Analysing product character. Examine a product and ask the following:
a. What does the product do?
b. Who will use it? Where? When? Why?
c. What are their aspirations? How do they see themselves?
d. What aesthetics has the designer used? Why?
e. What associations? How did the designer create them? Why?
f. What perceptions? What is your reaction to the product? What made you feel that way?
g. How (intentionally or unintentionally) did the designer create that perception?
h. And finally: What was the designer trying to say?
'Many designers, working on a project, assemble a mood-board with images of the sort of people for whom the product is intended, the surroundings in which they suppose it will be used, and other products that the intended user group might own, seeking to capture the flavour of their lifestyle.
"Pantone (www.pantone.com.) provide detailed advice on colour selection, including colour-matching charts and good descriptions of the associations and perceptions of colour.
'The dates are, of course, approximate. Design styles do not switch on an off on specific dates, they emerge as a development of, or reaction to, earlier styles with which they often coexist, and they merge into the styles that follow.