Founder, SO design
Rotimi Solola is an award winning Chicago-based industrial design consultant. Solola graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in 2015 with a Bachelor’s in Design. Solola's design work has earned him Global recognition, and with design experience gained from Design Integrity, MNML and Motorola, Solola has contributed to the successful launch of multiple products. Solola is currently adjunct professor at UIC, and is the founder of SO design, an independent industrial design consulting practice.
An IDSA Student Merit Award winner in 2015, Rotimi Solola, IDSA has continued to grow and succeed as a designer, even in as tumultuous a year as 2020. As the founder of the independent consulting practice SO design and a visiting instructor at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), Rotimi has been motivated by many factors this year, including his commitment to design education and to his students at UIC.
“2020 has been hard on students nationwide, and I’ve tried to adapt and continue to add value even under less than ideal circumstances,” Rotimi says. On the business side, “for most people, 2020 started a bit rough,” he adds. “This was going to be THE BIG YEAR for SO design, but that’s not exactly how things went. As the year progressed though, I found myself picking up more and more projects from industries that were positively impacted by the pandemic. It started to get so busy that I was able to hire my fourth summer intern since I opened up shop in 2018.”
Another big motivation for Rotimi was found in collaborating with other designers in 2020. “When work slowed, I was able to collaborate with the talented branding and packaging designer Candace Carson,” he says; “We were able to produce a strong portfolio piece that showcased a small portion of our abilities as designers, and this sparked many new ideas for the future.”
“The last significant motivator has been with my clients,” Rotimi continues. “Maintaining a strong and respectful relationship with my work partners is extremely important to me. I’ve focused on building lasting relationships that go beyond the present-day projects that I’m working on into being viewed as an integral part of various teams that I work with.”
Rotimi’s work in 2020 also includes the elegant Alt Pen, a minimalist pen with a secondary function a precision tool that is available to order now. And the future for new projects is looking bright. “I can honestly say that SO design has started to take off,” says Rotimi. “I’ve been able to expand and work with so many trusted freelancers because of the amount of work that has been coming in. I’m looking forward to further expanding the business and working with new talent along with my current design partners; but above all, I’m very excited to finally be able to share some of the amazing work that SO design has been doing as we bring new products to market in 2021!”
Rotimi Solola, IDSA, says he’s exactly where he wants to be. The 2015 winner of the IDSA Student Merit Award from the Midwest Design District grew up in Chicago and always wanted to work for Motorola. Upon graduation from the University of Illinois-Chicago this past spring, Solola jumped right into a full-time position as an industrial designer at Motorola Mobility’s Consumer Experience Design division in the Windy City.
Solola’s journey began halfway around the world. He was born in Lagos, Nigeria and arrived in the United States at the age of five. He found out about industrial design through a high school project driven by traditional hand sketching and digital rendering techniques. “I knew that I wanted that to be in my future…. I later realized that designing products came most naturally to me, so I decided to pursue that in college. Since that decision, I’ve been very fortunate to have met so many talented people, and to have been a part of so many amazing opportunities.”
During his college years, Solola interned at Design Integrity, Motorola and Minimal. He returned to Motorola to start his career. “Since early in high school, I often wondered what it would be like to work at Motorola; they are responsible for some really awesome products throughout the decades, and I wanted to be a part of that,” he explains. “Now I can say I am a part of that.”
One of Solola’s SMA presentations proved necessity is indeed the mother of invention. Solola, a former track athlete, found MP3 watches were distracting during workouts. He designed the Bezel watch, to make it easier to control music during a workout, without having to look down at the device.
ID has changed Solola’s life in more ways than one. “When it comes to winning things I’ve always had poor luck, but since accepting Industrial design as my path all of that changed for me. When I found out I won the SMA, I was very pleased and relieved that all of my all nighters were put to good use. I was honored to win this award because the students who presented that same day did an outstanding job.”
Solola sees industrial design as “the important bridge between craft and business.” He adds, “It has truly made a positive impact on the industry as a whole, but there comes a point where too much of a good thing, is no longer a good thing. As designers we are problem solvers, but we sometimes forget that with every problem we solve, we create a new one.”
Solola says just as the world is changing, our industry must change and adapt. “We have to ask ourselves—are the problems we are solving, truly greater than the problems we are creating? Now, as well as in the future, and the Future of the Future, I believe it is our responsibility to ask ourselves a question: Is it possible to grow our industry and shrink our negative environmental impacts? If so, how?”
And just what lies ahead in his future? Solola hopes to lead his own design practice someday, and leverage his experience to launch products that—as he puts it—will matter.
