France Première STD2A (design and applied arts) — 1re specialties
Chapters: 8
1. Design and crafts — tools and methods
Resources and information · Analysis, investigation, synthesis · Communication and self-assessment
- Research Skills: From a Question to a Finished Project – Research is a careful way of finding an answer. You ask a clear, focused question, plan how to answer it, find information and check that each source can be trusted, collect and analyse your own data, draw a conclusion that the evidence supports, and share it while crediting every source you used.
- The Design Process: From Problem to Product – The design process is a loop of steps designers use to solve a real problem for real people: investigate the need, define it in a brief and a measurable specification, generate many ideas, build a prototype, then test and evaluate it against the specification. Whatever fails sends you back round the loop. This repeating is called iteration, and it is how almost every product, app, building and artwork is improved.
- Graphic Design – Graphic design is planning pictures, words and shapes so that a message is clear, useful and attractive. Designers use elements (line, shape, colour, type, image, space) and principles (alignment and grid, hierarchy, contrast, proximity, repetition, balance and white space). They follow a process: brief, research, ideas, sketches, digital drafts, feedback and final artwork. Graphic design is used in posters, logos, book covers, packaging, signs, websites and apps.
2. Design and crafts — creative process
Setting the context · Creating and designing · Giving form and presenting
- The Design Process: From Problem to Product – The design process is a loop of steps designers use to solve a real problem for real people: investigate the need, define it in a brief and a measurable specification, generate many ideas, build a prototype, then test and evaluate it against the specification. Whatever fails sends you back round the loop. This repeating is called iteration, and it is how almost every product, app, building and artwork is improved.
3. Design and crafts — visual arts
Tools · Ways of representing · Ways of researching · Presenting work
- Visual Representation in Art and Images – To represent something is to make an image that stands for it. A picture has only two dimensions, so artists use depth cues (size, height, overlap, light, perspective) to suggest space. Frames in a sequence show movement and time. An artwork does not have to copy reality: it can be realistic, simplified or abstract. The same image can work as a document, an artwork or an advert, and its meaning depends on its frame, words and where it is shown. Making a work includes research, tools, producing and sharing.
- Graphic Design – Graphic design is planning pictures, words and shapes so that a message is clear, useful and attractive. Designers use elements (line, shape, colour, type, image, space) and principles (alignment and grid, hierarchy, contrast, proximity, repetition, balance and white space). They follow a process: brief, research, ideas, sketches, digital drafts, feedback and final artwork. Graphic design is used in posters, logos, book covers, packaging, signs, websites and apps.
4. Design and crafts — arts, techniques and civilisations
Representations and forms · Timeline landmarks · Means of production · Contemporary landmarks
- Art History: From Cave Walls to Today – People have made art for at least 40,000 years. Prehistoric art shows animals and hands on cave walls. Ancient civilisations made art for rulers, gods and the afterlife. Classical traditions arose in Greece and Rome, India, China, Africa and the Americas. The Renaissance brought perspective and realism; modern art (from about 1860) broke those rules; contemporary art uses any material. To appreciate any artwork, describe it, analyse its elements, interpret its meaning in its context, and judge why it works.
- Design History: How Movements and Designers Shaped Everyday Things – Designs change over time because of new materials, new technology and new ideas about people and society. Arts and Crafts rejected cheap factory goods and valued hand-made work. Art Nouveau used flowing curves from nature. Bauhaus and Modernism said form follows function and designed for mass production. Mid-century designers used moulded plywood and plastic for affordable furniture. Postmodernism and Memphis broke the rules with colour and fun. Today's designers focus on sustainability and digital making. Studying the work of others helps us analyse, get inspired and design better.
5. Design and crafts — technologies
Materials · Making and processing · Innovation and foresight
- Materials and Their Properties: Why Things Are Made of What They Are – Every product is made from materials chosen for their properties. The main families are papers and boards, timbers, metals, polymers (plastics) and textiles. Physical properties describe what a material is like (density, conductivity, how it reacts to heat and water). Working properties describe how it behaves when we use or shape it (strength, hardness, toughness, elasticity, plasticity, malleability, ductility). Materials come from natural sources such as trees, ores and crude oil, and are sold in standard stock forms like sheets, bars, tubes and planks. A designer picks a material by matching its properties to the job, and also thinks about cost, availability, looks and the environment.
- Manufacturing Technology: From Raw Material to Finished Product – Manufacturing turns raw materials into useful products. Primary industry makes standard stock; secondary industry makes finished goods. Material is converted by forming, separating, combining and conditioning. Good parts need the right material, a clear technical drawing and process plan, careful measurement against tolerances, and machines run by control systems, all done safely.
6. Digital tools and languages
Digital literacy and culture · Programming logic and languages · Digital publishing · 3D modelling · Interactivity · Methods: tools, formats and teamwork
- Digital Literacy: Using Digital Tools Wisely – Digital literacy means using computers and the internet well. You pick the right software for each job. You save work in a file format others can open. You share files with a team and keep versions so nothing is lost. You know how a search engine finds pages, and you check if a source can be trusted. You read the licence before you reuse someone's work, and you give credit.
- Creative Coding: Making Art with Programs – Creative coding means writing programs to make pictures, animation, sound or interactive art. You draw on a canvas with x and y coordinates, where (0, 0) is the top-left corner and y grows downwards. Colours are three numbers (red, green, blue). Loops repeat shapes into patterns, random numbers make every run different (generative art), recursion draws fractals, and events such as a mouse click or a sensor reading let the viewer change the work. Tools like p5.js, Processing, Scratch and Python turtle are made for this.
- Web Development: How HTML, CSS and JavaScript Build a Web Page – A web page is a set of text files. The browser (client) asks a server for them using a URL and HTTP. HTML gives the page its structure: headings, paragraphs, links, images, lists, tables and forms. CSS gives style: colours, fonts, spacing and layout. JavaScript gives behaviour: it reacts to clicks and changes the page. Responsive design makes one page fit both phones and computers. Good pages are also accessible, fast and safe.
- 3D Modelling: From a Cube to a Printed Object – A 3D model is a shape stored in a computer as points (vertices) joined by edges into flat faces: a mesh. We build models by starting from simple shapes (primitives), moving, rotating and scaling them, and pulling faces out (extrude). Then we add materials and lights and the computer renders a picture. The same model can be sliced into thin layers and built by a 3D printer, or used in games, films, VR and product design.
- Physical Computing: Making Code Sense and Move – Physical computing joins code to the real world. Sensors measure something (light, temperature, distance, button presses) and turn it into a number. A microcontroller runs a program that decides what to do with that number. Actuators (LEDs, buzzers, motors, screens) act on the world. This input–process–output cycle runs again and again in a loop. Using thresholds, conditions and feedback, we build night lights, smart plant waterers, wearables and interactive art.
7. Physics-chemistry — knowing and transforming materials
Materials in general · Organic materials · Metals and their transformations · Mineral materials · Innovative materials
- Materials and Their Properties: Why Things Are Made of What They Are – Every product is made from materials chosen for their properties. The main families are papers and boards, timbers, metals, polymers (plastics) and textiles. Physical properties describe what a material is like (density, conductivity, how it reacts to heat and water). Working properties describe how it behaves when we use or shape it (strength, hardness, toughness, elasticity, plasticity, malleability, ductility). Materials come from natural sources such as trees, ores and crude oil, and are sold in standard stock forms like sheets, bars, tubes and planks. A designer picks a material by matching its properties to the job, and also thinks about cost, availability, looks and the environment.
- Polymers – A polymer is a giant molecule made by joining many small molecules (monomers) into a long chain. In addition polymerisation, monomers with a C=C double bond open up and link with nothing lost (ethene → poly(ethene)). In condensation polymerisation, two kinds of monomer with reactive groups at both ends join and give off a small molecule such as water at every link (nylon, polyester). Nature makes polymers too: starch, cellulose, proteins, DNA, rubber. Separate chains give thermoplastics that melt and can be recycled; cross-linked chains give thermosets that never melt. Most plastics do not rot, so we must reduce, reuse and recycle them.
- Oxidation and Reduction: Corrosion and Rancidity – Oxidation is gain of oxygen (or loss of hydrogen); reduction is loss of oxygen (or gain of hydrogen). They always happen together, so these are called redox reactions. The substance that gives oxygen is the oxidising agent; the one that takes it is the reducing agent. In daily life, oxidation causes corrosion (like rusting of iron) and rancidity (fats and oils going stale).
- Smart and Modern Materials – A smart material changes one of its properties (shape, colour, transparency or electrical output) when something in its surroundings changes, such as temperature, light, force or a voltage. The change is reversible. Key examples: shape-memory alloys like nitinol return to a remembered shape when heated; thermochromic pigments change colour with temperature; photochromic materials darken in UV light; piezoelectric crystals make a voltage when squeezed. Modern materials, which are not necessarily smart, include composites such as carbon-fibre and glass-fibre reinforced plastic, graphene and other nanomaterials, technical and smart textiles, liquid crystals and bio-based plastics. Engineers choose materials by their properties, cost and effect on the environment.
8. Physics-chemistry — seeing and showing objects
Light in general · Using light sources · Making and analysing colours · Making photographic images · Seeing the invisible
- Electromagnetic Waves – A changing electric field acts like a current, called the displacement current, and it makes a magnetic field. A changing magnetic field makes an electric field. Together they travel as an electromagnetic (EM) wave at c = 3 × 10⁸ m/s, even through empty space. E and B are at right angles to each other and to the direction of travel, so EM waves are transverse. Sorted by wavelength, they form the spectrum: radio, microwave, infrared, visible, ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays.
- Light Sources: Sun, Lamps, Optical Fibres and Lasers – A light source makes its own light. Natural sources are the Sun, stars, lightning and fireflies. Artificial sources are lamps: a filament bulb wastes most energy as heat, a fluorescent tube is better, an LED is best. The colour rendering index (CRI, 0 to 100) tells how truly a lamp shows colours. An optical fibre guides light by total internal reflection. A laser gives a thin, straight, single-colour beam.
- Light and Colour: Mixing, Seeing and Energy of Light – White light is a mix of colours (red to violet). Lights add: red + green + blue make white (additive mixing, used by screens). Paints take away: cyan + magenta + yellow make near-black (subtractive mixing). An object has a colour because it reflects some colours and absorbs the rest. Eyes use three kinds of cone cells. Light colour tells its energy: E = hf, blue photons carry more energy than red.
- Spherical Lenses: Images, Lens Formula and Power – A convex lens is thick in the middle and bends parallel light to meet at its focus; a concave lens is thin in the middle and spreads light out as if from its focus. With two simple rays (one parallel to the axis, one through the optical centre) you can find the image for any object position. A convex lens gives real, inverted images when the object is beyond F₁ and a virtual, erect, enlarged image inside F₁; a concave lens always gives a virtual, erect, diminished image. The lens formula 1/v − 1/u = 1/f, magnification m = v/u and power P = 1/f (in metres, unit dioptre) let you solve lens numericals.