1. “Beautiful isn’t enough — real industrial design starts at scale.”
“Industrial design is essentially someone that really understands how to manufacture at scale… five chairs in a garage might be beautiful, but they’re not industrially designed.”
Forget the romantic image of a lone craftsperson. True industrial design is about repeatability, tooling, and supply-chain choreography — the unglamorous stuff that lets great ideas reach millions.
2. The designer’s hidden job title: Chief Translator
“My responsibility is to act as the representative of the end user, and at the same time the business that’s manufacturing it — I’m the translator between the two.”
Designers aren’t just sketching; they’re negotiating between human needs and factory realities. When it works, the results feel inevitable—like the product always had to be that way.
3. Versatility is the super-power
“It can be a wide range of things… even a water dispensing machine — that’s what’s cool about industrial design.”
Master the process once, and you can shape anything from an Issey Miyake fragrance bottle to the office water cooler. The medium changes; the design thinking endures.
If you geek out on how things go from sketchpad to store shelf, you’ll love this conversation.
🔗 Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple or YouTube.
Stay curious,
— Nataraj
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