Industrial Design is the hardest degree you can do

Industrial Design is probably more useful in the world than your degree. Sure you may study Maths, English, Law, even Medicine, but there’s an argument to be made for Design.

After all, everything in the world needs to be designed. Surgeons are great, but without their tools, they’re pretty useless.

We have so much to do, we have to make personal timetables

That’s a schedule three weeks before a hand-in. We don’t just work hard before hand-ins, we work hard all of the time. The above is when we don’t have many lectures on, but when we do? Don’t even think about missing them.

You miss one lecture and you’ll have no idea what’s going on, one workshop and you have to come in in your own time, one tutorial and you can wave goodbye to a percentage of your degree.

Our degree is different in the sense that you have to be able to go to lectures and work independently. If you slack on either, you’re down for the count. It’s not just Design either, we’re expected to know Biology, Mechanical Engineering, metal fabrication, model making and graphic design.

Your life becomes your degree

Design takes over your life. Your room will be filled with post-its, your bin with scrunched up sketches that didn’t make the cut, your desk with stationary, blue foam, card, tools.

If you’re unlucky you may even go into your bag to pull something out and stab yourself with a craft knife instead.

And you’ll be so damn focussed that you’ll change your lifestyle to focus around your design work. You eat healthy so you feel good. You work out so you can focus harder. You change environments depending on whether you want to be creative or productive. You try not to look at screens before bed so you can sleep better.

Put it this way: if you were a smiley, happy person before, you will be miserable after.

You’ll do anything in the name of Industrial Design

And you’re expected to do things that most student’s wouldn’t dream of doing, like going and buying bathroom flooring for a prototype, putting your iPad in a swimming pool or getting on a Megabus at 5am to go to a London hospital to conduct user testing.

Oh, and let’s not forget you’re expected to pay for everything too. We’re told not to spend more than £500 on our final model. I couldn’t even afford to buy my family Christmas presents, how is this supposed to work?!

So the next time you think of Design as not being a real subject, take a minute to think about how much you love your iPhone, and consider how crap life might be without it.