Design and Technology (Product Design)

Course summary

Think about the products that you love. Your mobile phone with its elegant curves was designed on a computer screen. The car you yearn for, started life as a reduced size clay model. A building that you admire sprang from the drawing board of an architect. And it’s not a new phenomenon. Our fascination with Product Design goes back to flint arrowheads and earthenware pots. A level Product Design covers four main topics and you’ll study two of these each year. In ‘Materials, components and application’ - you’ll look at materials, production processes and the impact of cost and design. In ‘Learning through designing and making’ you’ll produce some coursework using your own design with a range of materials and media. In the second year, you’ll get to grips with ‘Design and manufacture’ - helping you to appreciate the relationship between design and technology, or form and function. ‘Design and making in practice’ is the practical, coursework part. You’ll make an object and record the processes that you went through. Product Design is a satisfying career. You have an idea and with the use of tools such as cardboard or computers-it comes to life. Imagine how satisfying it must be for the person who designed the Apple earpods or the Dyson vacuum cleaner to hold the finished product in their hand.