Sculpting emotions

“Sculpting with clay? I haven’t done that since kindergarten.” Ever since I started at TU Delft in 2019, I’ve been hearing jokes about sculpting emotions at Industrial Design Engineering (IDE). It was something you did exactly once in the old bachelor’s curriculum, yet for many students, it’s the only thing they associate with IDE. “That’s not real studying,” they say, often students who had just spent hours solving differential equations.

I had to do it myself in my second year, and I’ll admit that when I was handed a lump of clay, I felt like I was supposed to be floating a few metres above the ground instead of standing firmly on it. In the new IDE bachelor’s curriculum, this assignment is no longer a standard part of the programme. But I suspect the image of IDE as ‘the degree programme where you play with clay’ will persist for quite some time. So it’s time to explain what this assignment was actually about.

The assignment was part of the Form and Experience course in which we researched the associations that certain shapes and colours evoke. Dark grey feels cold and serious, while pink is warm and friendly. It also works the other way around. If I mention an abstract concept like joy or threat, you can probably imagine a shape that fits. (And if you can’t, then you’re probably not an IDE student.) Objects gain certain qualities through their shape – just compare the bright yellow, eye-like security cameras at train stations to the sleek, grey ones in supermarkets. The function is the same, but what they express is entirely different.

To develop this way of thinking, we had a three-part assignment. First, we had to take photos of ourselves expressing a specific emotion or characteristic. Then we had to translate that feeling into a shape. Finally we had to sculpt that shape out of clay. Hair and arms were popular subjects, as were more abstract forms. My characteristic was ‘openness’ and I made two open hands stacked on top of each other.

But what’s the point of this playing with clay?

But what’s the point of this playing with clay? Surprisingly, quite a lot. A product’s appearance has to align with its target audience and brand identity, and to achieve this, you need to be able to judge an object’s look and what it communicates. But the relevance of form goes beyond product design. Shapes can also help solve bigger challenges creatively. Think, for example, of how we warn future generations about radioactive waste. You could put up warning signs, but who’s to say people in ten thousand years will still understand what danger means? That’s why experts are thinking about how to design landscapes so ominous and inhospitable that even future civilizations will instinctively know to stay away. A universal, language-free way of communicating – through form.

Still, I don’t expect the jokes to disappear anytime soon. Maybe it’s partly jealousy – after endless hours of mathematical proofs, a creative assignment might feel like a breath of fresh air. Or maybe it’s because this kind of thinking feels too intangible. At a university where rationality is leading, emotions are often seen as unnecessary noise that you’re better off muting. But the truth is, everyone reacts to form and expression, even the most analytical engineer. Even a vacuum cleaner can look friendly or serious. Learning to explicitly link shape and meaning makes you recognise this in products. In the end, linking form to meaning is a skill that helps designers create better products – even if the process involves a little bit of creative eccentricity.