Alfred van Elk industrial design

Alfred van Elk:
‘Upon graduating, I immediately wanted to set up my own company. Mainly based on enthusiasm and naivety: small portfolio, little knowledge of product development and without too much experience. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to work as a freelancer in the studio of designer Frans de La Haye for a number of years. Subsequently the head of Philips’s design studio invited me for a conversation: there you enter a fantastic working environment with over 100 international designers. I therefore abandoned the idea to set out on my own, and worked for over four years as an in-house designer on lighting projects. Philips Design was a magnificent training ground: different views within the same company. The entire trajectory: from brand- and user experience to concept design, product development and production.

Next I joined the design department at TNO, where I found myself one of the few designers among a whole army of technicians. What working there taught me was how to collaborate with specialists, such as engineers, physicists, electrical engineers and manufacturers, each with their own agendas. After that I worked at design agency Well Design before I started working for myself and founded studioMOM identity & design with two partners.

Taking all those experiences into account I felt it was time to set out on my own. I have been working under my own name since 2007, which simply feels right. It offers freedom, but also means that I work hard. There is a lot of baggage to juggle: knowledge and an overview of all aspects of the field. And it has made me realise that I have a good overview of what happens outside of it. Also I can make flexible use of my network, and cooperate in teams with other specialists. This puts me in a position of being able to serve my clients well.

Alongside being a practitioner, I have been teaching industrial design at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague for 20 years. In my work in education I see parallels with my work for clients. Your task as a lecturer is to help students discover what they are good at or could become good at. Therefore I listen very carefully to what they say. The same goes for my relationship with clients. There I am very good at asking questions too, and distil something out of that. Throughout I keep an eye of the bigger picture: does what is being said align with that? There is always a connection on a deeper level. I have to pay attention and ask incisive questions to understand what the client needs. At the end of the day I don’t design for myself.’

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Alfred van Elk graduated with honours from the Industrial Design training at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Prior to this he obtained his master’s degree in Interior Architecture, after studying Graphic and Typographic Design for 2 years.
He worked as a product designer with Frans de la Haye, Philips Design, TNO research & innovation and Well Design, and was co-founder and partner of studioMOM identity & design. Since 2007 he has his own design studio: Alfred van Elk industrial design. His designs have received multiple awards.

Clients include Heineken, Philips, B/S/H, Inventum Small Household, Auping, RoyalVKB, Inventum Technologies, Falco, Kembo, Leiden University, Factory Zero, Feadship, Bosch & Siemens, Skalar, Bandall, ABB, Fri-Jado, Idex, Fast & Fluid Management, Bruynzeel, Ubbink, Kruitbosch, Cooloyster, Brink, Mobeye, Symposion Gorinchem, Geesa, Tiger, Wereldwinkel and Widget.

In addition to his work as a designer, for 20 years Alfred van Elk has been a lecturer on the Post Graduate Industrial Design and Master Industrial Design at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, The Netherlands.

You can read an interview with Alfred van Elk on the BNO website.