Industrial Design. The Jack of all Trades.
Industrial Design isn’t an easy industry to define, this becomes particularly apparent to me when I’m asked what I do. As I begin to explain that I both study and work in the industrial design industry, I am often met with a blank stare of confusion followed by, “well what does that actually involve”. The thing is, it involves so much more than what most people assume.
Industrial designers are taught to learn a little about a lot, which forces us to become a ‘Jack of all trades’. I love this, its one of the main reason I strived to work within this industry, and its important to enter into this mindset. But having said this, it doesn’t half make it difficult to explain!
If you are to Google, ‘Definition of Industrial Design’ it returns the following extremely vague and weak definition, ‘The art or process of designing manufactured products’. While fundamentally this isn’t incorrect, I’d like to believe that Industrial Design is so much more than this!
I feel that the issue I have here revolves around the word ‘design’ and the stigma that wrongly comes with it. Countless times now I have been on the receiving end of comments along the lines of “So you just draw all day then?” or “You just sit on the computer all day”. While yes, both drawing and computer oriented tasks such as CAD are a huge aspect of the design process and therefore industrial design, it isn’t just what we do!
In order to create a successful and commercially viable product we are required to do so much more than sketch ‘pretty’ drawings. We have to research possible materials, manufacturing methods, standards and regulations, amongst a plethora of other things. While we must keep up-to-date with new developments within these areas, overtime we begin to form a knowledge of them. Now I’m definitely not saying that we become an expert in any of the fields, which is why the phrase ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’ fits us so well!
Design compromise is a huge aspect of the design process, it could be brought on due to cost, manufacturing , timescales etc etc. If these issues do arise it’s important that we first understand the cause of this and before we can then go onto figuring out or designing a solution. This is an extremely desirable attribute to companies as it means that they do not necessarily have to hire or outsource the project to an engineer to resolve the issue.
All in all I love being required to know a little about a lot, it’s a great excuse to read-up and learn about topics from a whole range of industry sectors!
James
