Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The history of man is recorded, recovered and remembered through the designs he created and the materials he used. Materials are the stuff of design, and today is not the age of just one material, but of an immense range.

Best selling author M. F. Ashby guides the reader through the process of selecting materials on the basis of their design suitability. He and co-author Kara Johnson begin with the assumption that products in a given market sector have little to distinguish between them in either performance or cost. When many technically near-equivalent products compete, market share is won or lost by the industrial design of a product: its visual and tactile attributes, the associations it carries, the image it creates in the consumer's mind and the quality of its interface with the use and the environment.



Ashby and Johnson address the problem of selecting materials for industrial design from a unique viewpoint. They acknowledge that materials have two overlapping roles, in technical design and in industrial design. The technical designer has ready access to materials information. Industrial designers often do not have equivalent support.

Materials Selection in Industrial Design presents groundbreaking new information that, on one hand introduces engineering students to the principles of Industrial Design and to the idea that the selection of materials can directly affect the aesthetic qualities of the object. On the other hand they introduce industrial design students and practising industrial designers to engineering parameters through an accessible and holistic approach.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Chapter 1 Function and Personality (p. 1)
• Chapter 2 What Influences Product Design? (p. 7)
• Chapter 3 Design and Designing (p. 27)
• Chapter 4 The Stuff... Multi-dimensional Materials (p. 49)
• Chapter 5 Other Stuff... Shaping, Joining and Surfaces (p. 89)
• Chapter 6 Form Follows Material (p. 99)
• Chapter 7 A Structure for Material Selection (p. 117)
• Chapter 8 Case Studies in Materials and Design (p. 141)
• Chapter 9 New Materials--The Potential for Innovation (p. 157)
• Chapter 10 Conclusions (p. 169)
• A Practical Reference for Inspiration
• Material Profiles (p. 174)
• Shaping Profiles (p. 236)
• Joining Profiles (p. 258)
• Surface Profiles (p. 284)
• Appendices
• Exercises for the Eye and Mind (p. 311)
• Selected Material Maps (p. 315)
• Index (p. 329)