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Thoughts on the Term Industrial Design

By Michael DiTullo - January 7, 2014

in Essay

Like a lot of designers, I have struggled with the term industrial design over the years. The term seems a little vague. Sometimes people ask us if we design factories. A look at conversations over in the Core77 discussions forums shows I'm not alone. Check out this 80 reply thread on the forum that was started back in 2007. The term doesn't seem have the weight of history that Architecture has. It doesn't have the contemporary feel of the term Interaction Design. It does't have the specificity that some of our sub disciplines have like furniture design and footwear design, and it doesn't have the sexiness of transportation design or entertainment concept design.

In reaction we have flirted with other terms like product design, which has it's own set of issues. It seems a bit clinical to me and doesn't touch on the breadth of what we do beyond the product. Adding to the confusion, the term product design has been co-opted in some cases by mechanical engineers and app designers.

Over the last 15 years, as I've grown from a staff designer to a design director, creative director, and now chief design officer at Sound United, I've now started to come full circle. What I do now as a CDO of course involves identifying user segments, defining brand parameters, conceptualizing product opportunities, designing physical and digital products, packaging, web-experiences, physical retail and event spaces. It also involves designing interdisciplinary work flows, concept development processes, and organizational structures. Suddenly the term Industrial design seems to fit. Our education in user-centered design, problem identification, creative solution finding, implementation strategy mixed with our desire to often find the most aesthetic and clean solution makes us just as suited to designing the perfect ergonomic task chair as it does designing the company that makes the chair.

Industrial designers can in fact be designers of industry. So after 15 years of trying to dodge the term, I've actually come to embrace it. I am an industrial designer.

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Ralph Zoontjens

10 years ago

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I pretty much agree with Nigel.

I use the term product designer because it removes the technical associations and makes it easier to understand for people basically. 'Industrial Design' has this old, 2nd industrial revolution, dehumanized feel to it too. People used to be proud of having a technical sounding job title and degree from a technical school, but those days are over. I see manufacturing quickly shifting more from mass manufacturing to more localized and democratized production, and I'm already focusing a lot on designing for 3d printing. So for me the term product designer fits much better. The software guys just need to call themselves interactive designers. And when you combine interactive with product design you can call your role an 'interactive product designer'. But yeah if you focus solely on creating mass-produced items you should probably retain the term 'industrial designer'.

And unless an educational program is purely focused on mass-produced products, it should probably also start considering changing its name (I work freelance at Eindhoven University of Technology's dept. of Industrial Design and to just be completely honest, I despise the name and almost shiver everytime I hear it :) there's hardly any industrial design happening there really)
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Rob Curedale

10 years ago

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The Google Ngram viewer reveals that the term "Industrial Design" was first used in a UK government report in 1839. The report was a document recommending that a number of government ministers travel to Europe to visit some art schools that had a good record of art graduates finding roles designing for industry. It recognized the need for this new role as the Industrial revolution took hold in the UK. It was an initiative that led to the setting up of the Royal College of Art in 1840 and the first Industrial Design Course. A far as I know I am the only person that has done this research. I believe that the term is usually attributed to someone around 1890. The Industrial Design Group that I established on LinkedIn now has around 90,000 members.
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Tralfazmajestic

10 years ago

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Josh Halldeman has the best definition: "Mad Scientist"
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Ken

10 years ago

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The problem of industrial design as a reference term is not only the lack of specificity, but the embrace of its generality. Industrial Design is the source and process of the development of objects, environments, and interactions combined on numerous levels. As Michael addressed, it is the source of creativity that powers industry and it's product or service to the masses or individual. The common vocabulary for words of the industrial revolution have been "tweaked" as is a lot of our common terminology. If you were to search on the term architecture, it's possible more of the references would relate to digital architecture. Is this bad for the architecture field, maybe not now, but could be in the near future.

I have always related in conversations about this topic that people interact with the result of industrial designs efforts more than any single field or professional practice on earth. Then why is there still confusion over what we do. We can hold the blame on ourselves for not championing our profession, the associations that represent our field of practice, or our diversity of creativity.

The field of industrial design is broad, diverse, and uniquely impactful on an individual to international level simultaneously. We shape the experience of the environment that we live and work in, travel in, the experience of sitting, standing, laying, whapt we touch, how we touch or hold it, how if feels, the color, the texture, how it reacts to our interaction, there are so many things that could be added to this list, it is almost endless, because we haven't finished design things that we don't even know we need yet.

There are a lot of great places to get educated in the world for industrial design, but I'm sure the large majority will agree, that whatever specialty you chose to work in, it was not the only design education you got, that is what makes us special.

Michael, thanks for lifting this subject up again.
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Ryan

10 years ago

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As I contemplate this topic on an almost daily basis I usually come back to the fact that an Industrial Designer is actually a type or description of a person. It describes how I think verse what I do on a daily basis. It is someone who has a creative mind, is empathetic to users of any product or service, understands impacts at a large scale and uses a human centered process to guide the results.

In my daily flow I do many things such as business strategy, brand strategy, organization structure, logistics, service design, operations management and project/product management. That is a lot of different job titles that I jump around in and what my title is isn't really a big concern to me. I am named Industrial Design Specialist because I am came on by making the CEO of our 400+ company say to my face, "I didn't realize I needed an Industrial Designer on my team". With that being said he didn't need someone to sketch or render concepts. He needed someone who displayed the type of thinking that we all naturally obtain.

To wrap it up I view it as an Industrial Designer is a type of person that brings their skills into other areas. An Industrial Designer works in business, product design, service design, UX/UI, marketing, branding, etc...

So I ask if we should really be trying to be another, "oh, oh, look at me, please look at me, we are awesome people" a me too mentality. Or should we drop the jealousy of looking at architecture and engineering as what we want to me and instead replace the work "creative"

I know it still exists as a profession on career postings but bare with me as I try to figure this out. haha
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Gianluca

10 years ago

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Well, a little history refresh might help: "Industrial Design" term was coined in the early '900, when designers were supposed to design "industrial products", mass products designed to be optimized for large series industrial production, and not handcrafted. You can find the whole story on every Design manual.

In the beginning designing products for the industrial revolution was a new cool profession. It's true that over the decade the term has lost his meaning. Nowadays the design world is very segmented in vertical specializations, and "product designers" describes better what a "product designer" does.
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db

10 years ago

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slipperyfish I believe the word you are looking for is ironic. And on so many levels.
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powers

10 years ago

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Lol @ slippyfish! Thanks for saying what we were all thinking!
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slippyfish

10 years ago

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Anyone like to share their thoughts on the choice of artwork accompanying this posting? A lightbulb with a gear in it, shooting out sparks, done up in multiple layers of Photoshop?
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Nigel

10 years ago

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I've always thought industrial design was a term used to communicate the specialized task of designing physical products for industrial or mass production, distinguishing the profession from that of a craftsperson etc.

Industrial designer is a fine term in a lot of cases, but personally I think it heavily implies a focus on physical and technical design that can be confining. To a nuanced and informed audience, I think the terms industry or industrial can be understood in the broad contexts mentioned in the essay. But to the layperson or other professionals I think the term Product Designer can more effectively communicate the breadth of skills and roles we possess.

There is certainly the caveat that by using the term product design we lump ourselves in with many digital-exclusive designers, and the various engineer hybrids, who don't have the classic industrial design experience and expertise that makes us unique. Also, it could potentially section us off from non-product based design that we often take part in like brand strategy etc.

Right now for me, product design is more appealing because I think the mental image brought up amongst non-designers is probably more indicative of what we actually do than the factory-math-engineering ideas people often get from industrial design.

It's sure not perfect though. Next week I may switch back to preferring industrial design! We're an odd bunch to define.
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powers

10 years ago

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Also, if you think of "Industrial" as a generic term, some people design for the shoe industry, some people design for the toy industry, some for the auto industry, and some people design for the low-end wire rack industry. So it does do a nice job as a catch-all term that can encompass a set of skills and process that we all have in common... most of the time.
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Eric

10 years ago

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I would have to agree here, I have long struggled with the term my self. As I find my self designing more and more products for industry, like toys and consumer electronics, I would have to say I embrace the term more and more. As the IDSA will do nothing to stop happy go lucky mechanical engineers and tube jockeys from using the term product designer, it seems we will have to continue to educate people about what we do.
I could definitely see C77 doing a series on the term, I would love to participate in that.
All the best to everyone this new year.

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slippyfish

10 years ago

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The 'industrial' term, while not exactly describing the overall scope of the profession, has the connotation of factories, production, and familiarity with the mechanisms of manufacturing regardless of media or material...which sets it apart from other terms or descriptions...and this is a good thing.
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powers

10 years ago

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"I am an industrial designer." That would make a good little tagline for a 5-10min video or video series... Maybe sponsored by IDSA or c77 or someone... A little "What we are" type of thing... advertisement of sorts... Me rambling... Sort of like the c77 designer interviews of late in video form... Could be really cool for "Intro to ID courses" even...Good thoughts.
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