About
My name is Nicolas Gonzalez Garrido. I was born in Buenos Aires in 1976 and grew up in San Juan, Argentina.
During 1994 I went to Denver (Colorado) as an exchange student, and during that year I had my first experience with design. The following year, after returning to Argentina, I moved to Buenos Aires to begin my industrial design studies at the University of Buenos Aires. During the last two years as a student, I began working part time for Arcadia Diseño, and also did freelance work for other clients.
After graduation in 2003 I moved to Madrid, Spain. There, I began collaborating with the engineering department of Montajes Mejorada in the design of industrial machinery. I was interested to continue my studies, and after 5 months in Madrid, I was granted a scholarship to enroll in a Postgraduate Degree in Strategic Design Management at the University of Buenos Aires. At the same time, I met Gustavo Fontana from Boston, who offered me a new position. I decided then to go back to school and started working for Gustavo.
During 2004, with Gustavo, decided to open a small office in Buenos Aires, where I managed two other designers and a couple of freelance resources. I had to handle all the legal and financial aspects when opening this new office and I took my first steps in management.
Our clients included: A-Team Collaborative, Bose, Boston Scientific, Evenflo, Franklin Electronics, GUM, Ingersoll Rand, Kodak, Lowes, Sensable, Staples and RIM. We were also involved with projects at ABID, Essential Design, HLB, Human Centric and Insight PD. In addition we worked in conjuction with Cadillac, Cuisinart, Ferrari, Infinity, Maserati, Mazda, Nisan, Pirex, Polaroid, Porsche, Procter and Gamble, Samsung and Scion trough our immediate client base.
After completing my studies in Strategic Design Management, I was even more interested about business strategy, markets and consumer behavior. I decided to go back to school in 2005 and enrolled in a Postgraduate Degree in Marketing at the University of San Andres (UdeSA), which I finished in December 2006.
It is my interest to continue learning and integrate Design thinking with knowledge from other fields. I think that as the profession and the markets evolves; new challenges come up, and it takes a lot more than traditional design training to create successful products and services.
Since March 2008 I am living in Taipei, where I joined Pega Design & Engineering (the offshoot of ASUSDESIGN).
