Design instructionals

I’m old. not really old like 8 -track tapes, but an adult. I started pursuing industrial design education at the age of 33. Since this old dog is learning new tricks, I figured it’d be a good time to note useful resources I’ve found for students (young or old) who choose to follow the path of design. Below are some resources that I’ve found helpful, or wished I would have had earlier. This is just a starting point. Do you own explorations.

The Portfolio Handbook
Portfolios are the resume of designers. No portfolio, no job. At the sophmore level, you have to have one of these to continue. Start learning the process now, so your stuff is ready to drop in when it’s time. This guide was created by students at UCID, (University of Cincinnatti Industrial Design) a school with a very strong reputation in ID.

Getting a design job – 2008 edition
This is a brief guide from a design career consultant on getting a design job. It’s a little out of date, but still has good info.

Core77
Core is the only real online community of Industrial designers that I’ve encountered. They have a blog with lots of great articles, but more importantly a message board where you can talk with industry pros and the like. Another component of this site is coroflot, a portfolio hosting and job search site.

Ethnography Primer from AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts)
Ethnography is one of the best ways we can study the human element when designing. This is just as important, and sometimes much more important than the pretty pictures. This short document from AIGA breaks it down for you so you have an understanding of whats there. Follow this up with your own research in cultural anthropology, and behavioral sciences.

Footwear rendering tutorial from firstpullover.com
Footwear design is a passion for many ID students and practitioners. It’s also a project for a lot of sophmores. This tutorial is a great example of the rendering process. check out the rest of the site too, as it has a lot of great footwear info.

https://www.coursera.org/course/hci
Coursera is a site that hosts free online courses from a lot of learning institutions. This particular link is for a Human Computer Interaction course from Stanford university. Most assume HCI involves a lot of code, but in reality it’s more a design thing. This course is a great introduction to processes for HCI work, and you can relate it to regular product design too.

https://www.inventables.com/
inventables is billed as a hardware store for designers. that’t about right. it’s a great source for materials, especially colored acrylic as well as design machines like 3D printers, CNCs and the like.

http://design-seeds.com/
Design seeds consists of a bunch of color palates. It’s a great jumping off point for putting together layouts if you’re feeling uninspired.

https://kuler.adobe.com/
Kuler is a web app from adobe to suggest and allow you to create your own color palates. It also lets you import them into adobe apps easily.

http://www.core77.com/posts/43001/Reference-The-Ultimate-Wood-Joint-Visual-Reference-Guide
A pretty good list of types of wood joinery.

more to come..