An Interview with Benjamin Pipitone

Benjamin Pipitone is a senior industrial design student at Appalachian State University. He took a very pragmatic approach to designing his Crease Shelf Bracket. For aesthetics, Ben took inspiration from the angular silhouettes of high-speed transport like fighter jets, sports cars, and bullet trains. Pipitone had a clear vision and a dynamic feeling that he strove to capture with his Crease Shelf Bracket. We caught up with Ben to pick his brain about the design process and delved more into the inspiration behind his design.

What is your background in design? How did you find out about our Annual Design Competition?

Me and the other two winners of the competition are all students here at App State University. The way we found out about the competition was it was assigned to us in our junior-level studio class. So that was brought to us by the professor from start to finish. The whole process was part of a project for class.



Tell us about your design. What was the inspiration behind it?

Where I started with my design was, I wanted to make it as easily manufacturable as possible. So that's the information that I started with and wanted to design around. Pretty early on, I knew that I wanted to keep it down to one or two manufacturing processes max, just so this could be, you know, as quick to market and easily manufacturable wherever it needs to be manufactured. Aesthetically speaking, it kind of came mostly inspired by older transportation designs. I looked at a lot of fighter jets, sports cars, bullet trains, that kind of thing. I don't know why, but I kind of wanted it to seem fast and angular and moving when it's up on the wall.



What was the process like, and can you explain your approach? How did you envision the concept-to-part pipeline, and how did you execute it?

Where I started with the whole process was research. Like I said, I wanted it to be easily manufacturable, and that's kind of what I designed around. I started by researching manufacturing methods and what went into different manufacturing methods, especially the ones that I knew that Mockett had already established. So, figuring that stuff out, the little nitty gritty stuff there was first, and then I could move into more aesthetic ideation. So, I started brainstorming and then slowly narrowed down my concepts until I had a more solid choice to move forward with. I saw most of my concepts being made out of wood at first, just for that same manufacturing kind of aspect. But once I started to research more in the metal manufacturing methods and that kind of thing, that's kind of what I landed on.



What would your advice be for someone looking to submit but is hesitant about the process?

I'd really say there's not much to be hesitant about. This is a cool opportunity. And the same thing with a lot of design competitions. It's a good chance to have a low-pressure scenario where there's not a client on the other end that needs something delivered to them. But you can take risks and push the boundaries of what you're normally capable of. But same thing what I did with this process was a little bit different of an approach to my design process personally. And it was fun to get to work through that and see how things change.

Congratulations to Ben for their exceptional design that clinched the win! We can’t wait to bring his design to life! View Daniel’s full interview here