Michael Roller

Five Questions for Geoffrey Baldwin

To understand the meaningful similarities and differences between different types of designers, I’ve started collecting a series of short interviews with a broad range of students and professionals. The first was with Neal Mabee, and here is the second. Geoffrey Baldwin is an Industrial Designer at IDEO Chicago.  He is a 2006 graduate of the University of Cincinnati’s Industrial Design program.  Prior to joining IDEO, he made the internship rounds at Lexmark, Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Design Continuum, Nike, and The Rockwell Group.  While Geoffrey is quite passionate about design it isn’t his first love – that would be baseball.  He spends the Spring, Summer and Fall playing baseball all over the Chicagoland area, refusing to grow up.

How do you define good design?

Good design is a balance, it’s about what’s best without being too much.  Two phrases that help me are… “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”  “A design isn’t finished when there’s nothing left to add, but rather when there’s nothing left to take away.”

What is your favorite part of the design process?

Reduction.  Whether its synthesizing research down to one salient insight or embodying that perspective into a simple object, I like simplifying information.

What challenges you most as a designer?

Making things tangible…“Design thinking” has created a lot of interest in “strategy.”  Strategy is a fancy word for having a plan and no plan is worth anything if it doesn’t have an outcome.  My passion and greatest challenge is having strategic conversations that end with a tangible outcome.

How do you define success?

It would be easy for me to say that success is when my client is happy.  But I think making clients happy isn’t that hard, just do what they want.  To me success is self satisfaction within the constraints of a project.  It’s two questions: “did I help my client?” and “did I fulfill myself?”

What has been the most unexpected part of being a professional designer?

I’ve always been surprised to work with designers who, admittedly, cannot draw. This has been a circumstance I’ve found myself in at several studios and it never ceases to amaze me.  In my opinion, sketching is the heart of what design is all about.  It’s as much about imagination as it is about hard details.

Thanks, Geoffrey. Please check back to see how other designers have responded to these questions!

Tags: definitions, five questions, interviews

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