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Exploring Materials invites you to get inspired by physical forms and substances. Materials are like words. The richer your design vocabulary, the more design solutions you can see and express. Foam, mesh, wood, plastic, and wire each have behaviors and properties that suggest different types of structure, surface, and connection. Each has its place, consequences, and cost. Understanding materials is essential to design, and understanding materials through hands-on experiment is absolutely crucial. Use this book to begin looking at design with new eyes. Ignore what you already know, and find out how substances such as cardboard, cloth, metal, and rope can yield surprising structures with unexpected functions.

Best-selling author Ellen Lupton and her colleague Inna Alesina bring their collective design experiences to this informative and fun volume. The book opens with case studies of the design process. Lively examples show how designers can interact with physical materials to jump-start the course of thinking and inventing and how they can involve real people and real environments to take a fresh look at real problems. At the core of the book is a visual glossary of materials, organized both to inspire and inform. Everyday uses of each material are juxtaposed with experimental projects that reveal how designers from around the world have exploited materials in surprising and creative ways. The book concludes with a section on making it real, moving beyond the prototype to create a product that can be manufactured and marketed.

This colourful and accessible work speaks to a generational shift in design thinking and design culture. Today, there is a broad movement to think critically and creatively about materials—where they come from, how they function, and where they end up at the end of the day. There is also growing interest in making and crafting, engaging with objects and the environment in a direct way. Exploring Materials embraces this new wave of thinking and brings the complexities and joys of the material world into your hands.