Backstage: Industrial Design

"It’s the perfect mix of visionary design, creative drafting, and realizing the final product."

Michael, Product Designer | Anton Paar GmbH

We are a small team of product designers at the heart of Anton Paar. We are involved in projects and products throughout the entire development cycle. We are involved from the start – from the initial idea to the completion of the measuring instrument. In our organizational structure we act as internal service providers and depending on the incoming orders we create, control, and develop different projects together with other departments. Our central position in the production process enables us to work closely with the research and construction teams, and the construction of prototypes.

After I completed my studies in Industrial Design I started working as a freelancer and couldn’t imagine myself in a permanent post. It was the professional, harmonious, and diverse working environment, the philanthropic philosophy behind Anton Paar as well as the possibility to keep freelancing on the side that ultimately convinced me. I have been working at Anton Paar since 2014. Right from the start I was developing product design scenarios as part of the design group and giving impulses for future measuring instruments. Of course the design processes and the employed tools are highly dependent on their respective tasks and can vary a lot. Usually we work through our formal-aesthetic designs consecutively with hand-drawn sketches, Photoshop, 3D models, and renderings. For this process our company-owned 3D-printer has proven valuable as has the “design clay” and the “foam mockup”.

Due to the countless product lines at Anton Paar different challenges arise which then manifest themselves in the different forms and dimensions of instruments. This makes our job exciting, diverse, and interdisciplinary, and also offers the chance to learn something new every day and gain experience. We also profit on a personal level from the experience gained from our cooperations with constructors, physicists, and technicians from different disciplines. Ultimately it is our products that benefit in terms of quality and design. As in classical product design we pay attention to our customers’ needs and develop a design which considers both our stylistic elements and the handling of the instruments, while being as cutting-edge as possible. We work according to the MAYA principle (most advanced yet acceptable) and realize our products with a huge portion of creativity and empathy, and the appropriate reasoning.

Of course we change and develop further to ensure that our product design is always kept at pace with the times and fit for the future.