This bespoke course is designed to set you up to be a professional furniture designer, to help you be in complete control of your unique and original furniture designs, whether that be an exclusive furniture piece for a private client or designing and developing your very own brand furniture collection.

This course will provide you with the steps of the process with knowledge, insights and tips as well as your own practice to develop your own furniture designs, from client brief and analysis, artistic inspiration; creating your own ideas in 2D and starting in 3D; learning about ergonomics; understanding manufacturing processes, materials and sustainability; perfecting the sculptural and aesthetic beauty of your designs, considering experience, use, form, materials and production. This course also includes a furniture factory visit which when taking with the subsequent course could lead you on to develop your own prototype furniture design, with guidance and help from your tutor and factory technicians.

Course Outline:

• Topic 1
  
  • Professional Furniture Design Practice Intro
  • History of the Chair & Trends
  • Freehand drawing skills
  • Selected Furniture Assignment 1
• Topic 2
  
  • Design Process lecture
  • User Profile intro Assignment 2
  • Inspiration/Trend Board Assignments (exercise) Assignment 3
  • Design Brief intro
• Topic 3
  
  • User Profile & Decoding
  • Design theory intro
  • Designers’ Palette Assignment 4
  • Ideation
• Topic 4
  
  • Sketch Idea Presentation 2D (6x)
  • Production Processes & Materials
  • Working in scale & ergonomics
  • Materials & Processes Assignment 5
  • Intro to Orthographic Drawing for Furniture Designers Assign 6
• Topic 5
  
  • Client Concept Presentation (3x)
  • Desktop Sketch Model Making demo
  • Development in 2D & 3D to scale
  • Planning presentation
• Topic 6
  
  • Furniture Factory Visit
  • Completion of Sketch Model to scale
  • Completion of Presentation
  • Final Presentation of all Assignments

About the Instructor:

This exciting and intense 6-week furniture design course is taught by Rock Galpin, an expert furniture and product designer from London. He has over 28 years of industry practice & had his work exhibited in over 40 exhibitions worldwide from Milan, Paris, Cologne, Tokyo, Hong Kong, New York to London. He has won a number of awards including The Laurent Perrier Design Award, The Ness Furniture Design Award and Hiddenart Most Inspiring Designer of The Year Award. Rock has also been a tutor at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London for over 23 years working on BA Product Design, MA Industrial Design and now runs a number of his own Short Courses there in Furniture Design.