designburn

Industrial Strength Design.

Colin Nourie will be our next posted designer interview on designerID. I first met Colin in Columbus, Ohio while he was attending the Ohio State University. He was a roommate of my future brother-in-law Rick Stephens who was also studying Industrial Design at the time. Even back at that time I got a sense that his attention to detail would be a good barometer for his future in design.

I have been able to keep in touch with Colin throughout his career and I’m always impressed with his current work and vision for furniture and workspaces. The above work was done in 2002 for the Steelcase Pathways portfolio of contemporary furniture, architectural and technology products. You can learn more about Colin at his web site triplefivedesign.com. I hope you enjoy the interview on designerID.

Identifying Designers. Sharing Work.

I had an idea for a designer community in 2005 that would be unlike any other online design community. It would allow designers to connect by many different variables such as freelance, project type, city, country, school, market or company. All work would be easily searchable by project type, year, industry, country, keywords or company.

I was able to crystallize the idea with the help of my partner Matt Keith. Note that it only took me three months to find Matt – a very capable developer out of Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA. The site, designerID.com, launched in March 2006 and has been steadily growing ever since. It now has 733 designers registered and over 3,300 works uploaded into the database.

DesignerID has allowed me to focus much of my energy back on design and the industry in which I work. A pleasant surprise has been interviewing various members and posting an in-depth look at them as designers. We’ve already posted written interviews with Andrew Sabatier (UK), Neal Ashby (USA), Debbie Millman (USA), Tanya Gyani (ARE) and Filip Blazek (CZE). I've also had the opportunity to video interview Woody Pirtle (USA), 2003 AIGA Medalist. Look for many more to come in 2007.

Much of the content of this blog will be driven by the creation and ongoing development of designerID.com. Kind of a behind the scenes look at what drives this site. While other content will come from my involvement as an advisor for the AIGA Cincinnati Chapter and from my business experience running Brian Hock Design and infiniteIDs. I hope you enjoy reading this blog and certainly register on designerID.com to see how it evolves in the months and years to come.