Quest University’s upcoming designer in residence, David Raffo, has designed toothbrushes, toys for Fisher Price – and a speedster for Star Wars.
It was when Raffo, 64, was a young British student designing crash test dummies for a company in England that he had his brush with “the force.”
“An American guy rolled up and asked us to make some things full sized from these beautiful models that he gave us… and the guy was [George] Lucas and the things were for Star Wars,” he said with a hearty chuckle.
Most of Raffo’s career has been spent designing items for mass production such as toys, cars, medical equipment and appliances.
He also helps brand small businesses and teaches design at post-secondary institutions.
At Quest University, he will be working with a group of students for six weeks starting in September.
“The thing we want to do with the students is take away some of the very prescriptive school stuff and get them to think for themselves and go and do research,” he said.
Raffo said he is currently looking for a Squamish charity or business interested in having him and the students help with a small design job.
Even if the students he mentors don’t end up becoming designers, learning the skills is useful, Raffo said.
The process of design is understanding the problems, talking to people to understand their needs and their desires, then having a look at the possibilities of achieving something for them; designers come up with many ideas to find one to match what a customer or user wants.
“This sounds crazy, but the same process sits behind designing a toy for a company as it does working on a research project for sanitation in the Third World,” he said, adding he works on both of those things.
If the students can master the process behind design, they can apply that way of thinking to almost anything they do, he said.
Because designers look into the future to create things that are not yet in existence, accepting the rejection of your vision is also a part of any design career, and a student must be prepared, according to Raffo.
He designed many items in his career that were rejected at the time but became popular later when introduced by someone else, he said.
The Soda Stream sparkling water maker is one such product that Raffo suggested years ago, to no avail.
“About 15 or more years ago we talked to the manufacturers at Soda Stream saying, ‘People like flavoured water and healthy things, that is what you should be doing…’ and then I saw an advert a couple of weeks ago for exactly that,” he said.
In his decades in the industry, technology has changed. One of the changes that was game-changing at the time was the fax machine because he could fax clients his drawings from anywhere. “We just thought that was fantastic,” he said.
Raffo said the technology behind the three-dimensional printer is still in its infancy, so the hype around it has been premature.
“At the moment it is fantastic for prototyping and testing and things like that,” he said. “But you still have to do all the thinking.”
Mostly it is a glorified pencil, he said, adding although computers are involved in his designs, each project always starts with a simple pencil and piece of paper.
