You know you are a Product Designer Student when...

I ripped this from one of the face book groups (link) as I thought it was pretty funny and you guys one here might like a read.

Cliched attributes of being a Product Designer. Anybody who is a product designer, or indeed product design student will be able to relate to each statement in this this group…feel free to add your own experience to the list!

when the mouse hiding in your wall cavity at home, has more of a social life than you do.

…when the last thing you think about at night, and the first thing you think about in the morning, is model making and deadlines

…when you know the cleaners by their first name.

…when your housemates say to you good morning, and you say goodnight!

…when you spend so much money at the materials shop, you can’t afford to pay attention

…When all your Christmas presents are wrapped in unused A0 CAD drawings

…When your Christmas list to Santa reads, ‘Dear Santa, please may i have for Christmas…marker pens, layout pads and spray mount’

…when your parents have more of a social life than you do

…when you get on better with your tutors than you do with your housemates

…when you collect random pieces of rubbish, incase they help you with model making.

…when you spend more more hours in the studio, than you do in your bed

…when you get excited at the prospect of ‘pulling an all nighter’ to get ahead with your projects.

…when the highlight of your week, is having a shitty, 10 items for a pound breakfast, at the union.

…when you tell the time based on people leaving the studio

…when your are disapointed in yourself, for failing to sign in/out at the beginning/end of the day

… You are an expert and Photoshop, illustrator and auto cad
but u don’t know how to use MS excel

…your friends get more sleep in one night than you do in one week.

…You consider 3AM an early night

…the only building on campus with its lights on is your studios’.


…you say “It’s only midnight- I have plenty of time to finish.”



…you confuse sunrise with sunset.



…you ask what time it is, then ask “AM or PM?”



…you strangle your roommate because she said she stayed up late studying.


…your Friday night is 68 hours long.

…you slice your finger, and the first thing you think of is if you’ll be able to finish your model.


…you wake up to go to uni and you’re already there.

…you refer to outside studio as the “Real World.”


…“going out to eat” is at the ‘Shop Cafe’.


…you confuse today and tomorrow.

…you hear "Didn’t you wear that yesterday?’ followed by “and the day before that?”


…you roommate files a Missing Person Report.


…you count the number of days (not hours) you’ve been awake.


…concept of time is not forward, but a countdown from the time a project is due (“What time is it?”“4 hours 'till”).


…you contemplate suicide 3 times a day.


…you contemplate dropping your major 3 times a day.


…you have a tent pitched in studio, but still don’t go to sleep.

…Dremmels are a lifelong investment, if you can keep the parts.

…when you use the phrase ‘getting the round in’, and meaning tea not beer

…when u spark up a conversation in a pub, about how the ash tray is manufactured…

when the smell of burnt blue foam means home


…You don’t consider saved up pounds and pennys as beer money but money to spend on more materials


when you have more mechanical pencils, unually sized sheets of paper, and hand tools than stolen pint glasses and empty bottles adorning your windowledge

…when you feel strangley lost after project hand-ins.

You convert your own bathroom into a spray shop

…when after project hand-ins, your lack of stress worries you.

when you can’t help but point out when something is a bad design and how you could redesign it to make it better…

When the word alias means long nights of frustration, annoyance, dispair, anger, sadness and ultimately failure

When you cant imagine life without polly filler

…when someone dents your blue foam model and you feel like taking your stanley knife to their neck.

when you knod politely and say hmmm when someone tries to ‘improve’ your design, when actually you want to tell them their ideas are sh*t.

when you have 10 minuets before your deadline and your still in staples getting the mammoth of a so called design report bound.

when filler primer is your last hope.

when someone asks to borrow your ruler and pencil.

when your sick of saying the words…… form, function, aesthetics and ergonomics.

when your walking down the street trying to think of the next big thing.

When you need the technicians to help you in the workshop, but you realise you’re not a fit blonde who can make the guys submit to your every whim


when you buy a new toothbrush just so that your current toothbrush can be an old toothbrush for polishing stuff

when you set your alarm clock to remind you to stop working and eat


When you can no longer relish lie-ins,

instead you find yourself getting up, cursing that you’ve already ‘wasted’ 2 hours of project time.

…you cant get to sleep at night till 2am because you had to sketch out and idea that came to you whilst you were worrying about a project.

when…you go home after your first year and you can’t hold a conversation with anyone because all you can talk about is Materials, Manufacture and Technology.

When you think I’ve handed in a project, time to party and have a life again… only to be given ANOTHER project with EVEN MORE WORK in it the next day!

-when it takes you longer to move your stuff out of the studio than your own apartment

I can relate to these qoutes in many cases (usually at the end of semester) but people need to relax a little. Enjoy your life while you can. It’s unhealthy to spend all your time working in the studio.

good point, but most design student I’ve come across do the work hard play hard during the semester then go chill during the summer. Although this work reasonably well when you can have 3/4 months off in the middle it doesn’t work so well for the full time designer after uni.

I once had a friend tell me I smelled like ID.

I think he was picking up on the stench of brown modeling clay and fine blue foam dust which was gently falling out of my hair. Ah, good times.

…when your hair grows to long and you develop a pretty good beard you never knew you could grow, until people start to question what the homeless guy is doing in the studio.

when you decide to grab a pop from the school’s talk shop and the cashier asks you whether it is snowing outside by the sight of the blue foam dust all over your hair and hoodie!

these are kinda more depressing than funny

yeah it doesn’t sounds good from the outside…but its worth it when you see your first product coming out of the machines. Kinda like jumping out of your head in to real life, except it takes sometime, some pain and a hint of passion to get it out.