I’ve been teaching young product designers at Sheffield Hallam Uni for a few years now, working on developing design skills such as illustration, design presentation, photo editing, design sketching and model making to name a few areas.

The stuff I really like to get stuck into is the model making project ‘replicate’ which I’ll be doing after the Christmas period. Replicate asks first year Product Design students to make a visually accurate model to replicate an existing product using tools and methods which ‘these days’ are considered to be quite primitive for such a tech. leading industry. This can come as a crash back to earth for some of the students; sometimes they expect that a 2011 design course will skip the laborious methods and jump straight into the high tech CAD and shiny rapid prototype equipment of this generation. Hah, they couldn’t be more wrong…

Shower control replica models

The products we get them to replicate consist of anything from a small pocket wind up torch to a set of vice grips. The challenge is to use the tools in the incredibly well equipped workshop including bobbin sanders, routers, laser cutters and lathes to make an accurate representation of the product. Here are some of last year’s attempts…

This is such an important skill for your design toolbox as it gets you thinking in more detail about how things go together, how they’re made and why they’re made like that. These low tech processes make you stop, observe and become a detail geek.