You’ve worked on your ideas and created your design. You have found the right company to help you take your idea to the next step. You may even have an idea of what types of methods your design team will use to show you how your final product will work. However, now that you’re well into the process of working through your project, what should you expect to see from your project management company? Without a finished product or prototype, you may find it hard to visualize how your design’s progressing. When you know the right questions to ask, you can get the answers you need and the visual collateral to better communicate your idea. Read on to find out what types of deliverables your project manager can provide to show you exactly what you need to know.
Back to the Drawing Board
When you think of a design, you probably think of someone sitting at a table or computer drawing or illustrating the product they have in mind. For a long time, these types of drawings, sketches, or blueprints, were the best and easiest way to display a design concept to potential customers or investors. In recent years, however, multiple types of design methods have been developed and used to create a more complete and realistic picture. The traditional methods still exist of course like hand sketches, paper drawings (drafting), hand build scale models, flow diagrams, and others. With new technologies adapted from the automotive, aerospace, and even the gaming industry we now have options such as photorealistic renders, computer animations, kinematic simulations, finite element analysis (FEA), and computational fluid dynamics (CFD).
While these new concepts are widely utilized by designers worldwide, many people not in the design business may still lump much of the above together as “drawings.” For your design company, this can be a challenge, because a drawing does not specify what type of information you want to convey. As a result, the expectations of your design company may not be met. Likewise, your design company could spend more time trying to communicate the design with you then needed. While it may seem like your designer is asking for overly specific details, it’s important to understand that, with such a variety of visual communication types, you need to know what to ask for to get the results you want.
Which Visual Suits Your Needs?
There are a variety of people you may want to communicate with about your design. Some could be investors who may want to see a more high-level view of the design and in a much more polish form. In the build phases, you may need detailed drawings sometimes call prints for suppliers to build your components and assemblies. These prints communicate the dimensional and physical properties of the designed components.
Maybe you want to create pre-orders on your website with photorealistic renders and animation before the final product exists? In some case it is actually preferred to use rendered view of a product versus a picture because the product may be hard to photograph. Maybe the product is very large, has tough to photograph materials, or it’s just quicker and easier to use a render.
Hover Board Device Photorealistic Render
When your product is ready to ship you may need illustrations for instruction manuals and catalogs? All these types of communication require a different type of visuals although they can all come from the same 3D models or CAD (Computer Aided Design) models.
The options are not limitless, but it may take design experience to navigate the plethora of file types and design collateral to best fit your needs. Sit down with your designer and talk to them about what kind of representation would most accurately show off your design and final product. Be specific as to what the deliverable is to be used for. Once you have shared your ideas, take a moment and listen to theirs! As experts in their field, your design company has the knowledge and experience to help you understand what types of product representations are available – and which ones make the most sense for you.
If you still have questions about your design options, give us a call today at 317-550-4006 to speak with our team about making your dream design a reality.
