Featured ID Student: Senior Beth Blair

Senior Industrial Design student Beth Blair was gracious enough to send me a new blog interview. Check out some great advice on taking risks, working alongside your classmates, as well as some insight from her summer internship at Intel.

“…We’re all here to learn, and that doesn’t happen without some trial and error. It’s been said many times before, but it’s true: If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying hard enough”


3 Suggestions for Succeeding in Sophomore Industrial Design Courses:
1. Engage in good old constructive competitiveness with your classmates. By this, I mean that you should work alongside your peers. No one really knows what they’re doing their sophomore year (or any other year, for that matter!) but working alongside others in your class will enable you to more quickly improve your skills and sharpen your creative instincts. Work until you think yours is some of the best in the class; if it’s not, then you’re not done! (You can catch up on sleep in the summer!)
2. Keep an eye on what’s going on in the world around you. As designers we should know about current trends, whether its music, art, architecture, literature, furniture, technology, etc. Also, we all have unique areas of interest and unique hobbies, and those are what inspire us to do great things. It’s hard to come up with innovate solutions to design challenges if you don’t take some time to “step out” of the studio and see what’s going on in the world.
3. Don’t be afraid to take chances. You’ll benefit more from venturing into unknown territory than you will if you stick to what you already know. And besides, this is school. We’re all here to learn, and that doesn’t happen without some trial and error. It’s been said many times before, but it’s true: If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying hard enough!!!
So WWU ID, what is great about it, what could be improved, what will you miss?
Good question; hard to answer in brief. As a ‘non-traditional” student, I did a lot of research before deciding on the ID program at Western. Ultimately, I chose Western because of the balance between art and engineering, the competitiveness of the program, and because of its proximity to Seattle/Portland/Vancouver. Now that I’m almost done with the program, I am also able to appreciate the “unadvertised” benefits of belonging to a program like what we have here. The small class size and the quality of students and instructors enable it to behave more as a small community of crazy, sleep deprived, creatively motivated individuals who all share a common interest and drive. THAT, I think, is the most unique and special aspect of this program in particular, and one that I will probably miss the most.

You worked as an Intern outside of Portland at Intel this last summer, how was your first experience as an intern in the Industrial Design professional ?
Well, it was amazing. A little strange at first (my boss was gone for the first four of my 12-week internship) but absolutely invaluable from a learning perspective. At Intel I was able to work independently on a project, from start to finish. This gave me the chance to put my educational training to the test in a mini “real world” scenario. And guess what? IT WORKS!!! Some things that I might suggest to others getting ready for similar internships: keep your ego at home, ask questions when you don’t know something, be brave and take risks, remember that you’re a student and not a seasoned pro, have fun and make friends. Even in the grey, geometrical cube that was my world for three months this summer I was able to produce some of my best work and have a very fun and fulfilling experience.

What keeps you sane  outside of school? Hobbies? Experiments?
I WISH I could claim sanity outside of school. Hmm… I did try skydiving this summer – a very intense experience that I can’t regard as a hobby since I’ve only done it once. I guess I really enjoy music (especially live), art shows/museums, my old scooter, photography, food, and skiing when there’s actually some snow on the ground…

Is there a specific design project you faced that was especially rewarding?
I really appreciated Jason Morris’ approach to a project we did last year called “Form Function.” Without informing us of the final deliverable, Morris had us create paper models based on the basic principles of form. We then refined these models iteratively until we had only a few “best” models. It wasn’t until this point in the process that Morris provided us with a choice of functions for these forms. We finished by selecting one form and a function, making a scale model, and creating a contextual environment for the model that highlighted its place in a “real world” scenario. “Form Function” was a great way to depart from the normal design process and yielded some really interesting results. (Not to mention a few interesting context photos – thank you very much Sarah Blott!)

Any random piece of design you're diggin’ right now?
Design Movement: Non Intentional Design / Design Hacking is a sort of unplanned design phenomena that one of my classmates turned me onto recently (thanks Justin!) Hard to explain briefly, but here’s a link to an interesting site highlighting its merits: http://scottburnham.com/. And here’s a great article: http://www.scribd.com/doc/21120742/Design-Society-Hacking-Design.
Design Companies: Nendo produces some interesting stuff; very inspiring: http://www.nendo.jp/en/
And the people at Castor look like they’d be really fun to work with: http://www.castordesign.ca
Design Book: I read a lot of books, but here’s one I just finished that provided a lot of inspiration for a current project: “I Miss My Pencil” (by Martin Bone and Kara Johnson) And here’s some info about it: http://www.ideo.com/news/i-miss-my-pencil

Top 3 All-Time Movies?
Ditto. Although I was fond of “9 to 5” (with Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, and Lilly Tomlin) and John Hughes’ films when I was younger. (I think I just seriously dated myself!!)

Here is Beth’s 2nd Place Plywood Project from Spring 2008, a clean and stylish bench with magazine storage area. The second image is Beth’s ReMade project from Fall 2008, dining place mats made from recycled materials. Look out for another interview post soon.