Additive Design: One speaks of additive design when, in the perception of a product or form, the technical or practical functions characteristic to a product are arranged so that they largely maintain their visual independence.
Integrative Design: Here the creative instruments that are employed lead to a holistic perception of the product. Visual irritations that emerge primarily through multiple or different technical and practical functions, and through the materials used for these, can be considerably reduced by formal means, including uninterrupted lines, continuity, and uniformity of materials and colours.
Integral Design: What dominates here is the basic form, which is generally mathematically geometric and whose multiplicity of forms is limited to a few elementary basic shapes, including spheres, cylinders, squares, and pyramids. Cognitive and cultural imprinting make these geometric solids extremely stable in terms of the psychology of perception; they remain visually stable in our mental conceptualisation even when their form is violated, for instance, through notches or clear reductions or additions to the form.
Sculptural Design: This variant does not merely conform the pure, practical, and functional requirements of the products, but rather interprets the functions individually or even artistically, generating highly symbolic expressive power.
Organic Design: This method refers to biological principles (bionics); it also allows nature-like associations. The resulting sentiments not only build on a visual perception, but also integrate our spectrum of perception as a whole.Such perceptions as smells, sensations of cold and hot, tactile experience, and hearing as a spatial phenomenon are elementary experiences with only minimal differences in meaning for different cultures.