Nodes of Design#77: Industrial design by Afshin Mehin

Afshin Mehin is the founder of Card79, a creative studio based in San Francisco and Vancouver, helping companies give form to the future. Consistently blurring the boundaries between our digital and physical lives, he’s worked with clients ranging from startups such as Neuralink and Noon Home to large organizations such as Amazon, Lululemon, and Ford. Before setting up Card79, Afshin worked for design studios such as IDEO and Whipsaw in the Bay Area, designers such as BarberOsgerby and Terence Conran in London, and research Labs such as M.I.T.’s Media Lab Europe in Dublin.

In this episode, Afshin shared great insights on industrial design, how different it is from product design, and the frameworks to follow to explore ideas for manufacturing a product and reframing problems as opportunities. We then discussed various ways to evaluate product safety, appearance, and function to determine if a design is practical. In the latter part, he spoke on conveying a narrative behind a design to more oversized holders and audiences.

Takeaways:- What is Industrial design, How to reframe problems as opportunities, and What different frameworks to explore ideas and bring them to vision.

Books Recommended by Afshin Mehin 

Design by numbers - John Maeda

The Essential Rumi - Book by Rumi

White Teeth - Zadie Smith 

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This podcast aims to make design education accessible to all. Nodes of Design is a non-profit and self-sponsored initiative by Tejj.