Carlos Reyes Zgarrick Talks about His Experience at Beyond Design
Every summer we offer internships to undergraduates who want to learn more about product development in the real world & sometimes, we even offer them to selective high school students. This summer we were lucky enough to have five interns from different schools, one of them being a student from Lane Tech High School. Carlos, a junior at Lane Tech High School, heard about Beyond Design through the NPD101 program we hosted at LTHS.
He approached us, interested in wanting to learn from our designers the in’s and out’s of working at a product design consultancy and we were thrilled that we could help him out. At 16 years old, Carlos has become extremely proficient in the programs and tools that are designers use, picking up on it at a rapid rate.
As an intern, Carlos had the opportunity to not only learn from our designers, but to also work on a project of his own, creating a chess set. The time, effort and hard work that he put into it paid off – having it be one of the best intern projects we have seen here at Beyond Design. He shared that the three most important skills he developed over the summer were: learning photoshop, SolidWorks and getting a better understanding of sketching.
In addition, he told us about the top five things he learned about design in the real world:
1. Your personal design might not be the right one, and it often isn’t, even if you really like it.
2. Design is a long process, lots of refinement.
3. Design is very team based often, you bounce ideas off each other and brainstorm ideas of how to make something work.
4. Prototyping products using the 3D printer really helps, being able to see something physically often is a lot different than seeing it on the computer, and you can see things to change that you might not have seen on the computer. Design isn’t just drawing, there are numerous different parts to it.
5. Sketching, Photoshop, 3D modeling, and many more are all involved, and all go together to create a final design of a product. This can apply to my classes by showing me that if I’m having trouble coming up with a solution for something, it can help to bounce ideas off my classmates. Sometimes a classmates idea for something will work better than mine, even if I think mine is the best.
He also offered advice for future interns, whether at Beyond Design or another design consultancy.
1. My advice would be to take it. Being able to have an internship in a field that you are interested in is very helpful.
2. Before this internship, I was interested in sketching, but did not really know much about product design.
3. However, after spending the summer here, I’ve become so interested in it that it is now something that I would want to do as a job, and want to study in college. Internships provide a great opportunity to find a passion of yours that you might not necessarily know you have.
We thoroughly enjoy having interns each summer and helping them to improve their skills – in both design and communication. Mike was no different. He took advantage of his time at our studio to learn everything he could from our designers. We hope that he returns to school with an improved skill set and understanding of the industry we all love to be a part of.
“Thank you so much for this experience, it really has had a huge impact on me. It’s been an amazing summer here, I learned a lot about design, and I am really considering going into industrial design in the future now. Also, thanks to everyone who helped me out and taught me different things, it means a lot and really made an impact on me.”
Download the Chess Set and Board Here
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