Design & Digital Fabrication 1A: Make Your Own Flat Pack Character
Are you interested in industrial design, making your own unique creations, or using machines to create high-quality products? Learn how to create products that you design and fabricate with professional tools!
In Product Design 1, students learn to design shapes in 2D in order to translate their designs into 3-dimensional objects. Through this process, students will learn to use vector-editing software such as Adobe Illustrator to create products that will then be cut using a plotter. Students will learn about design, geometry, production, CNC machines, and unique approaches to product design and creation while making their own fun characters.
The learning outcomes associated with this class have been WASC-accredited by UCSD Extension College Exploration.
We will begin with exercises that help ‘train our brains’ to think of 3-dimensional forms in terms of surfaces or flattened patterns through a hands-on exploration of the Platonic solids, which students will build. We will then move into presentations that offer insight into the works of other professional designers and fabricators, their design process and the use of products in our daily lives. From here, we will create paper ‘sketches’ of our proposed designs, test the ideas, and learn how to translate these designs into the vector editing program. Through guided exercises, we the students will develop unique graphics that can then be turned into tool paths and cut on the plotter to create the final flat-pack characters.
Creating vector artwork with Adobe Illustrator
Vector Art and Product Design students at work
Make Your Own Flat Pack Character
Make Your Own Flat Pack Character
While this class is fast-paced, it is designed to be accessible and enjoyable for newcomers to these topics, and we will review necessary fundamentals of graphic design, patterning, and packaging.
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The goal of this course is to create and design a comprehensive project consisting of 3-dimensional folded forms, that consider form-making within the context of graphic-design packaging, branding, and production. In the process, students will also learn about the communication of ideas through the presentation of form. The course will take students through observation, documentation, investigation, and research of given topics.
Each student will design and produce a custom project that will include vector artwork of their design that will be cut by a Roland CAMM plotter and folded into 3-dimensional objects in order to create 3D characters in the likeness of their choice. Contextual information on 2D to 3D design, packaging, product design and production will be explored through discussions and in a hands-on setting.
The class is geared to high school students, and we will review necessary fundamentals of packaging, patterning, and 3d-modeling.
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This course is taught using classroom and lab instruction employing lecture/demonstration, in-class exercises, student participation, and class activities leading to a final project. Classes will include introductory concept presentations, followed by in-class exercises. The first couple of sessions will be more fundamental (2d/3d process, tools, etc), but will subsequently expand to cover necessary knowledge for complex shape-making and branding. Throughout, there will also be handouts and brief presentations on relevant concepts, including packaging, geo-location, branding.
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