INDUSTRIAL DESIGNERS: design school without manufacturing is art school with rulers

If you graduate without talking to a manufacturer, you're not learning industrial design. You're learning to make portfolios, not products.

Every program should require co-op time embedded with manufacturers. Students should see factories operate. What decisions get made. What compromises are required. How engineers think.

They need people who will tell them no. The molding specialist who explains why draft angles won't work. The assembly manager who shows why their design adds 47 seconds per unit. And then learn how to work around these constraints.

Design education focuses on the sexy 5% and ignores the other 95%. The real work isn’t just sketches, critiques, and concepts. It’s navigating constraints and solving for manufacturability while keeping design intent.

This not only makes better designers, it weeds out the people who thought this job was Keyshot renders. Beautiful designs that can't be made are expensive wall art. Stop protecting students from reality. Start showing them how to make their ideas real.

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