I have just completed my years (10 months) work placement at Resolute, an arcertical lighting design firm. The work placement was part of degree which is 4 year sandwich. This just means that I work for a year before my last year, I would recommend this to all undergrdautes as you are going to have to end out working eventily, a work placemnet will give you an option to see what the industry is really like, and what your strenghts are.

At Resolute I had a rought 3 phase workplan, this consited of.

1. Full Imerisoin: Working in all areas of the company. I helped, or undertook nearly every job Resolute offerd. This meant working in the glass shop, Assemblery, design office, sales office and general office type work. This part of my placement went on for 3 months and gave me a chance to see all areas of the company and more importatnly what could be manufactured, and what would sell.

Assemblery.

Glass Ready to be cold worked.

Resolute Assemberly Line.

1. (2.) Assiting Designers & Assembers: The next phase was helping Max, and Andrew the two designers at Resolute. They work alongside Douglas Vary to create solutions, and change designs depending on the requirement from the arcitects. This means that they can be doing something as simply swapping out a ballast, or they could be creating a complete solution for a one off lighting project.

   

2. (3.) Continued development of the Ardent Lighting Range. The last part of my placement was to work on the Ardent range of lighting. This project has been started from 2004, by Brent. I was incharge of taking the range and seeing how feasable the lighting range would be to take into mass production, in an offsite outsourcing site in Rockford. We completely re-designed the hardware, which went thought a very itterative design process. Price and easy of production were critial and this is very differnt design problem that I had encounterd before. I didn’t get the chance to get a commerially viable product, but i did process on some manufacuting and component issues.

   

3. Green Design. Alongside with Ardent I undertook studies into ‘green’ issues, and what we could do as a company to become more greeen and substainalbe. After a lot of reading most of this turned out to be green washing an marketing. I created a seperate blog to document my discoveries. This is avaible from http://www.blogthemanifesto.com

   

   

To all of Resolutes products see Resolutes Website

Many thanks to Doug Varey for employing me, Max Mosley for letting my Crash in his basement, Andrew Elliot for helping get over the imperial mesurement system, Kent for showing me how to run a J(about)IT assemberly line, Holy for selling the stuff and keeping things rolling and real, Jannet for being friendly and smiling, Yang and Steven for being Bad ass assemblery workers, Tommy for putting up with my bad QC standards. Mie for being patient with my Ardent Questions, Jessica for feeding me Henersy, Drew from Slipstrem design for showing me his design office, and a huge thanks to everyone else I worked with! Hopfully see you in the future at some point.

I recently found that I was getting Google Hits trying to find out how to become a product designer (Typ-Os Can be great in SEO). After looking online I saw that there isn’t really much advise out there to Students, or Anyone on What you have to do to become a Product Designer. So I will try summarize what I know in this post.

Step 1: Are you sure you want to design products?

I currently find that most BA product design students drop out of there first year of there degree because of the assumption that design is ‘an easy degree’. I am not sure where this idea comes from, but I think its because you are a “jack of all trades, master of none” that you can get away with being bad at lots of things. This isn’t really true, in reality you have to know about business, marketing, sales, engineering, material science, Art Design, Mechatronics, Electronics, Human factors, manufacturing, user experience, and a whole load of other stuff.

The definition of Product Designer is always changing, but basically we are “consumer bonder, we connect with engineers and consumers to create useful and well thought out products and services”

Step 2: Go to School.

There are many arguments about what the best product design school is. Most people will save Brunel, Loughborough, Bournemouth, Newcastle (Just because Jonathon Ive went there) and Middlsex. These are all great schools, and in the future I will hopefully plan to break down what each one has to offer. But in the end of the day you need to visit, meet the lectures, and make sure that the syllabus is being cons tally updated.

Step 3: Read, Visit, Geekout, Sketch, Absorb

The common is conception is that its all about doing stuff, practical stuff, as the literate would say. The truth is that as product design covers such a large range of subjects you have to read about design, design history, new design movements, design blogs and stay constantly up to date in this rapidly changing filed.

You will also have to become a geek, these are the programs that I know very well.

> Photoshop
> Illustataor
> Flash
> After Effects
> Premier Pro
> InDesign
> AutoCad
> Solidworks
> Alias StudioTools
> Excel (Maths and Calculations are very important)
> Web Skills (Dreamweaver, HTML, CSS, ASP, PHP, Flash)

What you also have to remember these are ONLY TOOLS, the first and most powerful tool is you pencil / pen, It is rare that I ever fire up and computer tool, without firing up my pencil / pen first. I would recommend saying that if you can’t think of idea on paper, you won’t be able to put it into CAD. There is nothing wrong with just being a CAD monkey and tackling problems in 3D space, you can even do 3D product design, that is all about CAD work. But keep in mind, you will be the CAD monkey, and not necessarily working on your own ideas, which may suite you down to the ground.

Step 4: Get experience
Try to get a degree that offers a years work experience. I’m currently working at a lighting design firm in Seattle, it is not only a great chance to work and actually get to make real stuff you get a good chance to develop your skills for your last year design project. It has given me the chance to further develop my portfolio, improve my reading and general design thinking.

If you can’t get a placement try to do as many design competitions as you can, jsut keep cranking them out. Even if you enter half finished bits of work, the experience will be great as this sort of rushed product is the bread and butter of most design consultancies.

While your a student i would recommend giving up your part time job, and just geeking out and learning the above programs. If and when you do need beer money try to get a job that will help with your career or at least give you more skills to expand your design business thinking. Its surprising how much you can learn about consumers working on the blunt end of sales, or about luxury products by working as silver service waiter.

Step 5: Get contacts.
Keep on networking, start small and just merge well with your class mates. You will learn the What?, Why?, When? from your lectures but you will find that pier group will teach you the ‘how’.

Look at everyone as a opportunity, everyone is a specialist in something. Reflect upon your own family, you might think that you have the most boring, bland family. The truth is, this is what the most of the population are like. These are “the consumers”, observe, ask and design for these people. These are the people who ultimately buy your products. Design for the people, the boring people.

> Get a Corflot profile, and a CarbonMade. These drive a lot of traffic to my site.

Step 6: Get a Job
So know you have finished University, you need to get a job now. I don’t really know what to recommend as I’m still a student. Just remember the best jobs are never advertised, use your network, publish online, do spec work, and just shamelessly self promote. Good work will always show its self, the job will follow your work.

Step 7: Make your Own Job. Freelance or you own Business.
Still no Job, Perhaps you just suck at being a product designer. (this is more than likly true) If so, go back, read, experience, observe and connect with manufactures to start creating real products, for example do you ever notice how few “real stuff” is on Corfolot. The is currently a huge problem between being able to design and manufacture.

If all fails and you can’t get a job, I would say just go at it alone. Start working with materials, designs and company’s. Sell yourself and your unique design thinking. Remember your thinking process is unique in the world, and many company’s just design bad products because no one has ever challenged them.

Go forth wannabe designer, challenge the giants.