Leeds School of Arts

LSA Festival Student Stories: Adam Bishop / Product Design

COVID-19: How Did it Affect my Design Studies?

This year has definitely been an interesting one, one that I won’t be forgetting anytime soon. I’m Adam, a Product Design Student basically finishing my last year, hopefully studying MA 3D Design when I next return to Leeds Beckett University.

A display of items at London Design Museum

I’d be lying if I said these last few months have been easy, the uncertainty of what is happening with absolutely everything loomed over me pretty much every day, which impacted the amount of work I did daily. I had to adapt, being a product designer, we are usually a studio-based course. We can discuss projects in person and bounce ideas off each other very easily, sketch and model concepts and ask for feedback almost instantly from peers and tutors, have access to the 3D workshop tools and machinery to construct final iterations of ideas to even the most basic of printing facilities. This all changed.

We went from the physical to the digital. The concept of working digitally does exist in the design world from graphic communication, computer aided design (CAD) and 3D renderings, but for me this was something I had to get used to. Creating a fancy 3D rendering with everything being super polished is nice for showing proof of concept and helping visualise an idea but, in my opinion, it just doesn’t replace getting into the workshop/printing studio and creating something with your own hands. However, I had to adopt this digital style working from home in lockdown, this meant that I only had the very basic modelling materials ranging from paper, card and the odd scraps of corrugated cardboard that I somehow seemed to have accumulated over the last few years (definitely a trait of a product designer).

Read more about Adams story on the Leeds School of Arts Festival Site…
My random collection of cardboard

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