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Audrey Bardwell, Author at The Open College of the Arts

To find out more details about the transfer to The Open University see A New Chapter for OCA.

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Audrey Bardwell


What’s in a sketch?  thumb

What’s in a sketch? 

Firstly, sketching offers us a quick means to document our observations of different spaces and designs. No, these don’t have to be hyper realistic perspective sketches that show every detail. Instead, these are sketches that can be done quickly to explore various aspects of a design that might be helpful for us to understand more deeply to apply to our own designs. 

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Interior Design: Reflecting on your work thumb

Interior Design: Reflecting on your work

As tutors, I realise we ask you to reflect on your work and your feedback a lot. Thinking back on my own experience, being asked to reflect on my own work was often the last thing I wanted to add to my constantly growing to do list as a student.  However, it quickly became apparent that this idea of reflecting on one’s work is actually something I’d need to do for the rest of my career as a designer.

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Presentation tips for Interior Designers thumb

Presentation tips for Interior Designers

While interior designers’ priority is designing spatial environments, so much of our job is also communicating our ideas for these spatial environments. One of the realities of this industry is that a great idea that’s presented poorly will almost always lose to a mediocre idea that’s presented well.

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Six Examples of Why Line Weights Matter thumb

Six Examples of Why Line Weights Matter

In any design drawing, both sketches and technical drawings, the unsung hero of the drawing is line weight. Varying the line weight, that is the thickness of the lines, will always add more depth and character to your drawings. Even the simplest of drawings will look more polished and professional with a bit of line weight variety. Let’s look at some examples to see what I mean.

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Interior Design: What is luxury? thumb

Interior Design: What is luxury?

Within interior design, there are definitely certain connotations when it comes to the idea of luxury. The most often association of luxury within interior design is expense. This can be realised in a variety of ways, such as the glitz and glamour of traditional palaces or in the solitary minimalism of contemporary spaces. But I wanted to recap and expand upon some of the ideas of luxury that were discussed by the group. Luxury can mean so many things to different perspectives. 

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The ergonomics of interiors thumb

The ergonomics of interiors

Now a lot of times, when we say the word ergonomics, we might think of funky looking desk chairs or computer equipment belonging to someone who takes their job very seriously.  But for an interior designer, ergonomics needs to mean so much more than that. 

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The Section Drawing: Communicating Experience thumb

The Section Drawing: Communicating Experience

When people think of interior design or architecture drawings, usually floor plans come to everyone’s mind first. However, a designer will quickly understand that a section drawing, that is a vertical slice through a building, space, object, etc., is the one that allows you to understand and test the experience of a design more effectively. […]

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How do we start designing for what isn’t visible? thumb

How do we start designing for what isn’t visible?

How do we start designing for what isn’t visible?  Interior design as an industry is notorious for not providing fully-considered spaces for individuals with disabilities. Spaces may be compliant with regulations, but it might be that ramps aren’t conveniently located or even that only a ramp is provided when some people with disabilities are actually […]

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Interior Design in a post-COVID-19 world thumb

Interior Design in a post-COVID-19 world

Perspex partitions have become the new normal in the last few months. So have big stickers on the floor set 2 metres apart. And ‘home’ has become the most dominant space in our lives. While there have already been a number of articles about the economic impact COVID-19 is having on the interior design industry […]

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