As a traditional manufacturer you are responsible for, and rightfully protective of, a highly evolved skill-set built through generations of repetition and refinement. Yet, as product designers, you are programmed to question, challenge and change. So begins the dance of gracious disruption.

The division between maker and industrial designer – or ‘felt tip fairy’, as we were often lovingly referred to – was never clearer than in my first consultancy job, where the prototyping workshop sat directly across the corridor from the industrial design studio. As I attempted to pen the impossible, they’d be listening to Led Zeppelin while building rigs and turning lathes. Occasionally I’d cross the void, and join reality to cleanse myself in the act of physically making something. 

There was always an underlying sense that model makers were just entertaining the concept sketchers, and if left to their own devices would out design any one of us. They knew how stuff was actually made. Truth is, you need both the untethered and the tethered to make well-grounded innovations.

Product design as a philosophy is a method of breaking down a challenge to its core intentions and removing all preconception of a solution – its shape, its colour. To see a project simply as a goal. What are you trying to achieve? ‘Design a new bag’ is not a brief. ‘Create a means of accommodating a specific set of equipment befitting a desired means of travel’ is.

The important thing, and this is the bit that rubs the ‘traditional manufacturer’, is never to get bogged down by tradition. Innovation, by its nature, can only exist outside of it. The good stuff comes from respecting the skill-set at hand and setting it a new challenge – putting it in a different ‘room’ and seeing how it gets on. Disruption is a mucky word, conjuring up images of ‘blue sky’ agencies firing colourful Post-it notes at people terrified of change. But it is healthy. Done correctly, it is the art of measured naivety – or ‘fresh perspective’.

A traditional manufacturer, with the greatest respect, is a slow-moving landslide, evolving over generations, gathering knowledge, refining its processes and perfecting its finishing. The longer it goes on, the heavier it becomes and less compliant to change. A product designer in this instance is a twig in the path of a landslide. But a well-rooted idea has a chance to stand firm and access the minerals beneath the surface.

Our suit carrier holdall is a good example of the designer-manufacturer symbiosis. It is an innovation that sat hidden between two known formats, and relies on a combination of age-old manufacturing techniques to build. The result is a product that helps to support an ecosystem of makers and a brand that champions their work.

As artificial intelligence blazes its trail into design and manufacturing, I firmly believe that the desire for signs of genuine human alchemy will only increase. I want more than ever to hear music made by bands, and to use objects made by skilled hands. Who cares about a flawless automated output? I want beautiful things made by crews of imperfect creatures. To experience a good product, should be to know its creators.