Meet Tom

Mechanical Design Lead

Tom has spent the last ten years designing physical products of all kinds. He has worked on consumer and medical devices, electric vehicles and most recently large scientific instruments for astronomy. He has led teams within projects that scale from two to two hundred people, with development cycles from weeks to years. He specialises in design for manufacture, incorporating considerations of tooling, moulding and assembly into designs right from the earliest concepts to ensure that products can actually be built.

What is your approach to design?

A design is like a story; once you really understand the brief you generally find that there is a simple, underlying proposition that drives many of the design choices. The physical product is the embodiment of that proposition, though of course subject to the limitations of physical reality! I aim to always apply de Saint Exupery's law of design: "a designer knows that they have achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

What are your 3 favourite designed products?

The AeroPress is the product I wish I had thought of. It has so few parts, and provides a great user experience without any of the mess of other coffee brewing technologies. It is rare to find such elegant solutions to longstanding, everyday tasks.

I have loved Brompton folding bicycles since I was a child. They incorporate so many brilliant movements and ingenious details: the angle of the handlebar hinge, the wheels on the luggage rack to allow rolling when folded, the way the chain stays in line through the fold.

My Garmin Forerunner 305 from 2006 still works almost as well as when it was new. It has none of the smartwatch functions of modern GPS watches, no colour or touch screen, and is rather chunky. On the other hand it has exactly the functions I need as a runner, and the display fields are actually more configurable than later offerings. The only reason I don't use it every day is that modern computers can't easily talk to it.

What Interests You?

I moved to Edinburgh specifically for interesting landscapes! I run, climb and hike in the hills, and surf off the East Lothian beaches. I converted a van so that I can explore more of Scotland at weekends and on long Summer days.

What product could you not live without?

A pocket sprung mattress. Whenever I sleep in a tent or on a friend's sofa I am reminded of just how brilliant real mattresses are! Even the highest tech foams can't compete in terms of support, breathability and longevity.

"A design is like a story; once you really understand the brief you generally find that there is a simple, underlying proposition that drives many of the design choices."