Enhancing Freehand Sketching in Industrial Design: Description and Implementation of a Drawing Methodology for More Effective Representations

Freehand sketching is an important part of the design process that allows one to communicate in a quick and gestural way the first ideas about new concepts and is a medium for graphic thinking. It is important for architects and designers because it is a mechanism of representation, conceptualization, and abstraction for the communication between the creators and their audience. All academic courses related to industrial design include subjects aimed at acquiring skills in the use of manual tools of graphic representation, recognizing their importance in the integral training of the designer. However, sometimes the methodologies implemented in some subjects fail to develop adequately the skills of the students, who finish their studies with shortcomings in the field of graphic representation. This paper describes exercises that are part of a methodology designed to help students of industrial design acquire the skills to make an agile and effective use of freehand sketching. Through different uses of the elements of formal expression, the exercises address topics such as shape analysis, composition, light, color, and descriptive illustration. The methodology is applied experimentally in a subject of the bachelor’s degree in industrial design and product development engineering at Universitat Jaume I, introducing the students to different instruments and techniques of sketching and proposing various enriching ways of direct observation of the objectual reality that surrounds them. The paper concludes by evaluating the positive impact of the implemented methodology