The Girl Behind Sharp Sugar

Background:

I graduated from the University of Alberta in 2006 with an impressive looking ‘Bachelor of Design with Distinction’ degree which in most part is just confusing and dumbfounding people as to what I actually do.

The assumptions range from fashion design, interior design, furniture making, graphic design, and most impressively engineering. Since there are very few industrial design jobs in Canada where I currently reside, while searching for alternative job positions, I often got the short end of the stick when employers assumed that I was an engineer and way over qualified.

What I actually do:

The easiest way to describe industrial design is in the following way – look at all the pretty man made things around you, everything from your cell phone, computer, car, watch, shoes, office chair, and even toothbrush. They were most likely all made with the help of industrial designers.

We are ‘stylists’ interpreting current trends, fashion, consumer wants, technological and environmental innovations, new materials and ergonomics to ideate and design new really good looking products. We have to take mass manufacturing processes into consideration (so for example, it doesn’t take a super complicated 50 hour production line process to make a single pair of running shoes which would then end up costing the consumer $5000 a pair).

Engineers usually come into the picture to figure out how to make our design concepts actually work (eg. Cram hundreds of amazing features, buttons, and lights into this teeny tiny phone). In the end, some of us end up with prestigious positions - designing interiors of luxury cars or designing luxury watches, and some of us end up designing toilet brushes for the dollar store.