Jonathan Robin

Industrial Designer

Bio:

We love this episode with Industrial Designer Jonathan Robin. 

Jonathan was born in Rio da Janeiro and experienced a truly international upbringing with a French father and American mother. 

Following a relatively traditional educational experience in Rio, he transitioned to initially study Law before realising this was not for him and switching courses to Industrial Design, in which he graduated three years later. 

Since graduation, Jonathan has worked in small startups to more prominent design agencies across continents. He has designed everything from street furniture for a new tram system in Rio to vending machines, electric scooters, ceiling fans...the list goes on. 

In this podcast, we discuss the design process in some detail and how professional designers also experience the excitement of taking on a new brief, through to the sticky patch that inevitably hits most designers as they progress through an iterative design process, through to the joy of building and setting a design free into the market. 

Jonathan worked for Sapetti, a boutique design consultancy based in Switzerland where he worked for a number of international clients and worked on a range of designs, including working on an exoskeleton to support workers who routinely had to stand (or sit) in unorthodox positions that would otherwise result in back and repetitive strain issues. 

Jonathan currently works for GHD, a UK based brand that develops and commercialises consumer electronics for hairstyling and currently lives in the UK. He hopes to actually see some of London's sites as we finally exit from the COVID pandemic!

Jonathan's excellent work can be viewed on his microsite https://www.behance.net/jmedcalf
His contact details are on the site, and he is happy for any teachers or students to reach out to him to talk about industrial design either by email or through LinkedIn. 

This podcast has been recorded with the help of our sponsors, The Edge Foundation inspiring the education system to give all young people across the UK the knowledge, skills and behaviours they need to flourish in their future life and work, and PTC Onshape Providing industry-standard cloud-based CAD to education  

We are indebted to both The Edge Foundation and PTC Onshape for their continued support.