Nixon watches 

I feel like an outsider. The industrial design group at Altair is definitely the bastard child of the group. Birthed from the need to document and storyboard the engineers work, we slowly infiltrated the process. To this day we are still considered by many as the "stylists". Just today, in an email I was cced on, an engineer was asked to choose an off-the-shelf part and run it by the "style guys" to make sure it was okay. So I appreciate the thought, but we do a lot more then that. That alone is a subject for a longer conversation but my main point is what happens when we aren't asked to review things. There have been many a times where I have walked up to an engineers desk to see what he/she has been up to and then was brief on alterations to the design they have made. "I thought this looked good so I changed it". That statement makes me cringe. I don't believe they are sabotaging the design on purpose. In the end everyone wants to make a product that looks great. Who am I to tell someone that something that they think looks cool isn't. Okay, okay yes i have been trained at a top industrial design school but one thing I've never forgotten is "beauty is in the eye of the beholder".

So how does a designer overcome such an obstacle? For now I have reached for the only card I have relating to this. I remind them that part of my job is to work on the overall design language. What happens when everyone starts designing individual pieces of one product? Each piece might be cool in its own right but as a whole it starts to look like The Munsters. I don't tell them that they have no clue what looks good and what they have done looks like a dog nert (even though this may be the case sometimes). That would just make them feel like crap and I walk away not knowing if he will ever ask my advice again. By telling him about the overall design language the engineer doesn't feel like you are a pompous designer who thinks that your shit don't stink. He understands that even though this small addition might be what he wants it may not be whats best for the overall product. If any one has any better ideas on how to go about this problem please let me know. Until then, I will most likely stick with this.

I want one! Photoshop of a Datsun 510.

Last year I was part of a brainstorming group at a company in Ann Arbor and together we formulated a plan for selling Dole lettuce. The picture is what resulted from this two day brainstorming activity. Probably not going to be found in the ole’ portfolio but I’m proud of it non-the-less.

I did this a few months back and its been sitting in a folder collecting dust.

Created a fight scene from a photo I found. I’m still not sure where the inspiration for this came from. Possibly a conflict with an engineer.

I designed a exterior treatment for a building in NY. I thought it might spruce up the street.

Philippe Starck most famously proclaimed that “Design is Dead”. Well mister Starck, it was you, in the conservatory with the……watch?! This statement was not proclaimed as of recent, however it has literally snapped back into my life. Starck wallowed in self pity because he believes his entire design career has been spent creating useless consumer goods for the elite. “Everything I have created is absolutely unnecessary”. I was against this statement originally because to a certain extent humans value material goods. It is our nature to want the latest and greatest and there is nothing wrong with that. For Valentines Day I purchased the beautiful S+arck watch pictured on the left for my girlfriend. I was rather excited to give it to her because of how amazingly simple, elegant, and modern the design is. I knew she would love it. Anything else the Fossil woman showed me just didn’t feel right. They all looked the same but that Starck watch…. THAT Starck watch was different.

3 days after owning the watch we are returning to the Fossil store. Why? Thanks for asking. The plastic watch has snapped from its buckle. The strap that snapped is attached to the same buckle that when getting the watch sized, doesn’t allow for error. In order to fit the watch one must wait an hour and a half for the Fossil people to cut it appropriately without a special pin snapping which apparently happens quite often. Oh yeah that’s right, I said you must permanently cut the strap at predetermined locations in order to fit it. Now we must return and go through the same process a second time. You know what S+arck, you are right.
Broken watch

Broken watch

Why not make an effort to learn the entire process one must go through in order to own your watch? Why not create a buckle that allows the user to increase or decrease the strap diameter without needing special tools? Why not use your talents to create products which make for not only a beautiful object but a beautiful experience. You would make a lot of people very happy. Or is that something you are against too now?