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Newell Rubbermaid to Open Huge Design Center in Michigan

By Rain Noe - April 3, 2013

in Design Business

Speaking of Sharpies, what do they have in common with these products?

All of those brands—Sharpie, Irwin Tools, Dymo, Calphalon, Rubbermaid, Rubbermaid Commercial Products and Graco, not to mention Goody, Waterman, Lenox, Paper-Mate, Parker, Aprica and more—are all owned by Newell Rubbermaid, which owns 40 brands in total. And having that much product diversity may be good news to those of you ID students set to graduate in 2014, and willing to move to Michigan: Newell Rubbermaid has announced they're consolidating 15 industrial design teams into one massive one, to be located at their first global design center.

The Newell Rubbermaid Design Center, located in Western Michigan University's Business Technology and Research Park, will employ 100 industrial and graphic designers under a single roof, with salaries reportedly in the $70,000 to $90,000 range. The $4 million, 40,000-square-foot facility is slated to open in early 2014, and while a number of those jobs will go to relocated designers currently employed by the sub-brand, there's surely going to be job vacancies from those who didn't want to move. And if things go well, the facility has space to expand by a factor of four. Here's some more info from the press release:

"Great design and creativity is the difference between a standard product and one that is beautiful in every way—and drives consumer preference," said Chuck Jones, Newell Rubbermaid's Chief Design and Research & Development Officer. "Our new Design Center will be a best-in-class facility that enables us to attract the best international design talent to work on a wonderful portfolio of leading brands. Our brand studios and immersion labs will foster growth ideas as designers collaborate with marketing and R&D on great innovation...

The [facility] has been carefully planned to foster creativity and maximize the sharing of ideas and technologies among the company's brands. A large, open studio space will provide the ideal environment for designers to collaborate using advanced software tools. Immersion labs for the company's priority business segments will enable design and marketing teams to evaluate product prototypes and imagine the possibilities of future product roadmaps. The company is investing in new talent with specialist design skills to work alongside the existing industrial and graphic design teams.

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K. Todd Shelley

11 years ago

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In regards to I.D. schools that will be in close proximity to this new Newell Rubbermaid design center. Kendall College of Art and Design - Grand Rapids. There are several I.D.'s working within Newell right now, at management level, who are Kendall Alumni.
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Michael

11 years ago

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Not sure what the last few post are about. The real discussion should focus on the positive momentum this creates for the design profession. I am not aware of many companies making this type of commitment to Design at the moment and Chuck Jones and his team deserve to be recognized for this. Great News Chuck!
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Nelson01

11 years ago

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youdliketoknow... while the industrial design department had been on slow decline for years (hence my reference to early 2000's) you are correct that the 'official' closure was 2009. My only point was that the Industrial Design department was well on its way to closure long before that...

It should be noted that WMU has an active Graphic Design program as well as several fine art programs of note. Not all design is 'ID'...

I graduated from WMU from the graphics program in 2004.

BTW... IIT = Illinois Institute of Technology

Cheers
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youdliketoknow

11 years ago

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hmm..seems as though "Nelson01" has his history a bit out of line...

WMU did not close until the summer of 2009. Anyone who actually went to WMU could tell you that ;)
Re-opening the dept. has been talked about amongst alumni for years since...

IIT Design? what?

Either way yes - great to here another design dept. is to hit South West Michigan. -cheers

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Nelson01

11 years ago

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Jon... your history is a bit off... the ID program at Western was closed in the early 2000's... that said, WMU and local business leaders are planning to reestablish a design program there in 2014-2015.

Regardless of their reasons, I am very thankful Rubbermaid had decided to locate their corporate design studio in West Michigan... great proximity to schools like CCS and IIT as well as metro Chicago.
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Jon

11 years ago

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This is interesting because they are moving to a college campus that very recently shut down their ID department. Oh the irony! If only they did this 5 years ago...
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Deb K

11 years ago

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Yahoo to Kazoo!
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