#HTE

Yea or Nay? This Children’s Drawing Aid Perfectly Replicates First-Year Industrial Design Drawing Techniques

The earliest Industrial Design Drawing 101 assignment I can remember is drawing cubes in perspective. We drew hundreds, then thousands. Once the professor felt perspective had been mastered, we then modified the cubes with voids and projections.

The assignments were more tedious than challenging, and I always thought a grade-school art class could learn the same thing. So I was a bit surprised to learn that a company called Splat makes an eponymous object that’s essentially a template for drawing isometric cubes with ellipses in the faces.

The company bills Splat as “a powerfully simple approach to teaching design for STEM,” saying that their “aim is to collaborate with industry and schools to help students develop authentic design skills, for success in the classroom and beyond.” Here’s how children are meant to use a Splat:

And the results it’s meant to yield:

I’m divided here. Drawing in isometric ought be even easier than drawing in perspective, and I think you’d want the student to develop this ability freehand; drawing freehand means you typically get it wrong in the beginning, then improve your understanding and accuracy, gradually machining the ability into your neurons. If you nail it the first time because you’re tracing a template, does that not hobble your ability to grow, and skip that all-important failure step?

I have no experience with education, and would like to hear opinions from those of you that do. Yea or Nay on the Splat?