The Autodidact Designer
A trend I’ve noticed through the years is that I tend to be a better learner when I can go at my own pace. To some, this might be blinding. It may depend on the subject or the imposed deadline of when the subject must be learned, but overall, I hate being in a class that is more often too slow for my attention span and would rather be given a series of materials and exercises to complete and periodically consult a mentor.
Some years ago, I found the succint word to describe this phenomenon: Autodidactism
The majority of my IT related training was via the reading of related books and practicing technology at home and on the job. I had attended some classes but was really bored and felt I could have covered the material much better on my own and with a mentor. Which is precisely what I plan on doing with Industrial Design.
I’ve started collecting and reading books related to Industrial Design
- The Design of Everyday, Emotional, Future Things books by Donald Norman
- ecoDesign, Fuad-Luke
- Conceptual Drawing, Koncelik & Reeder
- Sketching: Drawing Techniques for Product Designers
- Industrial Design Reader
I’ll also be working on other skills that are very useful in ID:
- Working with Powertools
- Sewing
- Foam sculpting
Using different software packages to render my design ideas and exercises is also pretty high on my list of skills to develop
- Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign)
- CAD (Rhino3D, AutoCAD, Solidworks, Sketchup)
This is all just the preliminary assembly of my autodidact curriculum so expect it to morph as I learn more and discover my strengths and weaknesses.
I’m keeping myself open to mentoring and look forward to breaking into a field that has caught my attention for some time.
-Tomas