Little late considering you sent me this in July… but here it am.
Sorry if they’re generic, but these questions are actually based on what (admittedly little) I know about you. I’d still like to hear the answers to the questions I posted if you’re interested in answering.
What is the biggest mistake a young designer can make?
Getting tunnel vision, squirreling yourself into a monkey position for YEARS to come. Solution? Learn the business. A lot of the old dogs here have talked about what happens to an IDer in the old age…read up on it. So learn the business as fast as you can. Make connections. Good ones. Not for social reasons, you can do that anytime anywhere at the local toilet store. Make STRATEGIC connections and keep in touch periodically. Learn the business outside of the visual queerness that symbolizes “industrial design” for you and your little friends at this point in life (OOOH concept car air brush renderings!). Drop the stupid markers once in a while. You eventually learn that the jizz bucket of eye candy the little IDers frolic over is nothing in terms of the grand scheme of things as a product designer. This isn’t an Art-Off (forever at least). After we oooh and ahhh about your rendering at the presentation, the adults talk shop. You are a hired child. You are seen as one. Most likely at a big company, you are seen as a bellydancing little girl with physical talents, not particularly known for your business mind. So learn the business. Learn to talk the business. Learn to deal with clients. Don’t be the legless entertainment they wheel in and let you do your juggling, then they wheel you out before the “real” business and decisions with the clients happens. Participate and be proactive in that side of things as well. Your markers and teary eyed design idea explanations are a dime a dozen. The real deal is getting the product on the shelves. Fucck iPod. Fuckk IDEA awards. Fuuck moaning about IDEO. 98% reading this won’t come near their dumpsters. Wake up. Gauge yourself. Brutally & honestly. Make your own reality.
So anyways, don’t JUST be the art whore they call in twice a week at the cakery bakery that is known for good “happy birthday” penmanship and for drawing the eye on Fudgie the Whale the best. Don’t be a glorified blue collar jockey with 19 mediocre skill sets (physical at that) that you are so proud of. Your face beaming with a resume listing 19 software programs in reality is a big red “MONKEY” forehead stamp. You are categorized as an expendable/replacable/recycable work horse. During the last years of college and first jobs, I as well was aroused and titillated with “collecting” software names and other skill sets to boast and list endlessly on my resume. Well rounded are we! This only goes so far. I always love ID idiots with Word and HTML programs listed as computer skills in their resumes. Laff. 6 modeling programs as well? Expert you are. EVEN the 2009 adobe CS9 version and solidworks2098? Congrats. Now go in the dark corner and mouse away for the next 7 years.
OK, I’m being unfair in that it is a good idea to show your wide range of skills and knowledge. But don’t let collecting go too far up your ass. It’s more pathetic than beneficial. You’re not being hired to write HTML tags, or to figure out how to get rid of Clippy in Word. And I hope you have the inclination to be insulted if you are asked to, once you are sitting in your cube and don’t have much ID work to do. You are NOT a fuccking jack-of-all-anythingdesigns. You weren’t hired as one.
Soon after, I realized that, beyond letting the employer know that I knew basic mouse skills and understanding popular CAD programs, I had NO desire to be known as the guy for CAD work. Fucck that. You got low tier mechies for CADin’. You don’t? Hire more, asssshole. I don’t ask marketing to blow me when they have down time. You’re not sitting there to make mechanical drafts, bosses, and chamfers. Actually, I DON’T even emphasize that I can model anymore. I won’t even open up a CAD program unless its to fix a curve for a mechie or if I feel the need to explore in deep detail through 3D. My resume started to look FAR different because of this. If you look through a stack of resumes, you can differentiate kids’ resumes vs. in-the-know professional designer resumes, EVEN if the basic skills sets are similar. Go check it out. It almost seems pathetic like a fat chick displaying too much to get starved-for attention.
Either way, try to WANT to learn the business. If not for what I’m talking/ranting about and future security, then just do it for knowledge itself. It’s your god damn career from now on. Don’t be a squirrel mumbling about his red stapler in 10 years.
What is the area that you feel student and incoming designers are most lacking?
A good self gauge and self perception.
Incoming designers are most likely just graduated and in their 20’s. This is an age far old enough to know who you are and where you stand in life. This can mean both having too much of the head up the ass as well as too little. This happens for two reasons. Designers and designer/art types are either A) pompous asses that have effeminate diva-like qualities WAY overshooting their self worth, too dumb to realize that they have no worth to anybody yet nor know how the world works yet (especially business), with a dash of immature hippie liberalism mixed in (most likely), B) introverted meek push overs (mostly female designers, you know this) who are afraid to speak up and defend their designs, getting bent over on minimal salaries, OR c) either A or B depending on the day of the week.
A good designer is a good designer based on his personality. A good designer is highly opinionated and highly particular. Trend-setter qualities as well as very discriminating/discerning tastes visually as well as in values/customs/traditions/beliefs. This is who the clueless business-only clients need to tell them and teach them. Hopefully he hates everything. Is bothered by everything. Annoyed by everyone. Perceptive and acute, a perfectionist. Very shrewd. Bratty as a child. Possibly the younger son. These are qualities that make a good designer. And these are only in reference to general qualities in character and personaliy, not in physical “design skills.” And in this TINY pool of a design population, what separates even further from good to great designers is that on top of these qualities, great designers possess farsightedness. There is a time when you should leave the circle jerk over photoshop airbrush skills to the bottom feeders. Go cross link Rhino tutorials with each other and discuss the BEST markers (AS IF, btw. Eye roll).
Other than that, in terms of physical skills, it’s all up to the individual in terms of what is lacking. Anyone can draw. Amongst us, drawing and sketching skills, being “artistic,” is a dime a dozen. When you sit amongst your overweight families in your turtlenecks for the holidays (having intriguing conversations I’m sure, wish I was there), THEN you can jerk yourself all over as THE “artistic” one of the bunch. Here, no one gives a shit. My Day-Lewis left foot can sketch and render. Design isn’t about sketching skills. It’s about getting one idea into another’s head. Like getting from A to B. If you can take a bus, car, bike, walk, hobble, donkey punch your way to B, who cares how you got there. Sketching well is only one option of many. It just happens to be the most popular and relatively efficient form (as well as visually queerishly intriguing and exciting). If you have the gift of gab and are highly talented in ways of description and story telling, you can be a great designer as well. So physical skills are just that. Physical skills. Method of transport. So get over your hang ups about art skills. Design isn’t a rendering convention. On the other hand, there are also MANY people with incredible talents who are just idiots when it comes to people skills and business sense. I knew a lot of such cases in ID school, people who have the basic “ID” skills but without a personality and with a charisma of a rock. Not having ONE person to call a genuine friend. Not ONE person who gave him respect in the studio or in life. So success and failure all depend on the personality, not immortal art skills.
What’s your design philosophy?
Design should be cool.
I’m not in the profession of bracket designs, I’m in the profession of consumer product designs. There is nothing that supercedes the requirement of cool in this industry. Quote me as you please.
Creating the feeling that the user has had with his blankie that he dragged around as a child, but now between him and the product he uses is a grand success.
When the “moment” is not only in the task, but is now shared and distributed to the tool itself, design is a success. Joy in food is now also joy in cooking. Joy in music is now also joy in using the player. This has GOT to make your joy in music more joyer. Yes I said joyer. Now think about a task you’re not too joyous about. Then, by logical deduction, think about how joy in using the tool HAS GOT to make you at least some joy in the task, if not then at least just joy in the tool, which is still joy, and which is… what I just said. Not only is the event an event, but the method to the event is an event. Do we dare imagine the tool OUTSHADOWING the task? Now that is ballsy cool.
What general philosophy do you live your life by?
My philosophy is humor. Make life fun and if not, entertaining at the least. What’s the point of living? As you can see from my presence and so called contributions here, I tend to follow this philosophy.