Customer Reviews

Materials and Design: The Art and Science of Material Selection in Product Design

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3 star:		(1)
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I teach product design at Ohio State to students from several engineering disciplines, and this latest book from Prof. Mike Ashby is exactly what I've been looking for. It gives an overview of product design from the perspective of the industrial designer, something engineering students need to appreciate. More importantly, it also provides a wealth of useful data on a wide range of materials and fabrication processes. In addition, each chapter has a thorough annotated reference list - valuable to anyone just entering the field. All this, and it's a beautiful example of book design, in the bargain. Regrettably, it suffers a bit from a lack of proofreading, as many books seem to these days.

It's quite heavy to read... but it covers so much information that it's worth of it. You won't find fancy products shown on the inside for any kind of material, but you will understand everything about them.

If you are truly interested in Materials and Design, this is your book. I suggest also to take a look of those books written by Chris Lefteri, they are easier to read for a student, and have examples of the materials with great pictures. It's up to you "what" and "how" you want to learn.

Collaboratively written by Mike Ashby (Professor, Engineering Department, Cambridge University) and design materials expert Kara Johnson, Materials And Design: The Art And Science Of Material Selection In Product Design is a thoroughly "user friendly" instructional guide to the scientific and systematic crafting of products from a variety of materials. Individual chapters address multidimensional issues, shaping joints and surfaces, rules of thumb for selecting certain materials over others, and much more in express, college-level detail. Enhanced throughout with full color photography and numerous illustrations, Materials And Design is strongly recommended as an extensive, superbly organized and presented, instructional resource and professional level reference.

It's a really complete book, where you can find all technical data of a material and some design aplications, also you can find substitute materials for each one of them.

Really Helpful

This book contains all the production techniques and materials that a student should know and it is written in a clear way.

After graduating with a mechanical engineering degree a year ago, I started a material cataloging project for work. This book provided a great top-level review of some material selection techniques.

Don't expect to this to be the end of your material exploration. It will act like a blueprint or the outline of an essay - lending itself nicely to quick reference and starting points for exploration.

excellent book, very helpful to the study,
a different way of looking at the material science

This book is perfect for Industrial Design students looking for some better understanding of materials, how to pick them, and what forming processes can be done to them. I am really glad I bought it.

i'm not a big fan of this book.

--what I don't like:
Oftentimes, the subject matter seems unorganized, and there are plenty of places that need some serious editing. I really can't stand incorrect grammar (obviously unintentional), especially when there's so much of it that I start focusing on wording instead of the subject or the story.

Also, they often do not fully flesh out explanations.. especially when mentioning technical details (which, is ok for us engineers, but hard for other readers). Sometimes, it seems like they were focusing on the number of pages and the layout more than the information in the chapters.

There's "further reading" bibliography-type information at the end of every chapter.

The side footnotes are ok with me, but often, the information is not really important or interesting enough to be on the same page as what you're reading about. I'd, at the very most, put them at the end of the chapter.

--what I like:
Although I haven't actually had a chance to use them, or even look through them carefully, the latter half of the book is full of charts and information on specific materials/processes.

It looks nice.. has a very clean, simple layout.

It's relatively short.

... to anyone w. even the slightest interest in materials & product design.