Industrial Design Program Spotlight
What is Industrial Design?
Industrial Design is the professional service of creating and developing concepts and specifications that optimize the function, value and appearance of products and systems for the mutual benefit of both user and manufacturer. Industrial designers, with their wide range of interests and generalists outlook in an age of specialization, must be part artist, part entrepreneur and part engineer.
The industrial designer?s work touches all of our lives in the form of home furnishings, transportation, appliances, recreational equipment and a myriad of other consumer and industrial products and services. While giving form to the efforts of industry, the designer is at the same time a consumer advocate, providing the humanizing link between technology and the consumer.
The industrial design program at Georgia Tech offers a well-rounded course of study with an early emphasis on basic design and design skills. Design projects stress realistic design situations. The program encourages students to develop a diverse background in order to expand individual talents and respond to changing opportunities in the field. Industrial design faculty members are practicing designers with extensive experience in the field.
What is the History of Industrial Design at Georgia Tech?
Industrial design studies at Georgia Tech began as a part of Architecture curriculum in the College of Architecture (COA) in the late 1940s. These course offerings resulted in the formation of the Industrial Design (ID) Program within the College of Architecture in 1952, making this ID Program one of the oldest in the United States. The Bachelor of Science in Industrial Design (BSID) at Georgia Tech started with small numbers and has graduated over 500 students since the program inception. The student body consists of approximately180 undergraduate students and 20 graduate students in the undesignated M.S. degree of the COA. The ID Program has five full-time faculty and 10 practicing adjunct faculty who teach specific coursework related to industrial design, such as materials and processes and the history of industrial design.
The ID Program's first director, Hin Braedendik, brought the influence of Bauhaus educational methods to industrial design studies at Georgia Tech, giving the program foundation studies and methodologies still evident in the curriculum today. Since that time, the ID Program has progressively gained national recognition through its graduates, industrial student projects, andmore recentlyfaculty expertise and involvement with the Industrial Design Society of America.
The Industrial Design Program is one of two in the country that reside within a technical institution such as Georgia Tech. The other industrial design program, Carnegie Mellon University, is similar in curricular make-up to the Georgia Tech ID Program. The Georgia Tech ID Program is one of six programs located in the Southeastern United States. It is the only industrial design program in the State of Georgia that resides within a public institution.