Abstract We will give an introductory presentation of the research field of geometric modeling and its applications, with specific attention to the use of splines for the representation of curves and surfaces. In particular, we will start by introducing basic notions of geometric modeling leading up to the definition of splines, which are piecewise functions with prescribed smoothness at the locations where the pieces join. Splines will be exploited for the representation of parametric curves and surfaces, and we will present their application in the context of computer-aided geometric design for shape description by means of approximation and interpolation methods. Finally, we will discuss some open problems in this topic and we will sketch some recent approaches for addressing them.