- Hey guys, it's Morna, and in this video
I'm gonna be talking about product design form development.
And what I'd like to do is give you one tip
for improving your form-giving skills, so, stick around.
Hey let's not look at the kitchen mess
'cause I haven't clean it up.
(lively music)
Okay, so, the tip that that I'm gonna be sharing with you
is going to help you more so in CAD rather than sketching
because in CAD you can be a lot more specific.
It's also gonna help you to create forms
that feel like more than just a lump of CAD, okay.
It's gonna help you to create a form
that really feels like it's unified in its visual language.
So let's look at these three objects for a minute.
While they may seem different they actually
share something in common.
And each of these forms feels like it's speaking
its own visual language.
Now how each form has achieved this kind of unified
harmonious feel is the tip that I'm gonna be giving you.
And here's the tip: When you are creating a form,
think about how you can repeat elements in that form.
And what I mean by elements are the elements of design.
So things like line, shape, form, and the reason
why you wanna repeat elements is to create harmony.
So this is actually a principal of design
which is repetition, and the principle goes
that if you want something to feel harmonious, repeat it.
However, if you repeat it too many times
it will become monotonous or boring.
So this principal actually reminds me of a saying
which goes, same, same, but different, okay.
And I think that's a good way to approach repetition
in design where you want to try and repeat things
but you don't want to do it so many times
that it becomes completely predictable.
And this is actually the product that made me
think of this video because I was staring at it
and looking at all the repeated fillets.
And so let's just start there, at how many repeated fillets
there are in this device.
So the first obvious one is around the display.
So here, here, and here, and here because they've used
the buttons as kind of part of this trying
to unify this whole thing and so they unify it
but creating the same fillet here as it is up here
so it feels like all one thing.
If you look from above, it's this fillet here, this fillet,
and then on the back here and the back here.
So all of the four corners kind of going this way.
And it's actually repeated again, not the exact same
but it's still quite a generous, two generous fillets
on either side, here and here, which kind of plays
to this language which is quiet a large fillet,
and larger fillet here.
And then one of the things that they've done
to kind of unify the coffee pot with the machine
is they've added a very generous rad here
in this direction and at the bottom here
to make it feel like it belongs with this
kind of generously-radiused form.
And I bet you that if we looked at the coffee pot
from the top view and put the coffee pot rad
on top of the machine rad, I bet you they are
probably the same and so that's again another way
that they've used this idea of repetition to create harmony.
Okay, so while we are looking at sort of examples
of nice-looking forms, good-looking forms,
I think we should also just for contrast,
look at a form that is perhaps exceptionally ugly. (laughs)
And see if we can find out why,
why is this form just so ugly, so hideous.
So this is a remote for a projector screen
which I'm sure is just made in China.
So I think part of the reason why
this is such a strange-looking form,
there's a number of reasons.
One is the kind of like, haphazard, use of different kind
of visual elements or different shapes and forms.
If you look at the overall form,
there's this kind of like half circle element here.
There is an elliptical element here.
There is like kind of a curve here, there's a curve here,
but then there's two parallel straight lines here.
And then there's two angled lines moving outwards here.
The fillets here and here are actually different sizes
which also again contributes to the kind of random,
quality of this form, this kind of overall collection
of things, then they've used a pill shape here
for this button, even these arrow buttons,
they have a kind of curve to them, they're not
a straight line, whereas there's straight lines here.
So it's almost like they've used every single type
of kind of anything that you could use, they've used it.
It's very arbitrary and does not feel cohesive.
It's like they've gone down the list
of all the possible shapes you could use in a form
and just checked them all off,
and they've covered all grounds with this.
So let's look at some of the repeated elements in this form.
The first kind of major one is, there's a repetition
of a circle shape, right here.
And this circle is actually a pivot point,
because this is a folding chair.
And it's actually kind of a nice, that the form
replicates a motion that is kind of circular, right.
So that's a nice detail I think there.
But this circle is actually repeated.
There's very slight, soft, concave circular shape
in the base of this form.
And it's actually repeated up here too.
I don't know if you can see, in, the way that the light,
there we go, see that, so there's half-circle here,
or close to it, there's another circular here
and then there's this circular shape here.
So that's one instance of repeated shapes.
Then of course there is kind of overall
this is made up of rectangular forms.
The back rest, overall is kind of rectangular
if you look at it from frontal view.
These legs are kind of like extruded rectangles
so there's like a repetition of that.
If you look at the fillets, that's another place
where there's a lot of repetition.
But I think it's a good thing to start noticing
in other products because this repetition,
especially of fillets, I would imagine
the filets that are used here, on all here, here,
and here are the same or very close to being there same
so that these, all the legs kind of feel
like they're the same thing.
I would imagine the dimensions, this being the same as this,
being the same as this, so you start
to create repetitions in the form.
Now what I think is nice about this form,
coming back to our principle of design,
which is I think of, like same, same but different.
And there's a lot of rectangular forms in this form,
in this overall thing, and yet there are,
these kind of surprise elements of the circles,
one circle, two circle, and then this other
kind of half-circle element which is
a little bit different, right?
And also too you could talk about how sharp,
I mean sharp is all relative, but smaller filets
along the edges verses these two very soft,
like this would be huge fillets in the computer.
And they're very, very soft forms here and here.
And then contrasting that with the sharper edge, here.
So it's like same, same but different.
So let's look at the form
and repeated elements in this earbud.
So see this pill-shape opening,
if we just kind of even turn it around
you can see already there's another pill shape.
Turn it over, there's another pill shape.
And there again is another pill shape.
So all of the openings on the earbud are the same shape.
Now, whether or not that the largest opening
is exactly a pill shape, and by pill shape I always think
of pill shapes as having straight, parallel lines.
So the other thing where this pill shape is repeated
is actually in this kind of, this stem part here,
right along here, and if we look at,
you can kind of see it here, it appears
to be another pill shape and I'm sure
if we took a cross section somewhere there we would see
that it is in fact a pill shape that's been extruded.
But coming back to our principle of design
how they have circumvented that in this form
is in this kind of circular, not everything in the form
is pill shape, this part of the shape, is very much
almost circular and then everything else, there's some blend
from the pill to a circle, here we go,
let me just put it down for a minute.
So they blended a pill shape, pill shape extruded
into a kind of circular, cylindrical form,
that's been blended through here
and so that kind of lends a difference,
makes it different than if everything was a pill.
Okay guys well that's the video, I hope you enjoyed it.
If you did, I always appreciate when you leave comments
or like the video, and we'll see you guys next time.