Thoughts on design education, advice for design students, critiques of our industry, and whatever else feels worthwhile. Want new posts sent to your inbox instead? 👉🏼 Subscribe to my Substack here 👈🏼
This article was written in collaboration with the fabulous Anne Van Itallie , Whipsaw’s Director of Business Development and perhaps the most effective network-er I’ve ever known. Industrial design is a relatively small field, and a competitive one at that. While a solid portfolio alone can land you a great job (more on that here ), you’re much more likely to find opportunities, and ultimately…
Most people’s conception of design as a practice focuses on the outputs: stunning renderings, proof of concept prototypes, frame-worthy sketches. But as important as the hard skills of sketching, CAD, and rendering are, there’s one particular quality that is extremely important. It’s a lesson that is seldom taught explicitly, despite the fact that it transcends and influences literally every…
As I’ve written in a previous article ( linked here ), it’s imperative to go above and beyond your school work in order to stand out from the pack and build your skills. The craft of design requires time and exposure to new challenges, and the reality is that the number of projects in a design education is usually not enough to master the skills at the level that’s required for industry. I love…
[AUTHOR’S NOTE: Please take care in reading this article. This has been an emotionally difficult one for me to write, and while I feel strongly that everyone ought to read it, it may similarly be a difficult one to read if you’re an F-1 student.] The U.S.’s immigration system is a complex series of bureaucratic processes seemingly designed to dissuade applicants and employers, filter out…
[NOTE: this is a rework of an entry I wrote for Whipsaw’s blog about a year ago ( linked here ). Some areas have been updated or rewritten — mostly to better reflect my voice rather than the Whipsaw brand voice and to reframe this in the present tense — but the bulk of the content is the same.] A few times a year at Whipsaw, we’ll open up an internship slot for a student to join the team. In this…