As a profession, Industrial Design has taken me many places and shown me many things throughout the course of a college degree and industry experience. As an experience of life, however, it has been an integral ingredient since Day One. What I do and who I am are the same thing; I’ve never seen them as separate and was never able to identify with a career whose ultimate result was simply a paycheck.

My family is made up of designers, filmmakers, architects, writers, painters, sculptors, jewelers, and musicians… so ending up in the design field was an inevitability.

My worldview has therefore been shaped by design but I’ve always tried to avoid treating this as a limitation. That is, if you narrow your view and build walls based on a title or profession you’re surely going to miss out on a lot of things. I often think the design industry, which should be there to serve a greater good, becomes distracted with itself and therefore loses the opportunity to dialogue with the very people that it’s creating for.

You may be wondering at this point what Industrial Design actually encompasses. My definition is this: that which is created for the experience of all, to improve quality of life, to transmit meaning, and to be shared. The ‘industrial’ aspect I believe should refer to its ability to cross borders and be accessible, because so often the term ‘designer’ is a little separatist, exclusive and ultimately expensive. So there’s a lot I’d like to accomplish with writing Design in the Blood, not only by sharing my point of view but also by telling the stories of the many amazing people that Industrial Design has brought me into contact with, in order to shine the light across the many categories that it covers: from product to automotive to furniture and (arguably) the architectural and graphical, since the basic elements of good design apply across all these borders. Yet it’s not the past and present of design that I find to be the most interesting; massive shifts are taking place that we cannot measure or plan for, and now is the time for the artists, designers, and creative thinkers to thrive. It is their vision that will shape and define where we head next and how we use the limitless technology that is ever available at our fingertips.

The above title could also be read as Designing the Blood because it’s the very foundations that need to be created anew, not just the surface; that which is not only skin deep, and that which is based on, simply, style. This means considering the whole, taking into account what good design is from start to finish, from the spark of an idea, to a sketch, to manufacturing, to a product on a shelf and beyond. By keeping all this as a contextual backdrop I hope to make sense of this broad and ever pervasive life’s passion that has kept me curious and critical of my surroundings, and that continues to take me on a fantastic journey. I hope you enjoy what’s to come.

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To see more from Leon Fitzpatrick, visit: http://evilmonito.com/author/leon/

Published on 4 November 2009 | 4 |