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How to Become an Industrial Designer (When you’re also a Mechanical Engineer)

Syed Hemu Rahman
Prototypr
Published in
7 min readMar 22, 2018

I want to become an inventor when I grow up!

(Click here for a list of my favorite design tools!)

I made this conclusion as early as I can remember. From age 5, my sketchbooks were filled with every wacky gadget, from multifunctional antenna laden brick phones to super top secret spy vehicles (so embarrassing). Many years later I found myself stuck and wondering: How on earth do I turn this into a career? Is “inventor” even a job title?

If you are reading this article there’s a good chance you decided to get a background in Mechanical Engineering. There’s also a good chance you made it through that degree only to realize, it wasn’t what you signed up for. You learned a ton of theory and are now a super talented cog in some big engineering firm. But what you really wanted was to create products, the look, the feel, the functionality, and the experience.

Ahh these childhood sketchbooks are so amusing.

But I didn’t go to design school. What do I…

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Published in Prototypr

Prototyping, UX Design, Front-end Development and Beyond 👾 | ✍️ Write for us https://bit.ly/apply-prototypr

Written by Syed Hemu Rahman

Designer, founder @Brainfood, coffee nerd, and tiny van dweller www.instagram.com/shapingelements

Responses (10)

What are your thoughts?

THANK YOU ..

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Wow, thank you so much for this! I really appreciate all the tips and resources you linked!

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Whatever you do, don’t jump straight into CAD

I just graduated as an ME and this is the perfect post I could’ve come across, so thanks for your insights! I’m really curious about why you shouldn’t jump straight into CAD?

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