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.
After repeatedly tripping over his apartment owner’s knotted garden hose, Swinton designed a solution that would allow the user to unroll the garden hose as far as they need it and roll the hose back up, without ever having to pull, touch or handle the hose. “I grew up in a rural area and we always had a few hundred feet of garden hose lying around,” added Swinton. “So I knew there weren’t too many other solutions for this problem.”
As he prepares to graduate, he looks back on a journey that began on a much different path. “I originally wanted to design cars,” Swinton said. “At CIA, auto design and product design are connected and once I was exposed to product design, I got hooked pretty easily.
Swinton interned in the summer of 2006 at Astro Studios in San Francisco and may be heading west after collecting his diploma, as he has lined up several interviews with companies in the Bay Area.
“I’d really like to work in product design and eventually have my own firm,” he offered. “Ultimately, I want to do product design in a way that really teaches customers about the value of good design.”
Matthew Swinton can be reached at [email protected]
