Industrial Design is so much more than making a design look “pretty”; it’s about refining the design to be simple, elegant, and intuitive for users and fabricators alike.    Not only should a design evoke a “personality” that can be aligned with a brand identity, it must also capitalize on cost-effective tooling and fabrication techniques to assure profitability and reliability.  Industrial Design isn’t just about the physical product itself; but rather about designing the experience a user receives while interacting with it.

I typically begin with some level of conceptual exploration and refinement.  Often the goal is to simplify the product or to find a better balance between manufacturability and the perfect user-experience.    Once I’ve identified several concept candidates,  I typically illustrate them in a 3D environment so that we can evaluate their merits “visually”.   The next stage is to develop the CAD files in a manner that optimizes the target concept for manufacturability and reliability.  Those CAD files can later be used to generate 3D printed prototypes, and also for tooling and fabrication.  Very often, I’ll also help clients to develop their marketing imagery (renderings and animations) so that once the product tooling is complete, they are ready to hit the ground running.  Nearly all of the product shots you see on this site are renderings based directly on the production CAD files.

Being an unabashed sci-fi junkie, I really enjoy watching movies in the genre and playing PC games in my spare time.   When I am able to escape my workstation during the daylight hours, I like mountain biking and throwing boomerangs at the park with my kids.  I am also a huge fan of smoking my own BBQ (hickory-apple smoked ribs and Carolina-style pulled pork have become a regular food-group at our place).  Like any self-respecting gear-head geek; I also love to drive and fly radio-controlled vehicles with my kids; and on occasion, have been known to impart some thoughtful insight to building structurally-sound Legos structures to my son. I am not ashamed to admit that I think I have the coolest job in the world;  what other profession rewards dreamers who spend their time drawing their visions of the technological future?  :D