What were your foremost influences in wanting to design?

When I was a little kid, my mom told me I should design toys. For years I didn’t think that was a real job. I got very interested in art but had no desire to live painting to painting. Also, I enjoyed the other, more pragmatic, subjects and didn’t want to give them up completely. An art teacher suggested industrial design, which I had never heard of. It seemed like a good mixture of creativity and pragmatism while being able to earn a decent living.

As it turns out, my mom was right. My first co-op was as a toy designer.

Oddly enough it started with drawing my own band flyers in my late teens. I learned Photoshop (then Photostyler, without layers and only one undo!) to make the flyers more trippy. That led to a career as a graphic designer, then Art Director. Then I met Bart from Design Engine. He gave me a demo using Alias and it blew my freakin mind. I’ve been hooked on CAD ever since. After a layoff from advertising I learned Pro/E, started freelancing and landed my current gig designing crazy-ass furniture and lighting.

The sad part is I wish someone would have introduced me to ID in high school, so instead of skipping college to be a rock star I would be ten years ahead of myself. I really should volunteer. Does anyone in the Chicago area want to team up and show some kids what’s up?

My story sounds remarkably like ever other poster’s above (i.e. class artist, dad was an Engineer, loved making and documenting how to make rubber band guns, etc.) save one: I actually lay blame squarely at the feet of Nightline and IDEO. Prior to 1998 / 1999 I’d never heard of Industrial Design and was involved in high tech (then print) sales after getting two totally unrelated-to-design degrees. I happened upon Nightline’s “Deep Dive” episode and starting looking at ID the very next day. After reaching out to a dozen IDSA mentors about getting involved in product development sales first, one mentor in North Carolina suggested that I look at NC State for a degree in Industrial Design. I moved my family a year later and now…I’m selling design. But I will commercialize my own products someday, damn it!

Ps. I, too, would love to get my firm involved directly in talking to local high school kids. If I’d known then what I know now…

i drank the coolaid, you know the movies about inventors, designers and such. I didnt see the ones like tucker a man and his dream, or read the true story of tesla and fuller.

breaking, everything…

R

I was just always “drawing stuff from the future”, as I called it then…

I have similar story but a bit different. When I was a kid I was always into drawing. I drew things like fighter planes, houses, cars (can’t draw them for shit now) and other random things lying around the house.

When I got a bit older I started to have a real interest in architecture. I really loved the way that a building could be beautiful and be a real part of the environment that it was placed in. I also got a really good at CAD, most of all AutoCAD 12. When I was in HS I took architecture classes, at least 2 a year, and then my senior year decided to take Art. I know this is probably not the norm with the rest of you but I looked at art as a useless class. I knew I could draw, I did not need a teacher to tell me that.

When I finally took my art class in HS I was the only Senior in a freshman class. This teacher was one of the hardest teachers I have ever had. He did not grade me as a freshman; he graded me as a senior. He loved my work and thought I was talented, but he wanted to teach me a bit of humility.

When it cam time to apply for schools he asked me what it was that I wanted to do, and I told him I was either going to go to school for engineering, because I was good at CAD, or I was going to go to school for Business because that is what my father did and he flipped. He told me that I was too talented and should go to an art school. So I got into art school and majored in Illustration. I did this because of my love for art and cartoons. My dream was to become a guy that works for Disney or something.

After getting to school and taking some illustration classes I once again got a lesson in humility. I not only realized that illustration is a hard business, but that I did not have the passion for it. I still had that passion for how things worked and the tech aspect of Architecture. About a month into my college education I met Bob Fee from SCAD and it was history from there. This man had me sold from day one. He told me that my love for illustration could be used in scenarios, my love for how things worked could be put to use in ID, and so on.

I have never looked back from that moment. I have to say that it took me a while to find ID as it I did not know about it when I was making my decision to go into college, but it is a bit more publicized now and the new generation of designers have a lot more info. Good luck too all of you

Sorry for the long post!!

I had a neighbor in high school who was a pretty cool guy. He collected old Triumph motorcycles and Jaguars and he had studied ID in college. He turned me on to the fact that ID even existed as a balance between art and engineering. Then my dad, who worked for Steelcase, brought home an IDEO catalog and I was hooked.

I was an engineering student and was on the Formula Race Team. During the building process I was interested more in the fabrication. When we raced in detroit I was more interested in the body styles and the car displays than I was the torque and horsepower.

I always took things apart as a kid and I drew alot of cartoons but I didn’t even know about Design until college.

Has anyone else felt that “How I got into Design” stories always sound like “Coming out of the closet” stories?

What is it about Industrial Designers as a group that we seem to constantly justify being a Designer? Doctors and Engineers wear their profession like a badge while I always feel like most designers reluctantly admit their in Industrial Design. Or worse yet, need to say soemthing like "I’m a product designer, or simply “I’m a Designer” and then have to correct ppl when they ask what kind of clothes we design.

This brings me back to the fact that for a group of people that are supposed to be good at branding and identifying product with the customer, we do a horrible job of identifying the profession of Industrial Design to ourselves and other people.

I’ve always liked to draw since young but it wasn’t really encouraged by either my family or teachers and so I never really made it far in that area. Got a computer when I was 15 and got hooked on to the internet, taught myself HTML and all that and had planned to get into IT and programming, but due to the wonderful education system in Singapore, I ended up doing engineering in college. Figured I didn’t like it very much after a year, left and switched to art school to do web design. Bumped around a couple of years doing web and graphics, also picked up a new hobby in toy collecting. Decided I’d like to do something toy related and uprooted myself to Japan, and it’s here that I discovered the magic that is ID.

In essence, I never heard of the word ID until august 2006.

I did 4 years of engineering at college and school, i switched to it, i found both horribly dull. I was always into music, that buzz of creation is addictive, and i found a university course which seemed to satisfy that. Influences from my mates also chipped in, they are all graphic designers, fine artists and sculpters. so Conversation was always about form, intent and presence was always being debated. Design was natural, and i don’t think i can be anything else.

I would say school. Motivation from teachers definitely got me into art and design. Even from an early age. I guess if they see something that you are good at then they help you to work on it.

My original major was Business, then after a year of that, I pursued Fine Arts when I really wanted to get back to my creative side. But soon after I took a sculpture class, I was hooked. I knew that I wanted to be able to create 3D objects, but I didn’t know that there was such a major besides being in sculpture. To be honest though, I didn’t like drawing much, I just knew that I had a knack for thinking beyond the normal bounds and preferred being able to use my hands as the manufacturing tool rather than a pencil. Ultimately though, it was Sculpture that got me interested in Industrial Design.

In highschool, technical graphics was what I was most interested in - drawing buildings didn’t really appeal to me, i preferred other things. Prior to that, there were a few things that got me into ID.

Drawing Cars - I could draw in perspective from roughly age 9 or 10. Admittedly nothing great, but no one else drew like that.

Lego - I made anything I could out of Lego, and got frustrated at people who didn’t do it ‘right’. I couldn’t have mismatched garbage on my spaceships. I was never interested in following the instructions though, after I made them once then I would just make my own things. I was very interested in the story of Lego, the worlds and ideas I could create with these littel palstic blocks.

Usborne’s Book of the Future - pictures speak a thousand words here.

and more. Looking at it now, it is pretty cheesy. THe full book can be found online though - well worth a read for a 1979 book. (I was born in 1987)

Star Wars - I loved drawing all this ships and have an embarrasingly geeky amount of Star Wars knowlege.

A friend’s older brother did the ID course that I am doing now, and I went oer to his place to check it all out, and was hooked instantly.
There’s more, but yeah.

I remember that same book!

I’d love t get my hands on another copy - the last time I saw it was like 1994…such a good book. I really liked the page with the 2 alternate futures - one all grim and grimy, and another one all clean and green. Remember that one?

@epic I realize that this is a very old thread, but hoping you get this. I too found the usborne book of the future when I was a kid, which was unbeknownst to me at the time, my first introduction to ID. I had a very strong recollection of it, but couldn’t remember the title. A few years ago, I was able to track it down (thanks Internet) but was disappointed to discover the prices demanded for the few available copies on ebay, and while I downloaded the pdf scan on scribd, it just isn’t the same. I reached out to one of the authors to see if they had any remaining copies (nope) or if there were any plans to reissue (also nope).

HOWEVER: a few weeks ago, I happened to do another search on a whim. One of the results was a copy for $18.55 USD. Surely a scam or otherwise incorrect? Turns out: NO. Usborne has somewhat quietly re-issued the book (it’s hard to even find on their website) in its original format, with the cover stating it’s “unabridged, unedited, and un-updated.” The only change is a new foreword by another person whose career was influenced by the original publication.

So, if, as you said, you’d like to get your hands on another copy, head over to the Blackwell’s site. I live in the US, and they offer delivery there, so I can’t imagine they wouldn’t do so for Australia. I ordered a copy and received in it in about a week.

Enjoy and spread the word.

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nice @nak! I looks like original copies are going for $300 and up! But the reissue is here: