Michael Roller

It is difficult to say because there are aspects I love about every stage of the process. Every point is an opportunity to make the end product better in some way. From a pure fun standpoint, the early conceptual phases are high on the list. That blank sheet of paper moment is magical. Anything can happen on that page, anything is possible. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I enjoy going over the finer details of CAD drawings and models with tooling engineers to get a part line just right or messaging a section and even specifying a texture. There is something so satisfying about both extremes of the spectrum.

What challenges you most as a designer?

What challenges me most as a person is patience. If I had my way I’d design everything. After over a decade of doing this professionally, I am still as excited about design as I was in school. I have a “bucket list” of sorts of things I need to design before I hang up the six guns. I’d love to get a chess set into production, a furniture piece, some small electrics like a toaster and coffee maker, flatware, some more consumer electronics, a camera, a phone, a video game system, a laptop…. OK, really pretty much everything is on that list. I’ve been able to check off a few items on the list; a tea kettle, I collaborated with Icon on a production vehicle that is being shown at this year’s SEMA show, and obviously a lot of footwear. With patience I know I will get to most of it.

Patience is a big part of the game. As designers we have the ability to see, in both the literal and figurative sense of the word. We are lucky when we have the opportunity to collaborate with others that have this skill. When we don’t have collaborators with this ability, we have to have patience to find out what their strengths are, what is important to them, educate them, and bring them along with us to better design solutions.

In the context of your job, how do you define success?

I don’t define success as perfection. What I look for is progress. If we can look back on the products that came before and say we made progress with this design, then I feel pretty good about it. It is a very simple and personal measurable. Of course I want to have great

sales, and awards are nice, so are magazine write ups, accolades and other forms of recognition. They all look great on your resume. What really matters is that I feel I in some way made progress.

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

One of the things that surprised me the most is how resistant designers can be to talk about design. I was at a design conference in which the keynote speaker was a photo-journalist whose opening line was “I have no idea what industrial design is or why you asked me here, so I’m just going to show my portfolio….”. I have never been to a convention for lawyers, but I bet they talk about law.

Designers can be so eager to learn the languages of business and engineering that it comes at the expense of their native design tongue. In the vacuum of designers talking design, we are loosing ownership of our language. Terms like Innovation, Design Thinking, Iconic, Modern are so miss-used that they are the verge of meaningless.

To be a successful designer it is important to understand how to speak to and influence business and engineering. As designers, we inherently have flexible thought patterns and a capacity for empathy that allows us to do this. As we learn these skills we must remember to educate others about our own language and the value of design.

I read that an article by a designer in a well known global design firm that said “Artifact making is dead”. Humans have been making artifacts since the dawn of our existence. It’s not a fad, it is hardwired into our spirit, as it is hardwired into a bird to build a nest and a beaver to build a dam. We tell stories through objects. We leave things behind for others to examine our lives. Are we proud of them? Can they represent the ideals of our age? Can they embody who we want to be as individuals and as a civilization?