Who's Ben Arent?

Ben is a 2008 graduate product designer from Middlesex University.  This is a small site dedicated to his design work, and design process. Ben is currently working at the TRIL Centre .

Why did you make benarent.co.uk?

I have been creating web site for over 7 years now. Being the first generation to really grow up with the Internet, I wanted to give back to the internet by creating a portfolio site and also make an online repository for my thoughts, work, views and experiences.

Creating a more complete web site has been meant that I have got a lot of press attention, and it has also brought a lot of interested of commercial buyers and art galley curators.

You can read my blog, view my ideas, read about 'my' process.

Where would you like to be in 5 years?

This is a question i don't know if I will ever answer. I don't' see my self as a traditional product designer, my skills in Engineering and Sketching isn't that of the 1st class Product Designers. Yet, I believe I have a multidisciplinary knowledge coupled with a keenness to become an entrepreneur. There are areas that I'm interested and are I hope to work somewhere along these lines.

• Interaction Design:

  The Digital Revolution has just started, and I want to create useful interaction products, not just fridges that tell you are out of milk.

• Ecological Design:

  That thing called the environment is dying pretty fast, and all we can do is create 190 different styles of hair straighter. As product designers, we are just feeding peoples need to consume. We all need products, but I believe the product designer could have more to do with the Ecological aspects of there design.

• Action Sports Design:

  The reason why Action sports drives me to it, is as it was Mountain boarding that lead me to product design. I reason I would want to work in the Action Sports industry is the people. Everyone is so passionate, so friendly from consumers to suppliers. Everyone just gets it, and there is a lot less hassle than working with the politics of Furniture / Lighting Design which is 'just a little' to pretentious for my taste. Yet maybe I could change that?