Five start-up design firms out of Pratt Institute met in a panel discussion on taking the independent path to a design career.

My pics of the event were weak so here are some pictures of their work (except Dan and Kiel—where the $#%@ is your webpage?)

upper row, left to right: The Design Can (Jeanie Choe & Steve Tomlinson), Dan Alexander & Kiel Mead, Eenamaria (Sarah Morgan)
lower row, left to right: 54dean (Todd Seidman & Paul Galli), [Make] (Scott Lundberg)

Everyone stressed the supportive community of fellow designers that serves as a sounding board and provides advice and inspiration, which sounds like a great and possibly unique feature of the industrial design world.

Lessons learned (and shared) included being open to happy mistakes and flexible enough to work within a transitional business model, developing a collaborative approach that works for you (whether with partners or employees) to make more powerful concepts, and learning to be very social as a means to build contacts.

In the first session, moderator Peter Barna, Provost of Pratt Institute, and audience members commented on the focus on craft and home items, noting the absence of digital products and large-scale manufacture. One of the reasons is the scale of a start-up doesn't lend itself to mass production, even when such is the ultimate goal. Several participants discussed the joys of working in products they feel passionate about, even as they kept day jobs in order to fund their businesses.