By David Ortiz
PBN Staff Writer
With the second-highest per capita concentration of industrial designers in the country, it was only a matter of time before Rhode Island got its own chapter of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), the profession’s national industry association.
IDSA-Rhode Island was launched on Feb. 11. The chapter will work to build and support the state’s industrial design industry, said Matt Grigsby, who was named Rising Star Innovator of the year in the 2007 Rhode Island Innovation Awards, for his role as co-founder of Providence-based Ecolect LLC (READ MORE). He organized IDSA-Rhode Island and serves as its incoming chairman.
Rhode Island’s is the 29th chapter of the industrial-design profession’s national organization, which provides education, information and advocacy for more than 3,300 members.
“The formation of this newest chapter of the IDSA represents an opportunity to promote and showcase Rhode Island’s industrial design community while strengthening our state’s network of industrial designers,” Grigsby said.
ISDA-Rhode Island has created a Web site, www.isdari.org. Founding members of the chapter include GTECH, Hasbro, Item Group, Bose, Cutler & Company, Design Formations, Design Lab, Kaiju Studios, Wooding Design and Décor Craft Inc.
Rhode Island’s estimated 540 industrial design professionals rank the state behind only Michigan in per capita concentration, according to 2005 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The relatively large number of local industrial designers owes in part to companies associated with the Rhode Island School of Design, and the many RISD graduates who stay in the state after graduating.
But until now, local industrial designers looking to network with others in the industry and attend IDSA events have had to travel to Boston, Grigsby said.
Grigsby, a 2005 RISD alumnus, got the idea to form a Rhode Island chapter of the IDSA last year in San Francisco, while attending an international industrial design conference where he and his business partner launched Ecolect. The Providence-based business provides architects and industrial designers with a free online library of sustainable materials and related information.
While at the conference, Grigsby learned from officers of the IDSA that the national organization hoped to establish more local chapters and become more enmeshed in local business communities.
Accordingly, Grigsby aims to develop programming and events that create relationships between local industrial designers and professionals in related fields, including architecture and graphic design.
In the coming year, IDSA-Rhode Island plans to host a lecture series and related networking events every other month at Tazza Caffe in downtown Providence and at other venues. Grigsby is reaching out to officials at RISD, Brown University, Johnson & Wales University, The Steelyard, Providence Geeks and the state chapters of the American Institute of Architecture and the American Institute of Graphic Arts, among other organizations.
“We’re connecting [industrial designers] who aren’t normally connected in our state, in other states and on a national level,” Grigsby said. “Beyond that, we’re also getting people who might not be involved with the IDSA to get involved,” such as manufacturers and people in academia.
IDSA-Rhode Island will leverage an existing networking and information-sharing platform by posting its events, job opportunities, requests for proposals and other information at RI-Nexus, an online portal established last year by the R.I. Economic Development Corporation to support and grow the state’s information technology and digital media sector, said Andy Cutler, owner of the Providence-based public relations firm Cutler & Co. and communications chairman for IDSA-Rhode Island.
IDSA-Rhode Island’s strategy for growth is seen as a test-bed for new-chapter development by the national association, Cutler said.
“According to IDSA, we are in a leadership position to show the rest of the country how an IDSA chapter is to be run,” he said.
An active IDSA chapter in Rhode Island will serve as a catalyst for continued growth of industrial design throughout the state and assist in further developing a robust design community with an eye towards innovation and economic growth, Frank Tyneski, IDSA’s executive director, said in a news release. •
