INTEGRATION OF ART AND DESIGN IN MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

Abstract

Is Design a process or an art form? Traditionally design has been taught in Engineering as a process that started with the definition of a need for a product or a process and culminated in a deliverable that took the form of a project record and usually a set of manufacturing drawings. There was always a good deal of emphasis on design for manufacturing as well as the minimization of product cost. As a result of this, and our inability to judge "creativity", designs had a tendency to be fully functional but not very esthetically pleasing. In other words the designs worked but, as often as not, were ugly. It seems that most engineers are very "left brained". As a result they are very comfortable with the notion of calculating anything required to make the design functional and cost effective but are not at all comfortable in making the design "work" from an industrial design perspective. Leading manufacturers of products are not satisfied with designs that are only functional. They recognize that for a product to be successful it must function but must also appeal to the customer. To enable this to happen requires more than the traditional hard calculation of optimal functional parameters; it requires a team approach that brings both the hard technical side and the more artistic industrial design side.