ABSTRACT
This chapter presents examples of specific aesthetic problems that relate to the craftsmanship of designed objects such as joints and junctions between parts. Craftsmanship isn’t always something you can draw, yet it’s often the quality of craftsmanship that affects people’s verdicts on an object, whether a building, a shirt or a home appliance. Some aspects have to do with how much control the production engineers can impose on the manufacturing process; for example, a part junction that looked good on paper and as a model might turn out to be hard to consistently make well during mass production. Other aspects are the details that designers directly control such as how well part joints gel with the rest of the design. It’s often very small-scale things (below 5 mm in size) that are hard to capture on paper, which is why a special form of critical imagination is needed to catch craftsmanship failures and also to spot opportunities for improvements that can set your product apart. Exercises for readers to undertake in a classroom setting are suggested.
