Design Sojourn | Strategic Industrial Design Blog

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So last week, I got issued with a work laptop. It was a 12″ Screen Dell Latitude D430 no bigger than my A4 sketchbook. It is a pretty decent, abet slow, system with an Intel Core 2, 1.2 GHz with 2 GB of RAM.

But when I held it in my hands I immediately balked.

My very helpful and friendly IT manger (ITM), looked at me and said:
(the conversation roughly happened as follows, sorry my mind was a fried egg at that time.)

ITM: What’s wrong?

Me: Eh…is this laptop powerful?

ITM: Yeah it is pretty good. Nice and small.

Me: But does it run Rhino? Does it run CAD?

ITM: Erm…do you need such software on your PC?

Me: Ah…otherwise, how do I do design?

ITM: (Checks a list) But for you it looks like you don’t need to use Rhino in your job description?

Me: So what if I need to check a 3D model? Or just look at it or spin it?

Me/ITM (together): you get someone else to do it for you….

What a head slapping moment. I have 3 lessons learned here.

1) Old habits are hard to break.

2) You can take a designer out of design, but you can’t take design out of a designer.

3) Sketching skills, suddenly becomes a lot more important these days.

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