Review: Process

Most books about industrial design fall into two camps. On one side are the books that are pure eye candy: coffee-table like tomes with beautifully-lit product shots. On the other side are books like Making It: Manufacturing Techniques for Product Design which, while valuable, are also technical and not for the casual reader. In the middle is the book Process: 50 Product Designs from Concept to Manufacture.

For the most part, this is an enjoyable book and really lifts the veil of some product designs and caused me to appreciate all over again the industrial design of the One Laptop Per Child. Unfortunately, there are far too few consumer electronics and appliances in the book. At least half of the book is furniture design. And furniture design, while certainly interesting, usually doesn’t have the challenges that device design does. This is especially true for limited edition furniture. Carving a chair out of a giant tree is cool and all, but has very little to do with the work I do. I would have liked to seen more examples like the OLPC, which (I’m guessing) has more relevance and interest to most designers than furniture design, whose constraints are very different. (Hate mail in 3, 2, 1…)

But if you like furniture design and are interested in the design process, there’s some really neat stuff in here. I love seeing how the sketches eventually make their way into a product, along with the challenges in between. And I did learn a lot about furniture design…

This was written by Dan Saffer. Posted on Saturday, October 25, 2008, at 1:19 pm. Filed under Book Reviews. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback.