No comments about Models and Constructs.

2 comments about Design Methods (Architecture).

1. Every designer should have a copy of this book.

   slightly dated now - but still the classic guide to design process.

   My copy keeps getting stolen - going to have to buy a new copy.




2. Design Methods: seeds of human futures By John Chris Jones 1970,1980,1992

   Architects, confronted in the 1950s and 1960s with design efforts involving many designers and many stakeholders, were forced to study their methods to make them more open to scrutiny and input at all stages. By the time "Design Methods" was published in 1970, architects, engineers, and industrial designers had begun to raise their perspective to include a much larger picture, ranging from the designer's internal processes all the way to planetary conditions. As a society, we were re-designing design. Many of the design methods which Jones presents in his "recipe book" grew from this design group work. Even today, best practice for design teams is largely developed from methods described almost thirty years ago in this book.

   From the Introduction:

   "Jones first became involved with design methods while working as an industrial designer for a manufacturer of large electrical products in Britain in the 1950s. He was frustrated with the superficiality of industrial design at the time and had become involved with ergonomics. When the results of his ergonomic studies of user behavior were not utilized by the firm's designers, Jones set about studying the design process being used by the engineers. To his surprise, and to theirs, Jones' analysis showed that the engineers had no way of incorporating rationally arrived at data early on in the design process when it was most needed. Jones then set to work redesigning the engineer's design process itself so that intuition and rationality could co-exist, rather than one excluding the other."

   This cooperation of multiple faculties seems to be a consistent thread throughout his work.

   "Design Methods" is divided into two parts.

   Part one gives a brief history of design, argues that new methods are needed for today's more complex realities, breaks down the design process into three stages, and shows us how to choose a design method for each stage. The 1992 edition has added several prefaces which are well worth reading. They help explain how to use the book.

   Part two consists of descriptive outlines, or recipes, for 35 design methods. These methods include: logical, data gathering, innovative, taxonomic, and evaluative procedures. Reading part one gives you a grasp of the book. After that, the methods in part two are best read singly or a few at a time, as you would any recipe book.

   * * * * *

   Jones breaks design down into three stages: 1) Divergence, 2) Transformation, and 3) Convergence.

   The divergence stage is ".. extending the boundary of a design situation .. to have a large enough, and fruitful enough, search space... The objectives, and the problem boundary, are unstable and tentative. Evaluation is deferred. Every effort is made to escape old assumptions, and absorb new data."

   The territory of the problem is tested to discover limits, consequences, and paradoxes. The questions are: What is valuable? What is feasible? What is dangerous? Where are the dependencies between elements? What are the penalties for getting it wrong? Are the right questions being asked?

   The transformation stage requires a shift of gears. The territory of the problem has been mapped. Operative words here are: eliminate, combine, simplify, transform, modify.

   "This is the stage when objectives, brief, and problem boundaries are fixed, when critical variables are identified, when constraints are recognized, when opportunites are taken and when judgements are made. [It is] pattern-making, fun, flashes of insight, changes of set... Pattern-making .. is the creative act of turning a complicated problem into a simple one by .. deciding what to emphasize and what to overlook."

   At the last stage, convergence, "the problem has been defined, the variables have been identified and the objectives have been agreed. The designer's aim ...[is to] reduce the secondary uncertainties progressively until only one of many possible alternative designs is left... Persistence and rigidity of mind is a virtue: flexibilty and vagueness are to be shunned."

   Convergence can be done, as a programmer would say, from the top down or from the bottom up; or architecturally speaking, from the outside inward or inside outward. Often the best approach is to do both at once, and resolve differences as the two processes meet.

   * * * * *

   Design today is an increasingly social art, involving multiple designers, and multiple stakeholders as client/sponsor, suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, consumer/customer, and citizen groups and government agencies concerned with a shared environment, all get into the act. Individual design geniuses now must learn to communicate and negotiate effectively to succeed in the current enterprise environment.

   Advances in the capabilites of engineers and engineering tools must be matched with advances in techniques for resolving a broader range of issues and demands, and more effective communication skills and design transformation skills among designers and design managers.

   Computers will drive the role of humans in design to the earlier stages - divergence and transformation - of the design process where flexibility, intuition, and soft-focus attention are required. Knowledge base systems will take over the convergence stage, kicking the problem back to us only when discovered contradictions force re-evalution of design goals. The iteration of complete designs from a given design problem definition will become faster as our knowledge base improves and as computer power increases. As the speed of iteration increases, a threshold will be passed where qualitative changes in both design and designing will result.

   "Design Methods" is a seminal book which was widely credited with stimulating fresh approaches to design thinking. It will continue to be recognised as a classic work, and a useful text kept handy by every drawing table, CAD system, and engineering manager's desk.

No comments about Photo Graphics (Poster Collection).

No comments about L'Architecture (Reprint Series).

3 comments about AutoCAD 2000: 3D Modeling,: A Visual Approach.

1. I am an engineer and a part-time instructor of AutoCAD at a community college. This is an excellent book on the subject of AutoCAD 3D. I have many books that I use for reference when making lesson plans. While it could be argued which book is best overall, this one would rank near the top no matter its competition. Besides, this book offers things others do not. For instance, it gives an example on how to draw the complex curves of a boat hull using surface modeling techniques (this concept can be translated into automobile fenders or the like). It also shows one how to draw a solid model spring. These are things many other books just don't cover and don't offer enough knowledge on so that one could figure it out on one's own.
   The book also comes with a CD with examples on it, which is very helpful.
   If you are looking to buy just one AutoCAD 3D book, it would not be a mistake to buy this one. The list price is pretty steep, but this book can be found at discount book stores (I got it for under $20.00).



2. I bought this book with little 3D experience, hoping it would help guide me. I work in a small company and I am the only CAD user, so there isn't any help in the next office. This book taught me how to use 3D drawings to produce prints in probably a third of the time it used to by drawing all three views. Plus, in our shop, isometric views are almost a must to understand many prints, which has reduced our production time greatly. I am fairly well versed now in 3D, but I still reference the book almost weekly.

   I recommend this book to anyone who doesn't have time for courses and understands 2D construction.




3. MY AUTOCAD INSTRUCTOR, JOHN LARSON RATED TOP REFERENCE TEXT FOR 3D. HE ALSO STATED THAT THIS IS THE ONLY REFERENCE BOOK HE EVER BOUGHT IN HIS CAREER OF TEACHING.

5 comments about Design Culture Now: The National Design Triennial.

1. I agree completely with the reviewer from Providence, RI. However, I place the day-glo inks as the SECOND most noticeable flaw. The first is the misspelling of SMITHSONIAN on the spine.



2. Almost annoying.

   I agree about the fluorescent pages. I was really, really surprised that anyone would actually box large clumps of body copy (which by the way were written by someone who exists on a much higher plane of existence that the rest of us!) in to heavy fluorescent frames, which basically served to give me the worst headache I've had in weeks.

   I was relieved though, that there was some redeeming content in the book. I appreciated the attention to various art disciplines, however, I would (as a graphic designer), have appreciated a LITTLE more attention to print projects.

   I agree that it is perhaps, mis-titled, as I wonder if it truly represents "design culture," but there is much to inspire, and I found it worth having.




3. i like the book because of its overview and mixed / cross polinated approach. I don't think that vernacular design that informs our culture is any more inspiring necessarily to students than a more avant garde approach. Either way, I did find some mainstream design included and yet a lot was on the edge too. I think students, especially will gain from the survey approach here. They do not have enormous opportunities to see whats out there while they are in school and this resources makes a good effort at bringing it to them and the public. The layout is also fine. I do not fault the organization of the pages or thematic titles used throughout. It is a demonstration of cross fertilization in design that is pushing the envelope and thats the message of the book to me. Design is not complacent and not sitting still - it is pushing frontiers and making new relationships between information and communication, materials and process, environmental impact and human life/style, and so much more is happening all around us. I think its a good project.



4. Design Culture Now is the first survey of American design to blend architecture, product and graphic design under one cover, presenting the latest work in everything from fashion and landscape architecture to posters, film and interactive media. Themes provide the chapter focus for a book profiling projects by new designers and established achievers alike. Black and white and color photos pack the presentation.



5. Design Culture Now is the title for the catalog of the National Design Triennial(an exhibit of the best product,graphic,and architectural design done in the last three years). It's a nice title, but I'm not completely sure how accurate it is. The book contains a lot of nice pictures of designs and some decent writing about it. However I'm left wondering is this what design culture is? My feeling is that this a collection of the best stuff that has been in magazines about design for the last three years or the culture around designers not the designs that influence culture at large. The saddest part about this book is its unrealized potential. The concept is a decent one. Curators from the three fields of design looked far and wide for the best design in the country created in the last three years. They then met and instead of categorizing by building, product, or graphic they devised seven categories that served as umbrella themes in design (fluid, physical, minimal, reclaimed, local, branded, narrative, unbelievable.) The result is interesting. In the FLUID category an iMac is a page away from a rollercoaster in PHYSICAL a redesign of a shopping cart is grouped with a poster where a man has scarred his body to advertise a lecture. The juxtapostions are interesting but do not save the book. Too much of the work resides in the avant-garde, unseen by most people even fellow designers in many cases. A good example is the work of Martin Venezky (in the PHYSICAL category) a designer who alters the characteristics of letterforms by cutting and distorting them, while the work is interesting enough is it a profound influence on design culture? More likely it is work influenced heavily by grungy graphics. Similar things happen throughout the book where novel objects are elevated to undeserved levels. Another flaw is the attribution of design movements or the lack of criticim for being derivitive of the design movements. Hailing Razorfish as the creators of great internet sights is ok but the book makes it seem as if they are responsible for the idea of E-commerce sights, a better solution may have been to list E-commerce as a topic giving credit to the multitude of companies that have had a hand in developing this amazing revoluton in web design. Conversely, the fluid category is filled with iMac knock-offs which is ok but it should have made it clear that these things were obviously influenced by Apple's ID team. The book design also left something to be desired. Ellen Lupton designed the interior(she was also the curator responsible for graphics) and I was thoroughly let down. I am huge fan of her book Design/Writing/Research a monument in design criticism and book design in general. This book however is the polar opposite. The day-glo inks are the most noticeable flaw, giving me headaches while I tried to read the essays. other than that the layouts are just mediocre. It feels like every other design collection you have seen, which is ok but considering her scary talent it could have been much better. Overall I give it three stars, The project had good intentions, It broke traditional categories, included things not traditionally associated with design(roller-coasters, comic books, etc.), and tried to show a cross pollinated view of design. However I hope the next installment equally favors vernacular design along with the avant garde and provides more critical insight into who made the biggest waves and who merely latched on.

No comments about Strategies for Teaching Universal Design.

No comments about Architectural Acoustics: Blending Sound Sources, Sound Fields, and Listeners (Modern Acoustics and Signal Processing).

No comments about Steel Detailing in CAD Format.

No comments about Underground Space Design: Part 1: Overview of Subsurface Space Utilization Part 2: Design for People in Underground Facilities.