Design Education Talks Ep. 70 - Oscar Diaz

Oscar Diaz is a London based Industrial designer and educator. His work is characterised by a plain, innovative and playful take on everyday objects. He has worked for companies such as Muji, Joseph & Joseph or Hermès designing products and installations.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/OscarDiazStudio
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oscardiazstudio
Website: http://www.oscar-diaz.net
Bio: http://www.oscar-diaz.net/about-3

Transcript

Lefteris Heretakis: 0:09

Hello, and welcome to design education talks by the new art school. Our guest today is Oscar dear. Welcome, Moscow.

Oscar Diaz: 0:17

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Lefteris Heretakis: 0:20

Fantastic to have you here. So tell us about you.

Oscar Diaz: 0:25

Well, I'm industrial designer and currently run a small practice here in London, and also teach different universities. Yeah, as a visiting lecturer. lecturer. Yeah.

Lefteris Heretakis: 0:41

Fantastic. So tell us tell us more. Well, when did you start?

Oscar Diaz: 0:46

So so my, my, yeah, my background need was more into art. I just switched in my last year, actually, in university. I was doing an exchange in France. And I decided to switch design. So you have a kind of a twisted Yes, trajectory into design. But yeah, definitely something that always like it. I've always been interested in taking things apart and understanding how things work. And I think out of that curiosity I got, I got into design and they start first, I work for a few years in Paris in studio with metallic rosette. And then, because I had done just one year of industrial design in this kind of change from subject on my last year, at university, I went back and I did an MA at the Royal College of Art. After that, I was lucky to be invited to a small project in in Gifu, in Japan, with innovation, RCA that this is kind of an office that connects designers and industry. And so I went to Japan for about six months. And I was working there with with a furniture company. And then I came back to the to the UK I started working on my own with clients, I work a lot on them quite a lot of toys, especially educational toys, I've done a number of toys for for MUJI, in for for the Christmas system. And now I recently started working with this company doing STEM toys, trying to have toys that the children's can make themselves and getting those some learning into it some some of the skills needed for the future, either engineering, maths, and all those are skills that we talk so much about.

Lefteris Heretakis: 3:03

Fantastic. So just to go back to the beginning, where did you switch from?

Oscar Diaz: 3:09

I switched from art I was doing more like painting and sculpture. Sorry, yeah, I miss. And, and I switched from an artist background basically, to designer. It was it was sort of a chance of things happening. When I when I went from I was studying in Salamanca, I moved to Bordeaux in South West France. And there I happen to go into this kind of a small group of students, which was called nonguaranteed limits, and it was kind of a mix. Basically, there were designers, industrial designers and artists kind of sharing the same brief. And I got interested on that on that side. You know, I was at the moment already feeling a bit disappointed, I thought that they are war was very cryptic, difficult for everyone else to get into you need to nowadays have a kind of wide knowledge of art to properly understand it. And what I like about design is that you don't need to understand it. I mean, if he works, you shouldn't be trying to understand design, you should be just working. And that kind of proximity to the subject use appeals to me, and that's what I went in.

Lefteris Heretakis: 4:33

Fantastic. Excellent. So then tell us about what your project you're working on the your latest project.

Oscar Diaz: 4:42

So I yeah, I've been working a lot. I said, understand, projects, children subjects, and I started working as Creative Director for this company in France a few years ago, where we try to do So let's look at the future that is this kind of famous talk where Bill Gates say it's going to be, I think, suppose 60% of the jobs in 10 years don't exist now. So how do we prepare people from for that? If a huge amount of wind when AI comes in a huge amount of jobs that we know now that are going to be automatize? What are the skills that I cannot can can you teach so people can survive this challenging environment? I think we all we all have seen the speed of change going faster and faster. I remember in my previous generation, you used to have use for music, for example, you just have a standard record. On my lifetime, you know, my grandparents lives. On my lifetime. You already when Cassie says you went to mp3, to CD, and now we are in some interest into more software to Spotify, at least and so. So you could see how the, the accelerating rate of technology is bringing teams much faster. So the question is, how did you prepare people for that? And that's difficult, because you need to look at what what are transferable skill? What are adaptable skills that can basically you're preparing people for the unknown, and you're just trying to say, okay, creativity will be most difficult to replace by rote by by technology, robots, AI, problem solving skills, you kind of try to look at those skills that that you know, for sure, that will be valuable in 10 years, 10 years, with that idea, and, and some other ideas, some some old ideas from also Benjamin Franklin that talks about education. And he, for example, has something like I cannot misquote him, but it's something like telling me something, and I understand, but make me do it. And I learned. So this idea of learning through making is very, very important as well for this company. So we thought about how do you instead of giving something that is finished and the children can only do as we said, what if we propose sort of a system open open ended play where children's can kind of customise and there is some learning into it. So becomes a bit more experienced is not a typical toys is kind of more difficult to sell in, in sort of business terms. But it becomes more interesting for me as an object as a mission.

Lefteris Heretakis: 8:04

So how did you get into teaching

Oscar Diaz: 8:06

into teaching it was also something you know, I was, I didn't know I was interested on all schools and teaching methods, maybe because I've been through a few teaching this course myself, you know, at Salamanca, then in Bordeaux, and then in the UK. So three different countries. And I was exposed to very, very different ways of teaching. And I thought, this is interesting. So obviously, I went to look into curriculums back the time, I was interested in the house, obviously, and what become the scholar for whom in Germany, and how those curriculums compare, and, and so when I read from the essay, I did, I did a small, worse of training for four teachers at the London College of Communication. And then, and then I just started my practice. And in parallel, I was invited to the word subs in different places. And every time it was about a week, maybe 10 days, I will select a subject and I really liked the energy of those, those sort of events, there was a huge amount of change. And other things could happen in those 10 days, especially in the last ones. And it was it was great teaching and so at some point in 2013, I was offered a position to teach back at the RCA and I and that's when I started teaching kind of regularly, once once a week and until now, that's what I've been doing. Ya know, there's how I got into it, kind of kind of naturally for some worse ups. And now more regularly into Yeah, once a day, once a week. I do that mainly tutorials with the students. And I really like this change

Lefteris Heretakis: 10:05

I have. Fantastic. So how do you bring the energy from your professional life into teaching?

Oscar Diaz: 10:13

Yeah, that still doesn't mean that's great for me because there is a switch there, when went for four days a week, I have my own problems and things to deal with. And then suddenly I go and I have to do to thing for someone else, what will be the best choice because a lot of those times and tutorials, every student has their specific project. And I have to think, what, what now what I will do, but what I will do in that in his situation, or what will be the best path to take. So there's a lot of mentoring and discussing trying to poke holes into their thinking and say, Okay, where do you delete that? Or why do you didn't do that? And then obviously, and then obviously, technical expertise, maybe some materials or things that I came across through my professional practice, that I can recommend, or just say, Well, you didn't try this or that? Yeah. So it's just a very good balance. The same time students are always going into new technologies, new things, and then I also learn a lot of things.

Lefteris Heretakis: 11:26

Absolutely. So how can we help students and graduates reach employability, in this ever changing? Environment?

Oscar Diaz: 11:36

Yeah, obviously, nowadays, design is become much more known and accepted as a profession originally, especially if you look at the Italian design, the we're all architects, train architects, we're doing design. And in myself in Spain, I think didn't exist, the degree falling, per designer in particular didn't exist until very, very recently, I think it's the first in a series or something like that, which is incredible, there was this idea of either you are an engineer, and you go full on on that, or you are an artist, and cannot be the ground, didn't exist until recently, nowadays has, has exploded. And I think what we've seen is that fix are much more fragmented and mixed together. And I think designers need to be more entrepreneurial, I think they need to be better at communication as well, because of the effects of media media landscape, and how how things happen. Now, you know, we have a tonne of images flowing. And there is a lot of also, there's a lack of attention on people. So you need to play differently. I mean, I think that CDs, thieves CVs are nearly out of date, or today. And things like that need to be adapted. And I see this also, in the design education, we teach, for example, things like technical drawing that are good to do. And I remember, not in university, but in, in high school, using parallax and this kind of tools still now nowadays, you can see that there was the lack of hazardous 3d systems. But when I worked with companies most of the time, now I sell 3d files and and technical drawings are just double check most of the time. So you see that the things are a complexity has gone up, but because we have tools that are much faster and complex, also, the barrier to access to that complexities been lowered. So to prepare those, those two skills, I think are very, very important that we are not always very good at communicating because we are into 3d. So communication is going to be very important and also be more entrepreneurial.

Lefteris Heretakis: 14:13

Yeah. Fantastic. So how can we do design education differently? What would you change? If anything, if you could if you had a magic wand, if you could do whatever? Yeah,

Oscar Diaz: 14:24

yeah, I think the best the best thing and I like and these schools are trying this distant more into business, this kind of practice, but I like when the course is very, very close to reality. I think the problem with so many universities is that you stay in this kind of bubble where there is a system and students may look for degree which is or grade, which is fine, you know, being a student as well, but it's not the end purpose. You know, the grade or the degree is a concept terms of learning objective. But if you do understand that as an objective, then you're missing the point, you're just looking through the hole, and you're just missing. What is around, you know? And so things that I would like it's a bit closer to the real world, what is the dedication? That's why I like in university when we do what we call life projects with companies, and companies come in. And we have people with very specific expertise. And we've done that with boards and other companies. And you can see how much transfer of knowledge that is, and, and learning from the students. I think that that's key. And that should be on all levels, I think, I think we should be trying to act in the university as close as we can, to the real wall, and that need to be updated every few years. Another thing I like in the in the, in the RCA, this is on the system that we had, we were supposed to it was this idea of vertical units, meaning that you were two years there, but there was not a different curriculum from first year and second year. You You said you felt that someone was second year because he had more experience, like being in the army or making more hours of flying or something like that. But there was not a different curriculum is what I call kind of a boo FET kind of learning like it as much as you can, why should I limit this is your first year learning you will you get there. And don't learn this because we're going to teach this in second year or in the third year. There was also a lot of peer to peer learning there, which is very, very important for teaching. So I think that is structured. I mean, I am aware that you cannot do that everywhere or with big chunks of students. This work because there was a small group of students. But I think that idea was very interested in the idea of first and second year is is just a number. I mean, you are mixed together, you have the same brief you replay the same thing. You just have two years there. And I like that. So those kinds of things that I've seen things that the examples that I seem that for me worked really well, because he kind of push you up, there is no curriculum limitations. Yeah. And then, on other places, obviously, I see a hidden there a few things that are very interesting. But all of them come back to the same basis. Like how can you get as close as industry and the real world as possible?

Lefteris Heretakis: 17:51

Fantastic. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So how can our viewers and listeners find you?

Oscar Diaz: 17:58

Yeah. So while I'm on Instagram, I have an Instagram account. Oscar the studio? You could find me also in Twitter is the same handle. I have my website also, which is Oscar hyphen, the dotnet.

Lefteris Heretakis: 18:15

Yep. Excellent. Excellent. And what advice would you like to leave us with?

Oscar Diaz: 18:21

about education? You want? Yeah, no, I just I say, the best. The best students, I got always very curious. So one thing I will advise anyone getting in this profession wanted to get into this profession is how do you maximise that? How did you work on that? You know, the disempowers doesn't start on sketching, but paid start before What do you put in? Before you can put out so be aware of that, whether you would defend yourself out of and try to select very well that.

Lefteris Heretakis: 19:10

Perfect. Well, thank you so much. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you. Thanks. All right. Thank you. Bye. Thank you.