Why design? Always witty and engaged, brilliant designer Jens Paulus took some time to share with us his passion for design...

Hello Jens, Could you tell me when did you decide to follow a career of designer? Did you have other options in mind at the time?

I guess I always wanted to be a designer since I was quite young. I was always curious about how things are made and why they look the way they are. The final decision I took after finishing high school. I had the chance to attend some classes as a guest at the local art & design school. When I saw the students there in their ateliers working on their own ideas, I knew that this was the kind thing I wanted to do. 

Can you remember your first design project? 

The first real design project was a height adjustable lamp. It was part of the initial design foundation courses at the University of Art & Design Offenbach. It was all about learning the principles of industrial Design with a focus on product semantics. No 3D was involved, the entire design process was manual: sketching, doing scale models out of foam, and finally spending time in workshops doing the real scale model by hand. I remember turning small bits and pieces out of aluminum and using the manual milling machine and bending tools to create all the parts which had to be painted and assembled later on. It was the perfect place to turn ideas in reality, not only that we had access to all kind of perfectly equipped workshops, we received a training in wood and metal craftsmanship in order to be able to use the machines and tools.

Of course, 3D CAD and digital manufacturing are essential in a product design process, but to work in real scale with the real material by hand is a valuable experience for a product designer.

How would you describe your line of work? How about your work process?

Since 2005 I have been mainly involved into yacht design projects. The interesting thing about these kind of projects is that almost everything on board is custom designed and you work on a wide range of different elements. It´s a nice playground, but also quite challenging at times.  

About the work process I start it always by taking notes and doing sketches by hand, but actually 3D is part of the process from the very beginning.

Could you share your experience using CATIA Creative Design? Does it help improving your work process?  

I have been using CATIA V5 for over eight years by now and it has been always an extremely powerful solution during the design and product development process. But CATIA V6 for Creative Designers is something new! It It offers a workflow which is extremely efficient and very inspiring. 

A great example of this way of working is the creation of the virtual show car 'b l e u' which has been developed by the CATIA Design team at Dassault Systèmes in Paris. I had the chance to join the team and it was a great experience. My task was to demonstrate the concept design working methods with the aid of 3D sketching (Natural Sketch) and subdivision surface modeling (Imagine & Shape).

Would you still use it in the future? 

Of course.

Do you have any advice for the young designers reading this interview?

Try to be free and trust in your ideas.

Thank you for sharing Jens, you are inspiring !