In order to explain to my students the process and principles of three dimensional design, I find that places such as the Natural History Museum are a fantastic resource to begin to identify quite literally the bare bones of the process. Students had the opportunity to study these skeletons with words such as Repetition, Radiation, Curvilinear and so on at the forefront of their minds and with the knowledge that they were going to use these observational drawings to begin moving from the two dimensional drawings to three dimensional models. One may question how this relates to Visual Merchandising or Commercial Interior Design? However, what I want to do here is encourage the group, not to literally take some of these objects and place them in store - as we all too often see - but to begin to use these objects as the staring point of their inspiration and begin to test and experiment, include and exclude ideas and begin to really understand how to become Designers or at least understand the difference between 'good' design - establishing a need and unravelling a concept and 'bad' design - simply lifting the motif.
