"There's an enormous difference between beating a notion to death and beating an idea into shape"

What the f*ck is Product Design? Honestly do any of us really know? When your neighbor asks what you're studying in college the response is almost always

"uh right, and what's that now? What will you be in the finish?"

The answer? I don't flipping know Delores. It's like Art, but it's not Art, and its like Engineering, but I'm rubbish at maths, so its not really, there's a bit of Technology thrown in there and some History, oh and it's also a Bachelor of Science....

How do we justify our existence as Product Designers when the definition of the term is so vague? There's no module called "Explaining Product Design to your Extended Family 101".Even if there was, we'd probably all skip it to sleep in after a night on the tear anyway.

The truth is, none of us have a notion what we're doing after we graduate, as long as we get to design some cool stuff, get a chunky salary and don't have to get on the first plane to Australia like all of our older cousins, then we don't mind too much.

Good Design vs Bad Design, how can we tell? Good design means taking risks, it can be political or ergonomical, it can be both loud and subtle, good design can tell a story, it's colouring outside the lines when you really shouldn't. Bad Design, how about that ? I guess you could say all design is subjective. It's difficult to fully define good or bad design because everyone will have a different opinion on a design, or at least different variations of the same opinion. Bad design is the wobbly table in the exam hall missing some screws, why is it missing screws? Why didn't you design to avoid needing screws at all? Bad design is when the buttons that get stuck in the Tv remote so you have to sit through multiple repeat episodes of Reeling in the Years on RTÉ 1 and suffer through John Creedon's Road Less Travelled; there's a reason it's the road less travelled John, it goes through Tipp town for gods sake. Good Design would be building a Tipperary bypass and don't even try to disagree with me.

Product Design: Is it Art or Engineering? Isn't that the million dollar question. Personally, as an art enthusiast I don't feel as though it's like art at all. Art has no boundaries, put whatever you want on the canvas, use a pine cone as a paintbrush for all we care, let me tell you, art does whatever the f*ck it wants. Ask Pablo Picasso, who posed for a photo with bread rolls designed to look like his fingers or Frank Auerbach who filled his pages with charcoal and used the humble eraser as a creative tool rather than a destructive tool. Product Design although creative and free, still has its limitations; " That's too much colour, that isn't in perspective, that doesn't look like it could be sold in a shop, that's gonna catch fire blah blah "

I find the course leans towards engineering slightly more so than art, simply because of the emphasis on technology and maths, particularly in first year. At the end of the day this is a science degree, within the faculty of Science and Engineering, not an Art degree. Although, there are flavours of both disciplines to be found in Product Design it's the Engineering aspects of this course that will get us a job when we graduate. Employers care more about our Solidworks and mathematical ability that the engineers also study, than how pretty our sketches are. Even in our co-op meetings the guy in charge kept reminding us of this. He kept commenting on peoples Solidworks abilities and disregarding their sketches as a secondary requirement. Personally, I wish it were the other way around as I love to sketch, its what I'm good at. But unfortunately this is not the case. In an ideal world we would get to work in a business that thrives on creativity and freedom of expressive ideas but the chances are pretty slim and this island isn't really ready for a bike rack carousel or a shopping trolley pulled by crack heads.

(Chateaustyle.me, 2015)