2007 Western District Student Merit Winner

Design may or may not be a laughing matter, but when Soyun Kim sees bad design, the experience for her is just not funny. “Sometimes I see an object make a user uncomfortable, like a bad joke,” she said.

Kim is a natural problem solver who took an interest in design at an early age. “I found I was sometimes bothered by poorly designed objects and I often wondered, ‘Why can't this be different?’”

Naturally, that led Kim to focus on product design and fostered a keen interest in the user experience. 

2007 Midwest District Student Merit Winner

Before leaving Togo at age 16 to come to the US, Mansour Ourasanah knew he loved to draw.

“I watched cartoons and the only way I could remember them was to draw them,” Ourasanah noted. “I never took art classes, but I became known as the kid who drew.”

After mastering English, Ourasanah enrolled at Notre Dame, where he tried out mechanical engineering. “I didn’t like the technicality of engineering,” he reported. “I wanted something more artistic, so I tried architecture. Then I discovered industrial design.”

2007 Mideast District Student Merit Winner

When he shared the top prize in the International Housewares Association’s (IHA) student design contest with his twin brother back in February, Matthew Swinton was only getting started.

 His IHA-award-winning design for The Hose Wheel also played a role in the portfolio that earned him the Mideast District Student Merit Award.

2007 Northeast District Student Merit Winner

All work and no play simply doesn’t work for Dan Bolinski—which is fitting for someone who naturally gravitates toward toy design.

I like to have fun with what I do,” he said. “I don’t think the process should kill the product.”

2007 Southern District Student Merit Winner

The Aponte family includes a sculptor, a painter, an architect, an actor and now, an industrial designer. Creativity is in Alfredo Aponte’s genes.