Preface
‘Graphic communication is playing an ever-increasing part in the school curriculum. Graphicacy is taking its rightful place alongside literacy and numeracy as a form of expression and understanding. This book, along with its predecessors Design Drawing One and Two, shows the extremely important part that this form of communication plays in our lives. One only has to pick up a newspaper and look through it to see just how much information is presented to us in graphic form.
As the subject becomes more recognized so more examinations are being offered in graphic communication and the examples in the Design Drawing series will help prepare students for the type of work required for these examinations. You will find that many of the examples in this series of books require students to undertake research and produce original designs and solutions to various problems. I feel that learning should be enjoyable and to this end I have related the examples used in these books to things which young people are interested in and which they come into contact within their everyday lives. I have developed a series of themes to try to show how drawings can be based on almost any topic and not just engineering as has so often happened in the past with technical drawing. Although the book is aimed mainly at a graphic communication course there are many examples that could fit into a more traditional technical drawing course.
A number of the examples included in this book requires the use of squared paper, a drawing medium which, in my opinion, is very much underused in schools. It can enable students to produce drawings quickly and accurately without a great deal of costly equipment. Another extremely useful drawing method is also explored: that of using a square grid to enlarge and draw quite complicated objects which would be almost
impossible using more conventional techniques. Architectural drawing also seems to be forming part a of a number of examination courses and a section of the book is devoted to this. Colour, shading and texturing must play an important part in the type of work dealt with in this book and hope that students will be given
the opportunity to explore as many different mediums as possible. Students will have already experienced colored pencils and felt tip pens (both excellent mediums when used correctly) but try also things like gummed paper, sticky-back plastic and coloured air brush. In a book of this type it is difficult to go into detail about colour but I have shown a few techniques which used as far as shading and texturing is concerned. Study the photographs in the book, they will help you to pick out light and dark areas, highlights, textures
etc.
Don’t be afraid to try out ideas, they may not all work but I’m sure that most will help to improve the presentation of your work and make it more alive and interesting. I hope you I enjoy the book and the ideas it contains.’
John Rolfe