“Product Design” vs. Industrial Design

I first heard the term "Industrial Design" in a 1959 movie.

North by Northwest. Eva Marie Saint's character turns to Cary Grant and says "I'm an industrial designer." I was transfixed. Something about those two words together — industrial and design — sparked a curiosity that eventually became a career.

The term has been around since the 1930s. It describes something specific, something real — design for the industrial world. Manufacturing, materials, mechanisms, mass production, and fundamentally, the human experience of using a product. That last part is what distinguishes us from engineers. To paraphrase Steve Jobs — we don't just resolve how something works. We resolve how a product is used.

Somewhere along the way "Product Design" became a catch-all — used interchangeably for industrial design, digital design, UX, and everything in between until it lost its meaning entirely. Some industrial designers complain about "Product Design" being hijacked and want to reclaim it.

I don't.

I'd rather we leaned into "Industrial Design" — fully, unapologetically. I love telling people I'm an industrial designer. I love the intrigue it creates, the explanation it demands, the conversation it starts. I'm proud to carry the title despite the anonymity, despite the ignorance that sometimes surrounds it.

But here's the tension. That same anonymity is exactly why so few people know what we do. Why the discipline gets overlooked. Why its value isn't understood until something has already gone wrong.

We can't have it both ways. Either we embrace the obscurity and accept being misunderstood — or we fight to be understood and sacrifice some of the mystique.

I know which one I'd choose.