Cast shadows, whether on the ground or within the object itself can add additional drama and realism to our design drawings. Understanding how and why to make your cast shadows look believable is paramount. In addition, the rendering of cut lines, which are a feature in many products, is shown in this lecture.

This last lecture breaks down one of the most difficult surfaces for aspiring designers to represent: high gloss. The components of a high gloss surface and how to render them are shown. Then all the lessons of the course come together for a final presentation level rendering of a flashlight where high gloss, matte rubber and chrome surfaces are shown.