Practice
Back in the design classroom
Eleven years after a student project led me toward lighting design, I returned to the same class as a guest critic. The visit made the reach of a teacher’s work unusually clear.
A collection of thoughts
Notes.
Things I’m trying,
noticing, and thinking through.
Practice
Learning to value the breadth
I used to resent how much an industrial designer was expected to know. As AI changes the work, that hard-earned breadth is starting to feel like an advantage.
AI & judgment
When the image becomes the brief
I followed an AI-generated chair from a convincing image into 3D, then found myself defending the part that made it unstable. The problem was bigger than the base.
From image to object / Part 5
The last twenty percent
AI can supply a convincing structural explanation. The harder question is whether I know enough to trust it.
From image to object / Part 4
A form has to earn its place
The solid side panels give this chair its character. Whether they should also hold it together is still an open question.
From image to object / Part 3
A model is a checkpoint
The first chair now exists in CAD. That is progress, but the render can make it easy to misread what has actually been resolved.
From image to object / Part 2
Leaving room for interpretation
Two ways of translating an AI image into 3D—and why the route that left more decisions open worked better for me.
From image to object / Part 1
From image to object
Revisiting an early collection of AI furniture images with a harder question: what would it take for any of them to become an object?
Objects & experiments
Giving an object a gesture
A hot-air-balloon reference led to a candle-holder concept whose character comes from how it could move.
AI & judgment
More options, an earlier decision
An AI-assisted color, material and finish study took more than fifty generations. Its value was in what we could decide sooner.
Objects & experiments
Morning Edge
My first RenderWeekly submission began with a chamfer—and the moment a razor leaves your hand.
AI & judgment
Design's AlphaGo moment
What happens to professional intuition when a machine finds a good answer we would have dismissed?
AI & judgment
Ergonomics for the robot
If humanoid robots use our tools, should those tools still be designed only around our hands?
