DESIGN EXERCISES
These Design Exercises are inspired by children’s play. Play, especially for young children, is an important process of learning, exploring and discovering more of the world. Engagement in play becomes practice of the many facets of being human in our environment and society. These exercises are an attempt at guiding studies in basic design principles in a manner that begins to take on characteristics of play. They blur the line between work and leisure, and set the tone of practice and study as a calming moment in the busy pace of studio and design education. These first five studies have simple 2-dimensional objectives that address figure/ground, tone, line, balance and texture. Each packet includes 3 ‘process sheets’ that encourage exploration and refinement before the final study. The instructions include a variety of prompts in order to encourage the students to make connections between the design principles and basic truths about life and humanity. The exercises were carried out for the first hour of each of five consecutive studio sessions.
