Product Designers: Engineers or Artists?

Since the begininng of my studying of this course, one things for sure, I get asked an awful lot of questions from people not familiar with Product Design. These questions range from: What is product design? What job will you get? What do ye even do in yere course? My answer to most of these questions is usually along the lines of "Its far to long to explain!".

The question posed to us in our contemporary design module last week (Is product design art or engineering?) really got me thinking, it is a question I have asked myself on many an occasion. In my opinion when I am finished this course I will be a qualified problem solver, a person qualified in designing and improving products that people want. In my opinion this course is smack bang in the middle of being an artist and an engineer. We have to design products which are eye catching, this is done through a process of sketching, rendering, model making etc. At the end of the day the product has to be appealing to the consumer. This is where product design swerves into the lane of art, before anything else we have to come up with many different ideas of how we want our product to look and feel, and even what colour it will be! In this sense Product Design has a lot to do with art.

However, once we are done with how the product will look and feel, we have to start looking at the practical side of things: will this idea realistically work if it were to be produced? The dimensions have to be chosen, will it be big or small to fit its purpose? We have to look at the practicalities when selecting materials also, theres no point in selecting a material that isnt able to withstand certain temperatures if we know its going to be used in extreme temperatures. It now becomes clear that without engineering the product simply would not work.

To create a product which is both aesthetically pleasing and also fit for purpose, both engineering and art have to be brought into consideration. There is simply no other way to look at it, one will not work without the other! When both of these skills are done well, an exceptionally well designed product is brought to the table, it has the looks to attract the consumer and once the consumer is interested in the product it is able to back up the looks by working very well.

All being said, product design is what you make of it, as a designer it is what motivates you and inspires you that creates the product. If you were to ask ten different people the very same question of what they believe product design to be, the answers would vary depending on the persons personalities. It is how the person thinks, when they look at a product whats the first thing that comes to mind: the look of the product or how it functions, their answer to that question will also be the answer to the question discussed in this blog.