Unsure of where to start? Chris Lefteri has some tips on working with materials
Get your hands on some samples. There is no substitute for holding some material in your hand to see how it feels. Samples should be supplied by manufactures or, failing that, see if you can find the same material used for an existing product.
Look around in shops for a material you like the feel of. Sometimes if they are plastic these can be identified by the abbreviations moulded in a discreet part of the product. PP, for example, is polypropylene.
Don't just think about the shape of a product and the material. Think about the surface decoration and how this might impact on your design. Colour and translucency are just as powerful a tool in emotional terms as the feel of a squidgy piece of rubber or a rock-hard glass bottle. A sheet of aluminium will have a totally different quality, depending on whether it is acid-etched, sandblasted, polished or anodised.
Be aware of existing products and their use of materials. Evaluate them in relation to your own needs. Evaluate the material currently being used in a product and decide if it is the best material for its use. There may be cheaper, more ecological or safer alternatives. Don't be fooled into having preconceptions. Most of us think of wood as a craft-based material and plastic as a mass-produced material. However, matchsticks are one of the most automated mass produced products with one of the fastest outputs.
Get into the habit of trying to identify the particular material. This is becoming increasingly easy with many plastic mouldings having the abbreviation marked somewhere on the product.
In more depthFor a list of what these abbreviations stand for visit the
Plastworld website
Identify the number of units you want to produce. Some materials need to be manufactured using production methods that require large capital investment in tooling. Some materials can be used in large-scale production with relatively cheap methods. As already mentioned, certain polymers may well be cheap materials, but to produce them cost-effectively you may need to make tens of thousands of units.
Write a checklist of the key requirements of the material, eg heat resistant, cost effective, easy to mould, soft, transparent, etc. Be aware that materials have an aesthetic and emotional impact as well as a technical and physical requirement. Think of the Swatch watch.
Creative workshops can change the way materials are perceived and applied within your organisation. If you are a supplier it might be worth organising a workshop that helps your staff to understand how designers use and apply materials. This could in turn help them communicate more effectively with clients. Equally, workshops can help design teams to think in new ways about the application of materials as a key part of the process rather than as an afterthought.