Materials and manufacturing processes remains an essential component of industrial design education. But for many students and young designers, they are still unsure of their comfort with these complex issues and how they affect their designs.
The first phase
Young designers are often a source of fresh new forms, trends and ideas
The first phase was a period of blind naiveté. As a young designer anything was possible and the details of how my concept would make its way into reality was a secondary concern (if at all). Perhaps this is one of the primary reasons employing young designers can be so refreshing and energizing to a studio as they can be the source of fresh new forms, trends and ideas unfettered by any bias or understanding for the realities of materials, manufacturing or the laws of physics.
The second phase
I became terrified that everything I designed had some fatal flaw or would cost too much to produce
The second phase of this evolving relationship developed with my mounting awareness of all the rules of manufacturing — what you had to do versus could not do, what drove costs up and how to reduce those costs, materials selection guidelines, assembly techniques, and all the spectacular failures that can and do occur in manufacturing.