58: Your Work Doesn't Always Speak For Itself with Blair Hasty

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Industrial design leader Blair Hasty joins hosts Oliver Alexander and Louis Mills to discuss the shifting landscape of the design profession

Key takeaways

• Blair Hashing founded Industrial Designers International, which has grown to over 2,500 members.
• The traditional reliance on a strong portfolio is being undermined by AI and changing hiring practices.

Main topics

• Industrial Design Identity
• The Impact of AI on Creative Workflows

Notable quotes

Your work doesn't always speak for itself. You have to speak for it.

Conclusion

Success in the modern design era requires moving beyond technical mast

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:03) Please hold whilst we connect you to Redacted. Speaker 2 (0:20) Hi, I'm Oliver Alexander. Speaker 4 (0:23) I'm Louis Mills. This is Blair Hastie, and you're listening to Redacted. Speaker 2 (0:31) Today we're joined by Blair Hastie, an industrial design leader, founder and director of Crafted By. Hailing from Atlanta, Blair expanded his industrial design expertise at Verizon and has a wealth of experience in delivering breakthrough solutions from concept to market for global brands. Blair is a maven of the industrial design field and has fostered growth in our community both online and in person. We're really excited to have you on the show. So Blair, tell us about yourself in a nutshell. Speaker 4 (1:01) I'm Blair Hastie. I'm an industrial designer with a background of 22 years in industrial design from my early days in Apple accessories at Griffin Technology to running a large hardware portfolio at Verizon. These days, I run my own practice called Crafted By, which is rooted in industrial design, but tackles whatever design challenges companies are facing. But the thing that shaped me most lately is people. I founded Industrial Designers International, a community of 2,500 designers. And I've talked one-on-one with over 400 designers in the past couple years, and the thing that surprised me the most, almost all of them, even the successful ones, are quietly worried about the same thing. I think they're worried about falling behind, and they don't even know by what measure anymore. Seems like 20 years ago, the path was pretty clear. Get good at sketching, get good at CAD, build a strong portfolio, then get a good job and move up. Today, the rules feel a lot less certain. AI is changing things. Teams are smaller. Hiring works differently. And the portfolio that used to get you in the door just isn't enough on its own anymore. The fear isn't really about losing a job. It's uncertainty. Students feel it. Directors feel it. The successful ones just hide it better. And honestly, that's what this whole conversation comes back to. When the rules are changing, the people who stay connected figure them out first. Speaker 3 (2:15) Wow, they're fantastic. We're excited to have you on the show and ask you a lot about your background and where you're at and how you've gotten to where you are. How did you discover the field of industrial design? Speaker 4 (2:26) That's an easy one. If you ask that one a lot, you're going to get the same answer because I've asked it a lot. It's pretty much the same origin story is what I like to call it across the board. And it goes something like this. Most of us like to tinker. We like to take things apart, put things together when we were kids, like to sketch. And we were encouraged and told that we were creative and good at those things. And then at some point, we got to school, didn't really know what we wanted to do. Most of us went into mechanical engineering or architecture. Some went into graphic design. But at some point along the way, we discovered industrial design and fell in love. And then the rest of the story takes a different path for everyone. But that basic trajectory seems to hold true for most people, it seems. And for me, it certainly was. I think these days kids are getting introduced to it a little bit easier or a little bit sooner because the Internet and AI and everything is just making it a lot better. But for most people, it is that serendipitous discovery. Usually it's a professor that gave a speech in a class that you just happened to be in that one day or you had a friend that went into industrial design or you walked into the wrong classroom or something along those lines. It was very similar for me. I had a friend who wanted to be an industrial designer. He came to school while I was there and we toured the industrial design program together. And I was like, I think this is it. I don't think I want to do what I'm doing. I loved it. It was amazing. But the thing that I think really stands out to me is going back to that story is that I feel like most people like to focus on the end part as the more important bit where people discover and design. discover the name for the thing that they knew they always wanted to do or be. For me, I believe the more important factor is that first part of the story where somebody discovered that talent and you and nurtured it. And that became your identity very early on in life. I think for most industrial designers, it was always there. And then at some point you discovered the nomenclature that you could attach to it. But you always knew that you were that person you wanted to be. You wanted to design and create and make things. And it's an incredibly strong identity. Speaker 3 (4:33) Yeah, I definitely agree. It's probably one of the most succinct explanations we've had of it. That nurturing and then just happening across it. It was definitely the same for me. I don't know about you, Oli. Very similar. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 4 (4:46) I haven't actually gotten a whole lot about either one of your backgrounds. I don't know how often you get the tables turned on you on this podcast, but I'd love to hear just a little blurb about what you do, Louis and Oliver, how you discovered industrial design. What made you fall in love with it? Speaker 3 (5:00) Pretty much exactly the same creative sort of kid. I loved breaking things, taking them apart, looking at them and trying to fix them up, failing at that. Heaps of sketching and. Had the maths and the creative side. So I didn't really know what I wanted to do until I stumbled across it from a friend of friends who was studying it. And I was like, oh, sweet. Yeah, I'll just do that. Sounds awesome. But I actually did product design engineering, a mix of engineering and industrial design, which has been really good for me. I've loved my career. I've worked at a number of consultancies and now I have a small consultancy myself. It's been a great career. Awesome. Speaker 2 (5:39) Yeah, it's an exciting time for Louis at the moment with the business and stuff. Mine's quite similar, always playing with Lego and Speaker 4 (5:46) painting Speaker 2 (5:48) and tearing stuff apart as a kid. And then that grew and I kind of had my subjects in school themed towards design or engineering, getting to make stuff. And I always just loved sort of making things and learning how things worked and having little projects and stuff. So it was pretty clear that I wanted to do something hands-on and creative when I finished school. And I actually ended up doing engineering and design. But then what ended up happening was I wasn't very focused on the engineering that time in my life. I was quite distracted with other things. And then I ended up just finishing off the design degree, which in the end was a better choice for me and what I wanted in school. my career and it's been great to follow that path because I've worked in a variety of different fields and now also am freelancing, which is a bit of a new thing for me, but I've done some really impactful projects in the past, public realm and all kinds of things. So it's been really fulfilling overall. Speaker 4 (6:50) So you're both in the midst of something new right now. Speaker 2 (6:53) Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 4 (6:55) How new of a development is this on both of your part? Speaker 3 (7:00) I started my business about a year ago. That's been super exciting to take the plunge, leaving stable employment and trying something crazy. And I'd already been doing freelancing for quite a few years on the side. And that's where I met my business partner. Luckily, we already had a few clients to start off with. It's been a really rewarding experience. It's been fantastic, but it's a learning curve for sure. Speaker 4 (7:27) What's been the biggest learning curve for you in that process? God, that's a good question. We don't usually do this. Speaker 3 (7:35) Sorry. Shoes completely on the other foot. Speaker 4 (7:39) You guys are so much more interesting. I'd like to hear more about your backgrounds. Speaker 3 (7:44) Some of the learning curves is working probably more directly with clients and relying on a big team of brilliant minds when things are going a little bit wrong. Obviously, with a good network, we sort of work that out. Figuring out the value of super clear communication during these projects is one of the biggest learnings. Speaker 2 (8:03) It started sort of the start of the year for me, so it's all pretty new. Learning curve is just getting the other skills for business, whether that be financial, business development, BDM. You have to act as your own salesman. I'm still on that curve at the moment. But it's those kind of soft skills that you don't inherently learn in uni yourself. But you sort of pick things up, but then there's gaps there for me still, which is fine. I'm filling the gaps. It makes it an interesting journey too, because you have to think in a different way as a business, obviously, than to just designing this and everything else is going to fall into place generally if you're in a larger organization. Speaker 4 (8:49) I think one of the advantages of what we do is as a designer, you can never be unemployed. You're just freelance for a while. Going back to what I mentioned earlier, the identity portion of this thing is absolutely key. I find it interesting when I'm talking to other designers to get their background and understand where they're coming from. You'll rarely meet an industrial designer who doesn't still cling very tightly to that identity. And a good example being... You could be unemployed or laid off from industrial design and go work as an accountant for five years just to make ends meet. And at the end of that five years, have a conversation with that person at a cocktail party. And I guarantee you they'll say, oh, I'm an industrial designer. I just happen to be doing accounting right now. You could ask any other profession or many others the same question and you'll get a completely different answer. The answer would then be, well, I'm an accountant now. I used to do whatever. I was a firefighter, but now I do this for a living. But we tend to hold onto that identity really tightly. It's not something that we attach to ourselves necessarily. I think it's something we always had. And we just came up with that label at some point in our career and said, oh, I know that's who I am. That's always what I wanted to do and what I wanted to become. This is just now the name that I can attach to that. I think there's been a very interesting dichotomy within the broader design community, which is that we tend to be introverts for the most part. That's one of the things. We've gotten this to make things, to design stuff and to build things, not build relationships, organizations and systems. We tend to like to bear our nose in the sketchbook or the CAD software whenever we can. Most designers yearn, despite that internal nature, yearn for this connection to the broader community. But we're almost opposed internally to doing it at the same time. So I don't know if you guys have any in-person meetups for the design community there where you are. There were really none happening in my area here in Atlanta last year when I started doing this. Speaker 3 (10:53) You're doing meetups as well? You're putting together those? Speaker 4 (10:56) Yeah, I started having conversations with designers from everywhere and I've started seeing that that's happening in a lot of places. It's happening in Australia. There's a couple of guys in the UK that are doing some amazing work there. Sweden's doing some really bang up meetups there. I helped out a young woman in Germany who wanted to start doing it. And now she's starting to put together her own meetups. Speaker 3 (11:19) Yeah, Speaker 4 (11:20) that's cool. Yeah, there's this need for connection within the broader design community, but most of us don't really want to step outside of that day-to-day grind and that comfort zone of, I'm just going to go home and do my own thing for tonight. I often tell people the biggest hurdle I have to overcome with my meetups when I put them together is the draw of the couch at the house, because they all just want to go home and crash out, and that's the biggest enemy. Speaker 3 (11:50) I'd say I definitely agree. We run our own meetups in Melbourne. And I remember being at the place that I used to work, trying to get people to leave the office and come for one beer, have a bit of a chat, talk shop, even if it's just venting about your work. The people that do come, they really enjoy it. But getting people to take that extra time to come to the meetup and it's like, oh, I've just been at work. I don't want to talk about more work. Or they've got other stuff going on. They just want to, as you say, go home, be on the couch and just have a chill night. But the people that do come out, I know that they've found it very valuable. Oh, huge. Just to connect and talk. And obviously what we work on has a lot of IP involved, so they can't say too much in too many details most of the time. But just to talk about a few things and we're all in the same boat. We've found it very valuable here. Speaker 4 (12:39) Oh, 100%. The thing I have to do is try to reduce every barrier to entry as much as possible. Free drinks, free food, free entry, just show up and talk. And that's all you're required to do. But you're right. Once they get there, everybody has a great time. Matter of fact, everybody comes up to me at the end of the night and wants to say how excited they are and how much they appreciated the opportunity to come do it. Part of that, I believe, has a lot to do with the fact that throughout every conversation I've had, I don't believe that a single person has refuted the fact that every designer is neurodivergent. Part of that plays into what you mentioned, Oliver, around the difficulty of starting a business and having to do all those different things. You're playing on a different side of your brain. But also when you put a whole lot of neurodivergent people in the same room together, we vibrate on the same wavelength. The conversations are able to bounce around and nobody cares versus in a normal environment, you have to mask that and be a little more put together. But around other designers, you can just let loose. It's very unspoken, but as soon as you put them together, these people who normally are very reserved and quiet, they all just start becoming the most chatty people you've ever seen in your life. I usually leave the events having lost my voice by the end of the night. I'm not sure if that's the same way with you, but I talk so much. It's not just that you're talking to somebody about the thing that you're excited about, but it's also the way that you're talking to those people that really clicks, I feel like. It's been my experience so far. I love doing it. I'm going to keep doing it. I can get people to come together and donate the space and donate the time and the money to help me out with it. Speaker 3 (14:21) No, that's really cool. And what's the name of your events that you put on it in Atlanta so people can look you up? Speaker 4 (14:27) I started a group by accident a little bit. Turns out anybody can put together a flyer and send that out to all your connections on LinkedIn and just say, meet me at this time and this place. And we're going to talk about design. So I started doing that. And after the first one, I realized I probably need to start a group on LinkedIn where I can disseminate this information a little bit easier. I just called it Industrial Designers in the ATL for Atlanta. And then I started having people from outside of Atlanta, way outside of Atlanta, jumping into that group. So I thought, OK, well, maybe I'll go one step above that. I'll create one called Industrial Designers International. And that way, just anybody and everybody can join. With the idea being that maybe down the road, if somebody wanted to start their own version of