Product Description

There is a dearth of books covering drawing and product design. Drawing for Designers fills this gap, offering a comprehensive guide to drawing for product/industrial designers and students. As well as industrial product design, the book encompasses automotive design and the design of other 3D artefacts such as jewellery and furniture. Covering both manual and computer drawing methods, the book follows the design process: from initial concept sketches; through presentation drawings and visualizations; general arrangement and detail drafting; to fully dimensioned production drawings; and beyond to technical illustrations and exploded/assembly diagrams used for publicity and instructing the end user in the product's assembly, operation and maintenance. Interspersed with the chapters there are Case Study spreads featuring famous designer products shown both as drawn concepts and as finished object.s There are also several âhow-to-do-itâ Step-by-Step sequences.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6910 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Review
"...pratical and inspiring..." --The Designer Magazine

About the Author
Alan Pipes is a freelance writer, illustrator, webmaster, and part-time publisher specializing in the applications of computers in graphic design, fine art, illustration and product design. He is the former editor of CadCam International and the author of Production for Graphic Designers.

Customer Reviews

Not sure what it's aim is...
As a fussy professional designer I am forever trying to improve all of my skills, and although a competent and descriptive sketcher, I thought buying this book might have some more indications as to areas I can do exercises in to improve my sketching even further; please note this is not the case, this is NOT a 'tutorials' book.

I'm a bit confused by this book, I'm not sure what it's aiming to do! It was a toss up between this book and 'Sketching: Drawing Techniques for Product Designers' (yes, I realise sketching is different to drawing). Too much text, not enough visuals which I wasn't really expecting. What was/is interesting is seeing the difference of drawing from the Italian designers (i.e. Perry King) and current American designers (Michael DiTullo). I feel the information sometimes goes way off course (i.e. describing what a computer is, what RAM is, what a hard drive is... is this really essential?) and I wonder how many pages would actually be in the book if they were to take out the seemingly useless information.

Basically, I think Pipes has missed his market, I think there is too much text which feels like 'filler', and not enough visuals to whet the appetite and make me enthusiastic and energetic about drawing/sketching.

Excellent introduction to contemporary design methods
This book works, not because it shows one how to master any particular technique in detail, but, because it shows how a vast array of contemporary design tools and techniques can be bought together to communicate design intent. Alan Pipes has sourced some astounding examples of modern technical illustration and has put together some very revealing case studies.

I do agree with the previous reviewer that some techniques are not covered in enough detail to develop mastery and that there are sections where it is a little hard to understand who exactly the author is thinking of when he wrote them. However the book's real value is showing how traditional skills as well as computer based methods an be used with equal value. How a sketch with a bic biro, a conventional orthographic drawing, a ray traced 3d solid model and a photoshop manipulated image all have value in the product design process. The only notable omission for me was any real investigation of Computer Aided Manufacturing, one might be left with the impression that the only value of a cad model was to produce hyper realistic illustrations.

This said Alan Pipes should be congratulated on this and excellent reference volume and at the amazon price suberb value for money.

Mixed up focus
Being a professional design teacher for new design students I think this book lacks structure and depth in the topics it treats. It might be a book about drawing in the computerized design process, but contains too much computer basics. It might have been a book about CAD in design but its to unstructured on this topic.
There are some inspirational pictures and examples of mixed techniques the may inspire, and the book is well made and presented therefore an extra star