Emerging Talent: Jaime Sanchez

Jaime Sanchez is a 38 year old father of two girls, who is currently studying Industrial Design at the University of South Australia. Jaime decided to return to study and retrain as an Industrial Designer after deciding that his current career as a business analyst “doesn’t really float [his] boat”. Jaime is the designer of the Dinosaur Chair which was recently featured in VIVID at Furnitex 2009.

Highlights

• “It’s never too late to start again- it’s hard but you can do it if you want to.”

• “I don’t want to preach but I strongly feel that designers need to inform people why material A is better than material B, or why your product costs more than the competition”

• “I have a few reservations about Apple, but I like the fact they have very few products. They try and create the best product they can, knowing that if it is a good product it will sell, rather than compromising in order to sell to market-segment X.”

1. Hi Jaime, welcome to Design Droplets. Can you please give us a quick run down/introduction on yourself.

I’m a 38 year old, happily married father of two girls who worked out what he wanted to be a few years ago and bit the bullet to return to study, to became a product designer. I love daydreaming in order to solve problems and working out how life can be improved by doing things smarter, simpler, faster and better. I love elegant and clever solutions. They can be very low tech, or ridiculous ‘Heath Robinson’/ ‘Rube Goldberg’ type machines. I also love bicycles, Lego, black Labradors and Golden Retrievers.

2. You are currently studying Industrial Design part-time at the University of South Australia, what made you decide to pursue a new career in Industrial Design after working for many years as a business analyst?

I’ve always had a tinkering/ sketching/ daydreaming side, I’ve made a lot of furniture (bookcases and tables mostly) for myself and that sort of fed that urge to create. But I never realised that Industrial Design was a career that would allow me to indulge this until relatively recently. UniSA has a great Industrial Design course and is very supportive of mature-age and part-time students like myself. When I decided to enrol it was a case of ‘now-or-never’ as I felt I was getting older and switching lanes would only get harder with a family and a mortgage. Even though I like being a business analyst, it doesn’t really float my boat.

3. You Dinosaur chair was recently on show at VIVID at Furnitex, Can you tell us a bit about your design?

The chair is supplied as one sheet of 9mm MDF with the pieces pre-cut, but held in place with tabs. You break out each ‘bone’ piece and assemble the chair which slots together and doesn’t need any glue or fixings. I wanted to make a chair for my 2 year old daughter that was something she could play with as well. She started going through a massive dinosaur phase and knew the names of  them all. Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, Stegosaurus and the rest, and the dinosaur skeleton idea for a chair presented itself.

When I was a kid I liked the plywood model kits where you pushed out the stamped dinosaur bones to make the skeleton, and this was an inspiration, but the kits are all very fierce and scary looking. The friendly brontosaurus chair seemed to be an ideal shape. Lots of cardboard models showed me the idea would work and the flat pack aspect was then a natural progression. After showing at Vivid I want to investigate using other materials (such as X-Board) so an image can be applied to the sheet, when the pieces are removed the left over sheet shows a relief of the dinosaur ‘bones’ and can be mounted as a poster – zero waste.

4. Do you have any other current projects or future projects that you can tell us about?

I’m working on a bookshelf/ coffee-table which is nearly finished, plus a million ideas that I jot down on the bus, in meetings at work or whenever I have a few minutes free. I have this awful feeling when I get an idea if I don’t get it down in some form that I’ll lose it forever. I hope to get to the stage in my career where I can go ‘what shall I work on today?’ and bring out some of them.

5. Where do you draw your inspiration from?

Usually when I’m in a mood where I can have a think but I’m doing something else, like walking to the bus or mowing the lawn. Mindless physical activity tends to let my mind wander and the ideas jump in. Also frustration with objects I use everyday – why are remote controls so ridiculously complicated that I have to write an A3 pages of instructions with illustrations so my Mum can watch my TV? Why did I have to buy a new car when my eldest was born because our new fancy-pants pram didn’t fold up small enough to fit in the boot? Don’t get me started…

6. What do you think are the most important issues/trends that designers need to be considering today and in the future?

Educating the users of your products, especially in terms of you-get-what-you-pay-for. All sorts of issues are important, like sustainability and equality but people don’t know what they don’t know. I don’t want to preach but I strongly feel that designers need to inform people why material A is better than material B, or why your product costs more than the competition, such as because the workers are paid a decent wage and work in safe conditions. Most problems would go away if people understood how they contribute to them and how they can overcome them. I also would like to see bicycles embraced by adults as a transport rather than just toys or sports equipment, they are almost the perfect machine.

7. Which part of the design industry are you aiming to venture into after graduation?

Furniture, Bicycles, Cars, Toys, Consumer Goods. I’d like to be working before graduation. I figure that if you are good enough and have a passion for it; it will show in your work. Your portfolio is more important than your parchment. I’d like to work in a studio that has a wide enough client base with a variety of projects, so I could learn as much as I could. My dream would allow me to work for an employer that could mentor my ideas while working on their projects, until I got good enough to branch out on my own. I’d love to be good enough to be able to be commissioned and have full control of a project and have someone else pay for it. I speak Spanish and have lived there and I’d like the opportunity to work as a designer there, or anywhere else overseas, so my girls could experience growing up in another culture. Any wealthy patrons please get in touch.

8. Can you give us an idea of the processes you go through to create a new idea, design or concept?

I tend to get a firm idea very quickly, and then spend time trying to work out what doesn’t work about it. This usually leads me up a lot of garden-paths but it does refine the idea in my head. I don’t sketch as well or as quickly as I’d like to so a lot of my ideation involves written notes. As the process continues, the options narrow down until I get closer to an answer. I then tend to try and clear my head, by either working on something unrelated or doing something else. I find this helps some ideas to percolate in my head and later I’ll get a flash of inspiration. I think in terms of concepts and words rather than images, so trying to visualise precise details about the object as an image in my head helps as well, especially if you are standing on a crowded bus or driving and you can’t sketch anything down.

9. Do you have a favourite design, designer or design studio? Why?

For me I admire individuals and organisations that do what they do because they love it and want to do the best they can. I am really disappointed by design that is used as a bastard-son of marketing, only to increase profits or sell to another segment or whatever. I understand that people have to run a business and bring in money and put food on the table, but it is very disappointing when the ability to do something wonderful is held back for the sake of a few bucks.

I like the success of Knog’s lights and Crumpler, because they are Australian and have internationally successful products that have come from backyard tinkering. I like Konstantin Grgic and from what I’ve read I like the way he works. I have a few reservations about Apple, but I like the fact they have very few products. They try and create the best product they can, knowing that if it is a good product it will sell, rather than compromising in order to sell to market-segment X. I am a huge fan of Lego, such a simple idea with so many possibilities and the more you buy the more toys you have, and they have a similar philosophy – do what you do because you love it and want to make the best products you can.  I feel as if you just want to make money, invest in shares or real-estate, and leave the creation to people who want to create.

10. Jaime, thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us here at Design Droplets. In closing, do you have any last thoughts or words of advice you would like to share?

It’s never too late to start again- it’s hard but you can do it if you want to. You get what you pay for – if you buy something that doesn’t do the job it doesn’t matter how cheap it was you’ll always hate it, but if it does the job well you’ll forget how expensive it was. Hopefully you’ll see my Dinosaur Chair in a shop soon. It has been a pleasure.

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August 11, 2009