Sketching for Product Design and AEC

Product designs usually end up as complex CAD drawings before going into production. But they often start as sketches. Sketching allows product designers to generate ideas quickly, without committing resources to any single idea. That's why this course teaches sketching rather than drawing—focusing on speed, creativity, and iteration rather than on one precise depiction of a single concept.

Kevin Henry, a product designer and educator responsible for the influential book Drawing for Product Designers, teaches beginning and intermediate students how to visualize ideas for small-scale and mass production with just a pen and paper. He combines explanation, illustration, animation, and hands-on demonstrations of concepts such as sketching basic shapes as well as more complex forms, creating planes, the mechanics and methods of two-point perspective, projection principles, and creating the illusion of shade and casting shadows. The goal is to get students generating ideas, and sketching them as accurately as possible without inhibiting the creative process. At the end of the course, Kevin explains not just how designers sketch products, but also why. When you're done, check out the rest of our product design courses, which expand on advanced methods of sketching and visualization, including prototyping and computer-aided design (CAD).

Learning objectives
Exploring the relationship between analog sketching and computer modeling
Creating the illusion of form
Using different systems of drawing
Sketching 2D shapes and 3D forms
Creating orthographic projections
Sketching in one-point and two-point perspective
Creating curved surfaces
Projecting shadows and other visual touches
Sketching example product design concepts