Scott Rutherford, the Edinburgh Napier student who came third in our 2023 competition, was buzzing after spending a week at Brightworks UK, the multi-award winning new product design and development consultancy, which is one of the sponsors of DIP. Scott was immediately welcomed into the design team at Brightworks where he was able to roll up his sleeves and work on a live project, generating several design options for a simple operating mechanism for a hand tool.
He said: “I had an amazing time at Brightworks and learned so much from the managing director, Graeme Paterson and product designer, Izzy Paterson, who were very welcoming and happy to answer my questions. Graeme’s experience in the industry is incredible and he taught me so many valuable skills that I can now implement into my design process. It
really confirmed that working in a design studio is everything that I hoped.
Graeme Paterson said: “We thoroughly enjoyed having Scott work with us. He showed great design creativity and mechanical inventiveness and was able to visualise his ideas using hand-drawn sketches with great precision and accuracy. He also showed that he is a great communicator and with his positive attitude and willingness to collaborate, made a significant contribution to the success of our project.” DIP is delighted Scott was able to derive so much from his industry placement. All our finalists are awarded placements or industry training courses as part of their prize, a feature which is unique to our competition. Scott is pictured with Graeme and Izzy Paterson working on his designs.
