Today we bring our readers another amazing interview, we are privileged to introduce you to an amazing industrial designer and online writer Martin Gibson of Industrial design blog Embody 3d. Martin has massive amount of experience in the design industry whilst also running his own industrial design blog, coming from down under in Sydney; Australia. Embody 3D is an educating design blog about all things industrial design, CAD and much more.

If you have a designer who you think we should interview and pose a few questions towards then don’t hesitate to get in touch for us to get to know them and introduce them to our readers.

Hi Martin, thanks for taking your time out to answer our Design Juices readers; firstly we would like you to introduce yourself to the design juices readers?

I run an industrial design blog called Embody 3D and our main focus is on ID education for both students and professionals. I also work as an industrial designer in the point of sale industry in Sydney, Australia. For some reason where I live nearly every ID job seems to be point of sale. I also do a lot of freelance work in graphic, web and packaging design which allows me to approach briefs in my own creative way.

We know you Martin as being a part of Embody3d; How did this site develop? Was this your first design site?

This is an interesting question because Embody 3D was at first a website to serve my own needs as a CAD contractor. After I left uni with several hundred other students from across Australia I found it near impossible to get a job anywhere. The country was still in a fragile recovery stage after the GFC and no design firms or even manufacturers were offering any design jobs, especially to industrial design virgins. After much persistence my luck finally began to turn around and I scored my first ID job. After that I found the purpose of the website obsolete, and I said why waste a hosting plan and domain name? So I created Embody 3D – an Industrial Design Blog. The purpose of the site has always been education. There seems to be a lot of websites out there that are saying what others are doing and showcasing some wicked designs but there aren’t many websites actively improving designers themselves

I had created many portfolio websites in the past but this was my first community-centred blog. I could never have anticipated the amount of opportunities and knowledge I have gained from engaging in the online design world. I encourage everyone to get writing and to connect with other designers, you wont regret it!

Is there a reason you have chose to specifically concentrate on Industrial design are your sites single niche?

The reason I concentrated my efforts on an industrial design website was because it is what I am really passionate about. When I started my degree I had no idea that industrial design wasn’t just a course but rather a way of life. Design is really fun and challenging and it consumes you; people think I am crazy for doing contract work outside of full-time work but this is just how much I enjoy it. Sometimes when I am in a car driving down the main road I can’t help but study all the signs and critique them one by one in my head, that’s kind of how my brain works. Every time I interact with the thousands of products I use day-today my mind is always focused on how I would improve these creations. Also I love writing about design. At university I found most designers hated writing design essays, but I just loved doing it, so I thought maybe that’s the path for me. I think there is nothing more exciting to write about than where art meets science.

You’ve been lucky enough to interview some great industrial designers, which have been your favourite? How have these come together? Are there any future interviews planned?

One of the greatest assets of being part of Embody 3D is having the great opportunity to engage with industrial design practitioners through interviews. You learn a lot especially about how ID differs around the world and some of the personal and business challenges of starting up an ID firm. It’s extremely hard to pick favourites, but I must say I really enjoyed talking to Paul Charlwood from Charlwood Design (Melbourne, Australia) He runs a great design studio, utilising the latest technologies and has an amazing team of designers. Paul himself is really engaged with design education and a number of Australian industry bodies. Charlwood Design works tirelessly not only to develop greener products but to design them in a greener way by attempting to become fully carbon neutral. I think Paul and his consultancy have much to be desired upon.

What does Embody 3d hold ahead in the near future? Re-design? New writers?

We are always taking on new writers and it is such a pleasure to get them on board to share their experiences. In the near future I am planning a complete design overhaul which I have already started developing, but it should take 2-3 months to complete. The design should hopefully look a lot better and contain some really nifty features like a designer social network, a new forum and a new project/job centre to connect designers to employers. Another aim is to make navigation a little better and to make old content which I think is really valuable easier to be discovered. Haha there’s so much work to do it’s crazy!

How big a team is the Embody 3d site? Big team of writers? Do you run the site on your own?

We have around half a dozen writers from all around the world including England, Australia, United States, India and Portugal. I run, design and develop the website myself but if I see someone who is really passionate about design writing and preferably with some hardcore PHP skills I am really keen to grow the business with them. There is just so much work to do, it’s difficult for one person to manage it all especially on a part-time basis, it’s growing so fast.

What is your personal background in industrial design? How were you educated and do you work in industrial design?

For some reason when I was in high school I decided to learn Illustrator and Photoshop and I really enjoyed these programs, but I was such a bad designer, I had no formal training at all. I had no design taste, everything I did looked like some tripped out 80′s rainbow/hectic gangster style….a weird combo I know! Upon advice from many about how competitive graphic and web design was, I decided to try industrial design in the hope it would be less competitive (haha oh how I was wrong). But I took a degree in industrial design at the University of Technology Sydney, and they just had an amazing program there with some extremely knowledgeable and enthusiastic teachers like Nick Williams, Vasilije Kokotovich and Cathy Lockhart.

I worked at a few places for short spells in my time including a graphic design firm called Underline Fitch, a website company called MagicDust Websites and a furniture design company called Trent Furniture. However currently I am working as an industrial designer at Selmor Displays where we design and manufacture POS displays and other related products for many different industries.

From my experience, education is everything. A good teacher can save years and years of you trying to learn something yourself.

Is there a distinct difference to how industrial/product design is in Australia in comparison to Europe and North America?

From my knowledge I believe ID in the UK and US is very similar to Australia’s style. However I believe in central and northern Europe they have ‘design conceptors’ which are like industrial designers who just concept all the time and don’t worry about how things are constructed. Whereas in Australia an industrial designer has to know everything about manufacturing! You are absolutely redundant otherwise. Both of these occupation variants have their merits and pitfalls, but I think it is important to be realistic about what can be made when designing. But at the same time you don’t want to limit your design possibilities.

Geographically some even coin Australia as being part of Asia, so even throughout my education we were founded on the philosophy to not be threatened by Asian manufacturing but to work with it and exploit it. I know many people who are very protective of local jobs (and I used to be one of them) but someone once told me that the Chinese people also need food on their plate. And if you have ever watched the news recently most of the 1+ billion people there aren’t exactly living in nice houses like many of us enjoy.

Another key difference is Australia’s small and isolated population of 20 million which makes our markets smaller and more challenging number-wise for manufacturing. Where as the US has a massive population and the UK can easily trade with the European market. This makes it very difficult to be successful just selling products within Australia, one must go oversees to see substantial returns on product investments.

Which designers and design movements were your inspiration as a young designer in education?

I don’t have any notable designers that I look up to, I try and not be inspired by others and rather develop my own style. There is no fun in having thousands of Jonathan Ives out there. I actually seek much of my inspiration not from ‘designers’ but out of inventors like Da Vinci, Nobel, Edison among others. I think these people have contributed a trillion times more to our field than Dieter Rams and Philippe Starck in regards to showing ingenuity to solve problems. Have you ever thought how important the inventors of different fasteners, glues and machinery have been to industrial design?….It’s incredible how much they transform how I and others work today. But in saying all this I love simple and functional design, nothing beats that.

Is your design interest solely in industrial design? Do you have any interests or skills in other areas of design?

Like most industrial designers I am really passionate about graphic and website design as well. I think just in the last 10 years website design has changed from something coders do in a dark basement to something that is customised and thought about. Websites are starting to be for people now, and not for computers. It’s just embarrassing to look at websites designed 10-15 years ago, there is rarely a second spent on website ergonomics. I focus a lot of my attention on testing out new technologies, functions and features in platforms like WordPress, HTML5, CSS, JQUERY, Javascript and PHP. In general I just hate how websites are designed, it is so inaccessible for most people out there. I think it’s a shame that for someone to put a contact form on their website they need to worry about things like servers and php. There must be an easier way to develop websites that doesn’t involve code, it is definitely possible!

Where can our readers find you across the web? Twitter? Facebook?

Check out: Embody 3D at www.embody3d.com, Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/embody3d and Twitter at @embody3d

We know you as a Football fan in Australia, Do you have a team you support at home and abroad? Fav players?

As much as I like to support Australian Football, the A League is pretty crummy. We have had some EPL veteran imports though like Dwight Yorke and Robbie Fowler woot! But I would say I support Sydney FC! Abroad I love Manchester United (well the old Manchester United not the new one) I also love Blackburn Rovers and Leeds United they are wicked! In regards to players, well I follow a lot of players in and outside the EPL, but some include Andres Iniesta, Kaka, Lucas Neill, Harry Kewell, Robin Van Persie, Cesc Fabregas, Carlos Tevez, Mesut Ozil just to name a couple of many thousand in my head.

Quick Fire Five: Your picks.
In the Ashes: England or Australia? Well I want Australia to win but they have been in such bad form lately (7 games lost in a row) so I think England will probably win
Smart phones: iPhone or BlackBerry? (or other?) iPhone but I am keen to check out an Google Android
Are you a Mac or PC? Mac and Ubuntu/Fedora….I wish there was a Mac version of SolidWorks!

Sports fan: Rugby League or Union? I don’t like either…to me there is only one type of football in Australia hehe!
Is flash: Alive or should be killed? If it stays at its present state definitely killed. I applaud Apple for phasing it out, it slows down websites and is very power intensive especially for netbooks. HTML5 baby!

I think we would all love to see a Mac version of Solidworks, although there is hope with other pieces of software such as AutoCAD, moving over to the Mac OS. Big thankyou to Martin for taking his time out to put this interview together.

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