The phrase “industrial design” is now heard by many people. But everyone’s idea of ​​what it is is completely different. Industrial Design, the same type of creative activity as ordinary design, but the objects of industrial design are most often industrially manufactured household products.

Manufacturing companies today have to resort to various tricks in order to withstand competition and adequately present their product on the market. consumer market. Interesting and high-quality design of an industrial product - effective way stand out among competitors and interest consumers. The purpose of industrial design is to define the exterior, structural and functional features objects to which industrial design techniques are aimed. Industrial design items include dishes and other kitchen utensils, household and industrial appliances, furniture, equipment, and even high-tech and knowledge-intensive products. Industrial design options include today's popular automotive and transportation designs.

Thus, industrial design is not only the art of combining design with technology, but also a marketing tool.

A professional who creates a design for an industrial product must be at the same time an artist, a designer, and a process engineer. After all, industrial design requires using your creative imagination so that the technological meaning of the final product is not violated.

The artistic design process itself consists of 8 stages:

Formation of the main idea

Concept development

Working with sketches

Layout

3D modeling

Visualization

Engineering design

Creation of a prototype

The professional’s task is to guide the industrial design object through the preliminary seven stages so that the eighth production stage proceeds without delay and produces the final result in accordance with the main idea.

Copyright for the design concept and basic ideas of an industrial product belongs to the designer, except as otherwise specified in the contract. In accordance with Article 27 of the “Law of the Russian Federation on Copyright and Related Rights No. 5351-I”: copyright is valid during life and 70 years after his death; copyright, the right to name and protection of reputation are preserved indefinitely. In addition, the designer has the right to display original works in a portfolio in order to attract the attention of new customers.

The emergence of design

The emergence of design as a special type of design and artistic activity dates back to the end of the 19th century, linking its appearance with the industrial revolution - the widespread development of mass machine production and the resulting division of labor. In the conditions of industrial production and the filling of the market with goods, the attention of producers increasingly turned to the attractiveness and diversity of appearance manufactured products, as well as the consumer quality of the product and ease of use. As a result, the need arose for a special specialist who is capable of not only creating an attractive appearance that meets fashion trends and consumer needs, the shape of the product, but also has a good understanding of design and machine production technology. Only in the context of solving complex engineering and technical problems, artistic issues It is possible, as practice has shown, to create competitive products.

The entire history of industrial design is closely connected with the history of the development of technology. Inventions such as the steam boiler, internal combustion engine, electric motor, and aeronautics created not only new areas in mechanical engineering, but also became historical stages in the development of design.

The 19th century was a century of stunning progress. One technical miracle replaced another; the century that began with stagecoaches and the quill pen ended with the automobile and the typewriter. The telegraph was followed by the telephone, then the “wireless telegraph” - radio. People came up with a way to make accurate images from nature, without an artist, record and preserve the human voice for centuries, made the first attempts to fly on a device heavier than air, and invented moving photography - cinema.

The work of a craftsman, the process of creating the shape of an object, was directly related to its production. With the advent of the age of industrialization, prototypes of products began to be created in the form of drawings, models and prototypes, which were then produced in numerous editions using machines by other people. Thus, at the turn of the century in the process industrial production a division of labor occurred, design emerged as a separate form of design and artistic activity, and a new profession began to form - designer.

Design as a profession has existed for about a hundred years. It often begins with the famous movement “For the Connection of Arts and Crafts” in England late XIX century, whose leader was the famous artist and theorist in the field of object creativity William Morris. It was then that the basic principles of the theory and creative principles of design were formulated, which influenced the schools and trends of later years. Sometimes the date of the emergence of the design profession is associated with the beginning of the 20th century, when artists took leading positions in a number of industrial sectors and had the opportunity to shape the corporate style of enterprises, influencing the policy of shaping the products produced by companies. As examples, the corporate styles of the German electrical company AEG and the American automobile company Ford Motor. There is also an opinion that we can talk about design as a profession only when schools with methods of teaching design have emerged and the first certified design specialists have appeared. This is the 20s of our century, when the first design schools were opened - Bauhaus - in Germany and VKHUTEMAS - in Soviet Russia. There is also a point of view according to which the emergence of design is attributed to the period of the global crisis of 1929; it is described primarily as an American phenomenon.

Indeed, until the crisis of 1929, European design remained a purely local phenomenon, without having a noticeable impact on industrial production. And only with the onset of the crisis, American design became a real commercial force, gradually acquiring a mass character in the full sense of the word, and a professional design industry emerged. The new style direction of Functionalism, which was formed at the beginning of the century in the architecture of America and a number of European countries, became a kind of theoretical basis for the development of the principles of form-building in design. Its leaders, who saw the beauty of artistic form in its functional expediency, stood at the origins of machine-based design. Among them are such famous names as Louis Sullivan, one of the founders of the Chicago School of Architecture, famous for its buildings of the “machine age”; Frank Lloyd Wright - patriarch of American architecture and design; Peter Behrens is a German architect and artist, whose name is associated with an entire era in the development of design and, in particular, the emergence of a “corporate style”; Mies van der Rohe is one of the leaders of the famous German industrial union Werkbund and the founders of rationalist architecture and design in Germany; Walter Gropius - founder of Bauhaus, a world-famous school modern architecture and design; Gerit Thomas Rietveld is a Dutch architect whose conceptual “red and blue chair” has become a sculptural symbol of modern design.

Among the pioneers of design were architects and modernist artists who came to industry. Representatives of Art Nouveau were looking for a way out of the impasse of boring imitation of the styles of the past, they rejected eclecticism, sharply criticized decoration and ornamentation, searched in the field of rational, geometric forms, paying special attention to the beauty of the source material, identifying it. In essence, these views were a kind of step towards the philosophy of industrial formation. Among them are such famous names as Henri Van de Velde, whose name is associated with the emergence of the Art Nouveau style, Michael Thonet and his world-famous “Viennese chair”; Charles Mackintosh - Scottish architect, leader of the Art Nouveau style, whose design is considered one of the pinnacles of European Art Nouveau and his turn-of-the-century furniture is reproduced to this day; Raymond Loewy is one of the founders of professional design in the United States and is often called the father of industrial design; Camillo Olivetti and Erwin and Arthur Brown, whose names are associated with entire styles in the history of design; Giovanni Ponti - Italian architect - founder of the most famous design magazine "Domus"; Alvar Aalto - the founder of modern Finnish architecture and design; as well as our compatriots - K. Malevich, A. Rodchenko, V. Tatlin, L. Lisitsky and others, who became the origins of Soviet design.

In our country, until recently, the following terms were used to denote the concept of “design”: “artistic design” - the design process, “industrial art”, “technical aesthetics” - the field of activity. And the specialist designer was called “artist-designer”, the leading design institute was the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Technical Aesthetics, and the most popular in the 60-80s. domestic design magazine - “Technical Aesthetics”.

Every photographer, professional or amateur, in his work often encounters such a type of creativity as design, in particular the art of layout, style and decoration. Therefore, we decided to create a new section “Design” on the site, where we will publish articles about design as a form of creativity, about graphic design, design tasks, typography, fonts, visual communications, graphic solutions, and the work of famous graphic and industrial designers. The first article of the new section is devoted to industrial or industrial design.

Industrial or industrial design refers to the area of ​​design art that deals with the artistic design of elements of the objective content of the human environment. Industrial designers try to define the appearance of everyday objects around us and at the same time try to make them as functional as possible. Its success in the market largely depends on the ease of use, functionality and appearance of a product, which is why industrial design is extremely in demand today. In this article we will try to understand how industrial design appeared, what are its main features and differences from other types of design?

We can say that industrial design as an independent direction has emerged from architecture. It is not without reason that many of the people who stood at the origins of the development of industrial design were outstanding architects of their time. Actually, it is to architecture and industrial design that we largely owe the formation of the object-spatial environment surrounding the nose in the form in which it exists today. However, if architecture solves rather spatial problems, then industrial design is focused on the formation of an objective environment.

The main task of industrial design is to determine the exterior, functional and structural features of equipment, machinery, products and products that surround us in the world. Everyday life. In this regard distinctive feature industrial design can be called its orientation towards mass industrial production.

In addition, industrial design is always aimed at market needs. Indeed, to increase sales volumes in conditions of fierce competition, manufacturers have to resort to various methods, the most effective of which is the interesting and vibrant design of their products. This allows you to interest and attract consumers. However, such a focus on the market is inherent in other types of design to varying degrees.

Therefore, perhaps, the main difference between industrial design and other areas of design art is its connection with the everyday and industrial needs of humans. Industrial design deals with various kinds of artificially created equipment, technology and products that occupy a certain intermediate position between man and the natural structures surrounding him. An industrial designer is engaged in the artistic design of objects of mass industrial production, which, in particular, can include the following categories of products:

• household appliances (dishes and other kitchenware, radio and electrical equipment);
• cars and other vehicles;
• technological equipment for industrial production (machines and other equipment);
• engineering devices and structures;
• visual communications;
• interior elements (furniture).

The art of industrial design actually has deep historical roots, although this direction only took final shape in the 20th century. Most researchers agree that the starting point for the emergence and development of industrial design are those times when things began to be made on machines, rather than by hand. As a result, the products began to lose their individual features. Therefore, some people began to seriously fear that the appearance of such objects in everyday life would negatively affect a person’s inner harmony.

This is where the need for industrial design began to emerge. The example usually cited is the English industrialist Josiah Wedgwood, who lived back in XVIII century. While engaged in the production of printed fabrics in industrial scale, perhaps for the first time in history, he paid the utmost attention to the design and appearance of his products.

However, until the beginning of the 20th century, industrially manufactured objects in most cases were simply decorated decorative elements, which served as a kind of reminder of handmade artisan. By the way, artisans, despite the relatively small volumes of production, over many generations of their work have accumulated very valuable experience for industrial design. Indeed, in the course of their work, they identified the relationship between the purpose of an object and its shape, material, manufacturing technology, functional and aesthetic properties.

With the advent of such products as communications, steam transport or industrial machines in human life, at first the same contours and lines familiar to the eye of the average man of that time were applied to them, which were based on experience traditional culture crafts. One of the first to declare the inseparability of the beauty of an object and its function was the artist, theorist of fine arts and architecture J. Ruskin. He was a staunch opponent of machine production, seeing the way to combine aesthetics and functionality of manufactured objects only in the revival folk traditions crafts.

At the beginning of the 20th century, new artistic styles emerged; in search of new areas of creativity, many artists and architects turned to industrial products. In turn, entrepreneurs and owners manufacturing enterprises began to realize for the first time the importance of design in the process of creating products. In 1907, the Deutsche Werkbund association appeared in Germany, which declared its goal to create “ideal samples” for industrial production based on traditional craft culture. The principles of “aesthetic functionalism” laid down by the theorists of this creative association formed the basis of industrial design. True, the participants of the Deutsche Werkbund produced samples of products only in limited quantities to present them to the public at various exhibitions.

One of the prominent representatives of the field of industrial design at the beginning of the 20th century was the architect P. Behrens, who developed his own interesting forms of electric lamps, electric cookware and fans - that is, those types of products that at that time did not yet have any specific visual understanding. Using the principles of “aesthetic functionalism,” Behrens made these products recognizable and unique in their own way.

In 1919, an entire school of industrial design called Bauhaus was created in Weimar, founded by the German designer and architect Walter Gropius. The motto of this school was “New unity of art and technology.” The Bauhaus developed the principles of artistic design as an integrated approach to the design of things. The foundations of theoretical design in industrial design were laid, mainly that function and design determine form. Accordingly, the more functional the item, the more beautiful it should be.

This principle guided the members of this creative association, who believed that an industrial designer is an artist, craftsman and technologist rolled into one. Since the designer needed to create products for mass production, he therefore needed to know everything from start to finish. manufacturing process. By the way, product samples developed in the depths of the Bauhaus school in the 20s of the last century are still successfully sold and are very popular. The success of these products is due to the optimal combination of high manufacturability, aesthetic and ergonomic qualities.

Following the example of the school in Weimar, the Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops (VKHUTEMAS) were created in our country in 1920. Their first dean was designer, graphic artist, photographer A. Rodchenko, one of the founders of constructivism. Within the walls of these artistic and technical workshops, decisions are beginning to be made practical problems, original design concepts are formed.

The further development of industrial design, oddly enough, was facilitated by the crisis of 1929-1930 that arose in American industry. Industrial design turned out to be one of the means of solving commercial problems of manufacturing enterprises, since it served as a tool for increasing product sales. During this period, industrial design began to focus strictly on fulfilling commercial objectives and market needs. In this regard, design has largely been reduced to the simple external design of an object. This period is associated with the names of such artists and designers as Raymond Loewy, Walter Dorwin Tiig and Henry Dreyfus.

Industrial design received a new round of development after World War II, when the ability to transform industrial products into aesthetic works of art became an indicator of the level of economic development. Industrial design in the second half of the last century quickly became an important tool in the competition among the world's leading manufacturers. Realizing the importance of this area, in 1969 a college of industrial design was even created in America.

The principles of industrial design, as a creative human activity aimed at improving the external properties of industrially produced products, have become widely used in countries Western Europe and Scandinavia. In Europe, the Ulm School played a special role in the development of industrial design, which turned into one of the main centers of development theoretical foundations modern industrial art. In the post-war years, separate, national schools of industrial design emerged in Europe - Italian, Scandinavian and others.

Nowadays, when designing industrial products, the designer deals with concepts such as fashion or the lifestyle of potential consumers of the product. Also when designing household items Product marketing issues come to the fore, as a result of which the design often takes on a pronounced commercial character. However, when creating the design of industrial objects (agricultural equipment, machine tools) they still dominate technical requirements: ergonomics, manufacturability, efficiency and environmental Safety. It is impossible to ignore these factors, since the production environment formed with the participation of these objects must be comfortable for humans, including visually. Thus, the specifics of modern industrial design are very closely related to the nature of the products being created.

Designers working in this area must have knowledge of both a graphic designer, a designer, and a process engineer. Only such cumulative knowledge allows us to embody creative ideas and create interesting, original products, without compromising their functionality. In the process of artistic design, the designer forms main idea, develops the concept, then works with sketches to present the product layout.

Next, modeling is carried out in three-dimensional space and visualization of the object using specialized software. Only after this the actual design and creation of a prototype product is carried out. An industrial designer organizes his work in such a way that the product sample he develops, having gone through all the above stages, meets his primary plan and at the same time can be introduced into production without any delays.

Today, industrial design is widely used in a variety of fields, from the woodworking industry and metallurgy to high technology. In general, the wide range of services provided by professional industrial designers can range from designing housewares to creating car concepts. Molds, housings and parts - an industrial designer has to work with all this. The main task for modern stage The development of industrial design is to create a memorable and at the same time ergonomic appearance of a product while maintaining its technological and functional qualities.

The main task of an industrial designer is to create industrial design and ensure product ergonomics. An industrial designer can work in a wide variety of industries: textile production, production of haberdashery and leather goods, production of furniture and wood products, chemical production, production metal products, machinery and equipment, production of cars, aircraft, ships, etc.

Basic functions of an industrial designer

1. Implementation of ergonomic requirements for products, creation of industrial design elements:

• Performing individual works on sketching, prototyping, physical modeling
• Sketching, prototyping, physical modeling, prototyping
• Computer modeling, visualization, presentation of product model
• Design of product elements taking into account ergonomic requirements
• Establishing compliance of the characteristics of the model, prototype of the product with ergonomic requirements

2. Performing individual works during scientific research:

• Performing simple and moderately complex work when conducting anthropometric and other studies related to product ergonomics
• Performing complex work when conducting anthropometric and other studies related to product ergonomics

3. Monitoring the implementation of ergonomic requirements for products:

• Monitoring the compliance of the working design of the product with the ergonomic requirements for the product
• Monitoring the implementation of ergonomic requirements during the design, manufacturing, testing and fine-tuning of prototypes of products and the preparation of technical documentation for serial (mass) production, introducing the necessary changes to it.

4. Determination and development of ergonomic requirements for products:

• Setting tasks when conducting patent information research, searching for information based on the results of scientific research
• Selection regulatory documents, containing the requirements for the products being developed, selection of the results of anthropometric and sociological studies containing the requirements for the products being developed
• Definition of indicators technical level designed products, conducting patent research
• Development of an organization (enterprise) strategy in the field of ergonomics; formulation of ergonomic requirements for a specific type of product based on regulatory framework, the results of studies of ergonomics (safety and comfort) of products, anthropometric studies and the results of sociological research
• Development of ergonomic requirements for products that affect the safety and comfort of use of the product.

5. Conducting research work on product ergonomics:

• Development of a methodology for conducting sociological research concerning ergonomic parameters of products
• Definition of a system of indicators for anthropometric studies
• Conducting research on product ergonomics - its safety and ease of use
• Analysis and synthesis of scientific research results, evaluation of the information received.

Industrial Design- branch of design, area of ​​artistic and technical activity. The purpose of industrial design is to: determine the formal qualities of industrial products, namely their functional and external qualities.

Typically, industrial design development includes the following stages:

• Idea generation
• Conceptual development
• Sketching
• 3D modeling
• Visualization
• Construction
• Prototyping

Industrial designers themselves can be classified as such professions as engineers, mechanics and artists. They do not create drawings, are not responsible for the performance of inventions, they optimize inventions, trying to portray it as more expensive and beautiful than it is. Designers study sketches of products that are already successful in the market and use them to create their own masterpiece.