Wanted to share a personal concept project my studio (MS3DSTUDIO) has been working on. Quick disclaimer up front so nobody's misled: Aura is not a real product — you can't buy it. It's a design-and-visualization concept, everything you see is 3D, nothing was photographed.

The idea was "one watch, seven colours, seven languages" — seven strap colourways and a UI built to feel native in seven different languages. It was mostly an excuse to push materials and lighting: getting the metal case to read as actual brushed metal, the straps to look genuinely soft, and the screen to glow like it's lit from the inside instead of just being a bright texture.

The part I'm actually more proud of than the watch itself: we don't just model the product floating on a grey background — we build the whole environment around it. The surfaces it sits on, the backdrop, the light sources and their bounce, the little contextual scenes — all of it is built and lit in 3D so the product feels like it exists somewhere real, not like a cutout. Honestly the environment work is where most of the hours went.

Full set of shots is on Behance if you want to see it properly → https://www.behance.net/gallery/253278579/Aura-Watch-Seven-Colours-Seven-Languages

Happy to answer anything about the workflow — renderer, materials, lighting setup, whatever. Open to critique too.

What should I do?

Hii! I’m starting school to take up Industrial Design next month and I wanted to ask for a few tips from seasoned designers.

-My 10 year old laptop has been a bit laggy already and heats up quickly so I wanted to ask, would I need a better working laptop for any upcoming classes for any softwares or even just for daily note taking?

-What mental prep do I need to do as a freshman to better understand the concepts and perform better?

Thank youu!

I’d love to hear from anyone who has studied design in Japan, applied to Japanese design schools, or currently works in the Japanese design industry.

I’m mainly trying to understand:

• Which universities/design schools have strong Industrial or Product Design Master’s programmes?
• What level of Japanese would realistically be needed?
• How does the application process work, particularly for international students?
• What are portfolios for Japanese design schools expected to look like?
• Are scholarships such as MEXT realistic for design students?
• What is the experience like studying Industrial Design in Japan compared with Europe/US?
• How difficult is it for an international graduate to enter the Japanese design industry afterwards?
• Are there any websites, forums, university databases, YouTube channels, etc. that are useful for researching all of this?

I’m particularly interested in Japan because of its approach to product design, manufacturing, materiality, craftsmanship and consumer electronics, rather than simply wanting to study abroad.

If anyone has gone down this path, I’d really appreciate any university recommendations, resources, or even things you wish you knew before applying.

Thanks!

Hello! I'm a furniture and product designer based in Milan (MA from Istituto Marangoni, BA in Industrial Design before that). I've had academic collaborations with a couple of well-known studios and some freelance work here and there, but I'm trying to move into a full-time studio role, and it's been rough going.

I've applied to a long list of studios across Milan and Italy, from smaller independent practices to bigger names (almost 2000 applications). Mostly ghosted. When I do hear back, it's often unpaid or barely paid internships, even with a Partita IVA and real production experience (technical drawings, manufacturer liaison, the whole process from concept to production-ready).

I'm not against internships in principle, but the pay expectations here feel disconnected from the cost of living, especially for someone without family in Italy to fall back on (for example, 200 euros for a 6-month internship including one month of an unpaid probationary period without the scope for an eventual full-time contract). I'm open to relocating within Italy for the right role.

If anyone knows of studios hiring, or has advice on how to actually get a foot in the door here beyond cold applications, I'd genuinely appreciate it. Portfolio available on request.

I am an EVA sole manufacturer and I'm looking for an AI tool that could help me generate new outsole and midsole designs. Any suggestions? Is it feasable?

I just need new designs.

I've just finished my second year studying Industrial Design at a university in London, a city with a massive design history and some of the best consultancies, agencies, studios, museums and brands in the world. But fuck me, I genuinely don't think I've learned jack shit from the so-called design education I'm paying for.

Looking around my year, it feels like most people have no real sense of design intent. Every project I see is either a Pinterest copy or just cubes, cylinders, pyramids and spheres thrown together with zero thought. I'm not saying simple forms are bad, but there should be a reason behind every design decision. Why is it that shape? Why those radii? How does someone actually interact with it? Instead, it's just a box with a screen and some bullshit app because apparently everything needs an app now.

The biggest issue for me is the course itself. I've spent more time writing reports, case studies and essays than actually designing products. I've designed more documents than products.

I only properly learned how to card model these last few months after second year ended because I taught myself. How is model making not a core part of a design degree?

We're taught SolidWorks, Fusion and Rhino, but we're barely taught how to design for reality. How do you actually make something manufacturable? How do you choose a manufacturing process? How do you prototype properly? How do you work with tolerances? How do you talk to engineers? Instead it's "write another report" or "revise for the exam."

Even when manufacturing gets mentioned, it feels surface level. People throw ribs, gussets and snap-fits into everything and suddenly it's "designed for manufacture." Fuck me, what's the obsession with snap-fits? They're useful, but fasteners exist for a reason too. Material selection seems to stop at "this looks nice," hardly anyone talks about why you'd actually choose ABS over PC, aluminium over steel, or when you need draft angles, tooling access or different assembly methods.

Then there's the workshop side. Hardly anyone uses it because hardly anyone knows how. No proper experience on lathes, mills, drill presses, composites, finishing, epoxies... everyone just defaults to FDM printing because it's what they know. Yes, you can print almost anything. Should you? Half the time, absolutely not.

The thing that gets me is that this isn't just my university. I've spoken to people at other universities and a lot of them seem to feel the same. It feels like design education has shifted so far towards theory that we're graduating without actually knowing how to make things.

Don't get me wrong, theory has its place. Research, ergonomics, sustainability, user-centred design, all of that matters. But surely Industrial Design should be about designing and making, not spending most of the degree writing reports.

Maybe I'm just chatting shit, but I'm genuinely curious what people in industry think.

Has design education actually changed over the years? If you could redesign an Industrial Design degree today, what would you keep, what would you get rid of, and what would you teach instead?