1. What made you pursue a career in product design?
I remember wanting to be an architect when I was at primary school, but my love of taking things apart and inventing things led me towards product design. My dad ran a modelmaking company, so I’ve always been around product development of some kind.

2. Where, and what, did you study?
First I did an art foundation course, at what is now Hertfordshire University. I then did the Product Design Bsc course at Brunel University.

3. What did you enjoy about this course?
The fact that whatever you wanted to design and make, you could probably find a way to do it. There were great workshop facilities, technicians, and some very clever academic staff.

4. What are the most important things you have learned since starting work, which you did not learn at college?
Computers had only just become ubiquitous in design while I was at college, and stayed a bit of a mystery to me; I’ve become a geek along with everyone else since then. I wish I’d been taught to use Solidworks from the outset. I think there will always be things you won’t learn at college, you have to get out there and get some real experience.

5. With hindsight, are you glad you did this course?
Yes, although I nearly left in the first year, because I felt there wasn’t enough time spent on sketching, styling and presentation skills. They try to teach you a great many different subjects. Although it was tough at the time, I think it better prepared me for what I’m doing now than a lot of courses would have.

6. Did you manage to gain any work experience before you left college? How did you get it, and what did it teach you?
I was lucky; my dad knew people at FM Design (then in Islington) and spent all my spare time there, from 6th form up to the end of college. I also did two industrial placements at Brunel; one at PSD, the other at Pentagram. I learned new modelmaking skills, how things are made, how a design company works, and how to make lots of cups of tea.

7. What was your first job when you left college? Did you find it hard to get into design?
For the first three years after I left college I worked at FM Design (I think it was because of my tea making).

8. Other than specific skills, what do you think makes a good designer?
All round intelligence, understanding, and common sense. Product design can demand so much from one person; engineering, artistry, technology, craftsmanship, psychology, marketing, economics, manufacturing. You need to have an agile, multi-tasking mind to bring it all together.

9. What do you enjoy most about working in product design?
The fact that there is a different challenge every day.

10. Are there aspects of the work you don’t enjoy?
Sometimes a project is cancelled, or a product we have designed ends up wrong because we are not able to deal directly with a factory. This can be very frustrating.

11. If you could go back in time, would you still follow a career in product design?
Yes. Although I can think of other things I enjoy doing, I don’t think I would want to do them year after year.

12. Which product design skills do you find you use most?
I use most of them, although I don’t get to draw much anymore (and you can tell!). I spend a lot of time thinking problems through, so that I can contribute to projects.

13. Which part of the design process do you enjoy most?
I enjoy problem solving, and this happens from early concepts right through to final production.

14. What piece of work are you most proud of?
Probably my major project at Brunel; it was a big water purifier. I’m so used to working in team now, and using other people’s skills, that it’s nice to remember how much you can achieve by yourself when there aren’t lots of external pressures.

15. Finally... If you could give just one piece of advice to a student of product design, what would it be?
Have confidence in the abilities you have, and keep working at those you don’t.