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Form Fundamentals: How Great Storytelling Leads to Great Industrial Design

Bring clarity to your design process. Form Fundamentals is a 7 hour online video course about elevating your skills in industrial design, with an emphasis on visual storytelling. Create beautiful industrial design work that will help you land your dream job. ENROLLMENT IS TEMPORARILY CLOSED.

Enrollment is temporarily closed

Confidently Design Beautiful, Functional Products

Learn Actionable Principles to Improve your Design Work

Let me save you some time. There's only one reason to read this page. You want to create exceptional industrial design work.

If that's not you, feel free to move along. Or just watch any of my free industrial design tutorials and call it a day.

Great industrial design seems mysterious and difficult to understand.

Perhaps you believe that beautiful design is some sort of magical mix of intuition, luck, and natural-born talent. It may even seem subjective and arbitrary. You see these awesome designs posted online and wonder how you could ever reach that level. 

I've been exactly where you are. I simply didn't have a clue about how to design great products. It seemed completely unattainable to me....but not anymore.

I've spent the last 10 years working with companies like Amazon, Qualcomm, Logitech, Kohler, and dozens of others to design and launch successful products.

 I'm also an adjunct professor at California College of the Arts, where I teach students the principles of great industrial design. I also discuss many of these ideas on my YouTube channel, Design Theory. To date, my channel has over 46,000 subscribers. 

Through my teaching, I've developed a process that turns inexperienced students into excellent designers who are ready to take on the professional world.  By taking this course, you'll know exactly why some designs look great, and how you can apply the principles of good design to your own work. Most importantly, you'll be better prepared for the competitive industrial design job market.
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I'll Teach You Everything I Wish I Knew When I Started My Design Career

Who is this course for?

  • Industrial Design Students: You’re a student or recent grad, and you want to level up your design skills. You're eager to sharpen your skills so you can land that first junior position or internship. Your work is solid, but you could use some fresh tools and techniques to make your portfolio lightyears ahead of your peers. 

  • Design Enthusiasts: You’re new to industrial design and you’re not quite ready to commit to going to design school. This course will allow you to test the waters and build up a portfolio. If and when you are ready to commit to industrial design education, you’ll have a strong portfolio that could set you up for potential scholarships.
 
  • Young Design Professionals:  You've been working in the field for a while, but you’re not quite sure you have the confidence or the skills to really speak up and defend your design decisions to your boss or to other teams within your studio/company. This course will give you the tools to make informed design decisions and defend your design work in a professional setting.

  • Engineers: You want to learn the fundamentals of design and have a more holistic approach to product development. You will learn the methods and processes that designers use to make usability and aesthetic decisions, making you a better designer and a better engineer.

  • Entrepreneurs: You want to create products and services that people actually want to buy. You will learn the tools and methods to validate your ideas to prospective customers. Master the art of pitching your ideas to investors and buyers in a compelling way. Eventually, you'll be able to hire out design work. But for now, building this solid foundation in design will help you to communicate with your team and lead them effectively. 

  • Second Degree/Masters Degree Candidates: You want to learn new methods so that you can hit the ground running and excel in your studies. Masters degrees are often very condensed, so this course will give you a solid overview of anything your formal curriculum may have missed. 

I desperately wish I had access to a course like this when I was starting out. As a young designer, I had all of the technical skills, but it wasn't enough. I simply did not understand fundamental design principles or how to pitch my ideas in a way that made people excited about my work. This course will change that forever.

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I Learned the Hard Way, Now You Don't Have To.

Testimonials

Gabriel Newton - First Year Student

Gabriel's Form Fundamentals Project

"Form Fundamentals has given me clarity. It’s given me clarity both in my process and in the vision I have throughout my design projects. It's an absolute gem for anybody who wants to learn more about industrial design!"

Yash Jha - Self Taught Designer

Yash's work

"I started off as a self-taught designer with no formal education. The carefully curated content is distilled with practical knowledge. This, coupled with his tips on storytelling through design and personal feedback on my portfolio, helped me bag an internship at a reputed design firm. I highly recommend Form Fundamentals for aspiring designers!"

Learn Actionable Principles to Improve your Design Work

Form & Visual Storytelling

How to express an abstract idea visually in your own industrial design work. Create beautiful, functional designs that will look great in your portfolio and help you land your dream job.

Design Language

Create a visual theme for your design work that resonates with your users, clients, and even hiring managers during your job interviews. 

Design Analysis

Learn the process I use to analyze any object or product. Understand the exact principles that make a design successful. There’s a structured process to understanding the visual code and applying those learnings to your own work in a totally fresh and new way. I'll teach it to you in this course. 

Conceptual Development & Inspiration

Never run out of ideas. Learn how to find inspiration anywhere and use it in your design work. 

Craft a Conceptual Narrative

Learn about how to conduct research that drives product decisions. Create design goals that clearly express what the product needs to do, how it should function, and what it should look like. This will help you to guide key stakeholders and clients to the right decision during key meetings or job interviews.

Design Principles

Ever wonder why a certain product looks so good, but you can't put it into words? Learn about...
  • Proportion
  • Visual Hierarchy & Contrast
  • Form
  • Curvature
  • Balance & Tension
  • Color
  • Repetition, Pattern & Texture
  • Materials
Most importantly, learn how to apply all of these principles in your own work. 

A Design Case Study, from Initial Inspiration to Final Prototype

 Watch as I design a product from initial brief all the way through to a final CNC'ed prototype. I break down my process along every step of the way! You can follow along with a project that you're working on, or just watch as I break down my methodology!

Verbal and Visual Presentation Skills

Nail your next design job interview. Learn key storytelling skills so that you can present your work clearly and effectively.
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Learn the Skills That Will Serve You for Years

After graduating from school, I still didn't really understand how to design great products. It seemed like some people just "got it", and I wasn't one of them.

 In the end, I did learn about what makes design great. It came down to cold, hard analysis. It was a slow, grueling, and inefficient process. It took years. I've spent thousands of hours dissecting what makes a product look good and function effectively. Over time, I finally started seeing some patterns and recurring themes. I started to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Through this learning process, I noticed that there was a lot of writing about design theory, but none of it was very useful to me. It was too abstract. That's why I wanted this course to focus on giving you practical, actionable insights that you can actually use to improve your design work.

Now that my skills are developed, I've had the privilege of working with some of the biggest brands and hottest startups in the world. I've worked with Amazon, Logitech, Qualcomm, Kohler, and dozens of other companies. I've made hundreds of thousands of dollars through my design work. No matter what the project, I know that I can rely on my design process to create beautiful products that clients and customers love. And so can you. 

It all comes down to learning the principles and working hard to apply them to your own designs.  Below are some of my students' designs from the 2020/2021 school year. This is only their third industrial design studio course. The results speak for themselves.

The Results Speak for Themselves: My Students' Past Work

Introducing Form Fundamentals: How Great Storytelling Leads to Great Industrial Design

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Detailed Lessons

38 lessons and 7 hours of jam-packed, relevant industrial design content.

Skill-Building Exercises

Dozens of assignments to apply what you learn in a practical way. 

Community Discord Chat

Get Personal feedback on your designs, homework, assignments, and more. 

Multiple Project Files

Get full access to my sketches and some 3D files.

30 Day Money Back Guarantee

 If you aren’t happy with the course for any reason at all, just contact me and I’ll give you a refund. You've got nothing to lose!

Frequently asked questions

If you have other questions that are not listed here, feel free to contact me on my public discord channel. You can also contact me on Instagram or LinkedIn, but Discord is by far the best way to reach me. 

How much industrial design experience do I need to take this course?

None. Anyone can take this course and learn how to apply the principles to their design work. The only requirement is an open mind and a device with an internet connection. 

How long is the course?

The course has about 7 hours of content. There are 38 lessons in total. Each lesson ranges in length from 2 minutes up to about 30 minutes. Most of the lessons are about 8 minutes long. 

In terms of how long it takes to complete the course, that really depends on how much effort you want to put into all of the assignments and exercises. 

 If you follow along with every assignment and do your own personal project alongside me, it could take a month or more.

 If you just go through it without following along with your own project, while still doing all of the assignments, you could probably finish it in a week.

Another way to use the course is basically watch it the whole way through without interruptions. Then, when you have to do a design project for school or for work, you can go back and re-watch the relevant parts based on what you're going through in your project. Think of it as a guide or reference that you can always have handy.

 If you watch every video at 2x speed without doing any of the assignments, you can finish the course in only 3.5 hours! 

Will I always have access to the videos once I buy?

Yes. You will have immediate access to all of the content indefinitely.

Will I actually progress as a designer by taking this course?

Yes. Students improve rapidly. I've seen it in my teaching as a professor at California College of the Arts, and I see it in my discord everyday. 

What's up with the private discord?

Discord is basically just a chat room. It's a platform where we can send each other text messages and give each other feedback on assignments. We can also hop into voice/video chat if necessary. 

What if I don't like the course?

If you don't like the course for any reason at all, I will give you a full money-back guarantee within 30 days of purchase. Just contact me, and I'll happily give you your money back. My goal is to make sure that you progress as a designer and learn a lot! 

Course Table of Contents

Introduction - 30 minutes
  • Course Intro
  • Storytelling Intro
  • User Perceptions
  • Rolls Royce Case Study
  • Design History & Storytelling
  • Use Case & Storytelling
Design Analysis & Inspiration - 90 minutes
  • Why Analysis is Important
  • How to Analyze Any Product
  • Use Design Analysis To Generate Your Own Concepts
  • Inspiration Intro: Rational vs Emotional
  • Finding Inspiration Everywhere
  • Applying Inspiration
  • Applying Inspiration 2
  • Applying Inspiration 3
Conceptual Narrative & Defining the Problem
  • Conceptual Narrative Intro
  • Articulating a Vision
  • Creating a Discussion Guide
  • Refining the Vision
  • Creating a Design Criteria
  • Mind Mapping
  • Parting Thoughts
Basic Design Principles - 160 minutes
  • Proportion 1
  • Proportion 2
  • Proportion 3 - Applying the Principles
  • Proportion 4 - Applying the Principles
  • Balance & Tension
  • Curves & Splines
  • Surfacing & Form Analysis
  • Repetition & Pattern
  • Materials & Finishes
  • Color 1
  • Color 2
  • Color 3
  • Color 4 - Applying the Principles
  • Shape Language - Applying all of the Principles
Design Case Study
  • Bass Guitar Case Study 1
  • Bass Guitar Case Study 2
  • Existing Bass Guitar Audit
  • Sketching Critiques
  • CAD/Fabrication/3D Model changes
  • Manufacturing
Presentation & Storytelling
  • Preparation
  • Verbal Storytelling 1
  • Verbal & Visual Storytelling
  • Parting Thoughts on the course
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Here’s Why This Course Is Your Best Option

These are the other methods you could look into:

  • Learn the hard way, like I did. It will take you about ten years and cost you thousands of dollars, dozens of failed job interview attempts, and several poorly executed portfolios. 
  • Take several expensive university courses. You probably still won’t learn most of the information I teach in this course. I didn’t learn most of the things I’m teaching in this course from my university education. I learned it all from trial and error in my teaching as a professor, and in my professional practice. All of this information is geared towards making you a great designer who has a real shot at landing your dream job. You could take the class that I teach at California College of the Arts, but there is a limit of 12 students per semester, and tuition is about $6,400 for one class. Make no mistake, this course is not a substitute for a university education, but there are some things that school simply doesn't teach you.   
  • Find some of the information on your own by buying a couple dozen books, which will still cost thousands of dollars, or at the very least, way more than the price of this course. You’ll also need to find out whether these books exist and how to find them. You’ll still have to figure out what information is important and relevant to industrial design, and reading all of those books will take you at least a few years. 
  • Buy my course. Trust me. It’s the easiest and most affordable option. I'm speaking from personal experience.  
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Your Teacher, John Mauriello

I am an intensely driven industrial designer and adjunct professor of design at California College of the Arts. I strive to achieve the highest standard in my design work. I take great pride in my design decisions and the principles I use to make them. 

I have demonstrated my ability to deliver game-changing design work for companies like Amazon, Kohler, Logitech, and Qualcomm, as well as with several startups. I create best-selling designs that have been featured in top-tier publications including Forbes, Tech Crunch, Design Boom, Popular Science, and more.

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 Create beautiful industrial design work that will help you land your dream job.
Enroll Now!