Meet Designer: Carlos Arturo Torres Tovar

www.CarlosIDEA.com

I help to bring to life visionary ideas

What is your job title?

Design Director & Co-Founder

What is your typical "day in the life of a designer" ?

In a typical day in the life as a designer you have the opportunity to learn about so many other fields, subjects and professions to try to solve a problem that most of the time is never so obvious. You become a detective that brings evidence, clues and puts the puzzle together even with missing pieces to solve a challenge; and depending on your specialty, your solution comes in forms of a drawing a physical object, a system an experience… figuring out a sea of different challenges becomes the normal.

Design principles you live by?

1. Design is communication: No matter the media of what you create, your work will always say something and guide people in a language that has no words but feelings.

2. Form follows function, but the function is not always what everyone expects: To bring a real object into the world there are hundreds of constraints and the purpose of the object should be reflected on how this looks or behaves. Traditionally the function is thought from an engineering point of view but as we evolve and understand better our users and their need we realize that sometimes functions are no longer about moving a crank but become as abstract as making people dream. How to make someone dream? This is when a functional analysis list gets obsolete if your mission is to understand people’s feelings, aspirations, memories… suddenly ergonomics have to evolve and the object as well.

3. Everything you create needs a purpose: This helps people to connect emotionally with what you make but also and specially, justifies the use of materials, energy and resources to bring things to life. As a designer one has a permanent responsibility with the planet.

4. Design listens: The process is the nicest moment for a designer is the joy of figuring out, prototyping, questioning everything and failing several times. Listening is designer’s best tool to face uncertainty and ambiguity, as a designer that listens you quickly realize that your job is not about fancy sketches but being the interpreter of the need, the user and the vision.

5. The best solution is what is invisible to people: This is one of the biggest reward you can have as a designer, when you make something that solves a problem without people noticing you made one of the hardest things in my opinion, you actually solved the problem.

What problem can't you stop thinking about?

A better future for everyone. Since I became a father of twins this problem is more evident, complex and terrifying to me, how can I contribute to a better future not just for my kids but also everyone?

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

This one I received it from my director when I was studying to be a Spanish teacher and design was not even in my dreams :

“Whatever you do, do it well!“

Sounds simple, but for me it helped me realize that as a human being I was able to create, and that whatever I could create, this had a part of me that I was sharing with anyone!

Design tools you can’t live without? (Physical and/or digital)

• Clay

• Post-it

• LEGO

• Pens

• And a laptop ( as a designer in my career I’ve had to learn so many softwares but all of them live in a computer / iPad / phone )

What’s in your bag?

• Clay

• Post-it

• LEGO ( it’s such a great stress reliever )

• A flare

• A laptop

• Bike wrench

• And some chocolate...

What is the greatest design object, service, product or graphic ever made, in your opinion?

The Galileo Proves. The project was a genius piece of ingenuity, timeless technology that helped us see the far space and our home for the first time in such a humble and magnificent way inspiring millions and making us dream of exploring the unknown, transporting the sounds of our perception of what it meant to be human. A true rebel object in times of cold and heartless “progress”.

Books you highly recommend for anyone pursuing a career in design?

Creative Confidence by David and Tom Kelly

Designer friends you admire and we should talk to!

Liza Chong ( CEO of INDEX Design To Improve Life ) an organization whose mission is to show the impact of great design into people’s lives. My words get short to describe Liza, her humanity is out of this world.

Where and What did you study?

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Industrial and Product Design

Universidad Nacional, Colombia

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Advanced Product Design

Umeå University, Sweden