Screw Driver Sketching Exercise

Over one year as an employee now! Wohoo!!

And finally I start to feel like I'm getting up to speed to a level which I think is professional. To be productive in a creative profession 8 hours a day is not the easiest task and I'll probably never get there (can anyone?), but I'm slowly but surely starting to learn what I need to at least do the best I can. As long as I'm doing my best I don't really feel so much pressure, because how could I do more? But if I'm tired a week, have a hard time concentrating or for some reason have low motivation I can really feel performance anxiety and that only makes me less creative and can easily lead into a negative spiral where it in the end starts affecting my self confidence, which makes it even worse. So I'm really trying to prioritize sleep and to make sure I have everything I need to be focused and have energy at work. That makes working as a designer a 1000 times more enjoyable!

My title at ÅF is industrial designer, or product designer, and I'm part of a team of around 20 product and interaction designers and surfacers from all over the world including Sweden, Italy, Turkey, India, Rumania, USA, Canada and Iran. ÅF also has a satellite design studio towards Volvo AB where around 50 partners and some employees work under ÅF's name.

The international environment is great to work in and I get to do exciting Projects, which make me feel like I'm learning a lot and developing as a designer, which is the most important thing in this period of my professional career. A good salary really comes secondary even if I cannot complain on that either, considering that I started working directly after my bachelor and so far have little experience from working professionally as a designer. The autumn was quite tough for me because my hole situation drained my energy and I had a hard time delivering at work, but now I'm on my way up again and I feel that the passion and the energy is coming back more and more every week. Probably the nice spring weather is helping my progress as well.

Below are some sketches of mini-screwdrivers. I didn't try to brand it to some specific brand, but just played around with different ideas. Again I was lucky enough to get the possibility to do this on work time, in between projects, because my boss said she needed some sketches that we can use when presenting what we do outside of ÅF.