Parel Design Blog

I can appreciate an interesting sketch. I believe that I evolved my personal technique as a mish mash from the designers I work with, the work I see online, ArtCenter techniques and from the techniques of Ryan Church and Scott Robertson. However I ferreted out all these sources not to become an individual looking sketch artist, but somene who can quickly pump out as many directions as possible.

The crux of a sketch is that it is merely a means to an end. I am not
really worried if my sketch looks like everybody elses. If the design
is generic however thats the problem. I am still working on that. It is
only recently that I have grown comfortable with my sketch technique
and its abitility to represent shapes. I still have a lot to go as far
as clearly representing mechanical concepts and manually drawing
exploded view during meetings.

The frustrating part of designing products, is partially my own lack
of knowledge of all the manufacturing processes possible in China (it
is a pity that you can have really cool processes available
domestically that the marketing team doesnt consider because of
location), working with skittish marketing teams, as well as
time-frame. I suscribe to many different publications to get me more
information about materials and processes, but time-frame of
development usually means that the development team is not particularly
interested in rocking the boat. My own fear is that I am slowly
becoming too much of a trouble-shooter not exploring ideas, but
evaluating those created by others. So any empirical comments regarding
generating genuinely new ideas are much appreciated.

Addendum: I have worked with many creative engineers and marketers in the past, and I try not to be the slow one in the chain, but sometimes I am the one thats not creative enough. I just dont want to give the impression that the designer is always the creative genius (thats more the exception than the rule really :) )