Interviewing Industrial Designers Pet Peeves

I’ve interviewed over 100 industrial designers thus far for this blog… here are some of my pet peeves that I’ve developed over this process.

If you agree to something… follow though!

I have a roughly 50% e-mail interview return rate – which means for every 2 agreed to and confirmed “yes” from the designer I get before spending time making the questions, I get only one back. What’s ironic is that this “return rate” has not changed as this blog grows in influence and content. I can understand this situation with a business that’s just starting but I’m starting to generate some significant traffic. Considering I don’t charge anything and directly promote each article to thousands in the design/manufacturing/entrepreneurship community – what gives?

Remember the first rule in business after “the customer is always right”… show-up!

Lack of portfolio

You are an industrial designer… it’s a purely visual medium. Off-hand, I’d say about 10-15% of industrial designers don’t have an online portfolio of their work or worse, don’t even keep a listing of clients they’ve worked with and for! I understand… you have an awesome job but another thing I’ve also discovered is that most designers jump jobs every few years… why not keep an active portfolio of your work that’s easily accessible (your own domain?) so that other designers and potential future customers or employers, can judge your skills?

Always have an updated resume and review it every 6 months… for a designer, I’d say do this every 3 months and showcase some of your design accomplishments on your own site!

Awful spelling and grammar

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the best writer out there – my excuse is that I didn’t write or read English till I was maybe 10 years old! I’m a French Canuck! Your only language is English and it’s horrible… I understand foreign designers who have difficulty expressing themselves but come-on… if all you know is English, what’s your excuse for almost intangible gibberish?

Your designs might be awesome but if you can’t communicate effectively, you diminish the impact of your skills.

Passion… show it!

You are an industrial designer, you are suppose to live, breath and love what you do, if you don’t… go flip burgers or get into another career. You can learn a lot about somebody on how they respond. Some people are crazy busy – and I understand and appreciate their time… but I’m doing this to promote YOU, not me… take advantage of the opportunity. I’m not talking about quantity of the response either, I’m talking about the interest behind the responses.

Go above and beyond… others will notice!

 That’s all…

As I approach my 100th post (this is number 83 btw) – wow… did I learn a lot about the design “industry” from manufacturers to designers – I have to thank all of you for helping me along my journey of acquiring knowledge about the field. This wouldn’t be possible without the design community.

My original goal with this was to build a resource that I wished I had growing-up to learn more about the business of design and thankfully, I think my goal is really starting to take shape! Thank you all for participating and I can’t wait to share all this knowledge with others across the design field and beyond!

Podcast Coming Together

I’ve got a few people lined-up now for my upcoming podcast – got the required software all set-up now as well… I’m anxious to see how it all comes together fully expecting the first few to be rather awful but generally getting better over time. The feedback I’ve gotten thus far has been amazing and I think this next level will really bring a lot more to this site – I’m getting better with camera work so I guess going “backwards” into audio only is quite a step as now I won’t have my “perfect face for radio” as a distraction anymore. Will be fun for sure!