Initiate design ideas through exploration
You need to show that you can take a starting point (something meaningful to you like a photo, music, or a place) and use visual drawing and design techniques to develop it into actual design ideas. You'll explore and transform your starting point using different drawing strategies—like sketching, 3D modelling, or digital tools—to generate multiple design ideas that could work as real products or spaces.
You show good understanding of form exploration from your starting point, use visual techniques to generate multiple 2D shapes and 3D forms, and produce several design ideas with clear functionality that connect back to what you explored.
You demonstrate purposeful, intentional exploration where you find a visual theme or narrative from your starting point, then repeatedly re-examine and refine specific forms—not just the overall design—showing a cohesive train of thought linked to your design context.
You select starting experiences highly relevant to your context that clearly inform your work, interrogate forms purposefully with unique outcomes, wisely choose which visual modes to use, show refined technical skills with good proportions and details, and continue challenging both how your design looks and how it works right through to the end—refusing to settle on an early idea.
Standards typically taken alongside or after this one. Same subject, grouped by level.