For Daniel J. Lipscomb ’98, Senior Designer at Fiskars Garden and Tool in Salk City, WI, inspiration has come full circle. He and Fiskars recently received four GOOD DESIGN Awards from the Chicago Athenaeum: Museum for Architecture and Design, the oldest and most prestigious worldwide awards program recognizing innovation and superior design embodiment.
Daniel credits MIAD faculty for continuing to drive and inspire the quality of his Industrial Design work, especially the late Stephen F. Lacey, to whom he dedicates the awards.
Fiskars Garden Multi-Snip, one of four award-winning designs by Daniel J. Lipscomb ’98
But Daniel is also inspiring current MIAD students through collaborative Industrial Design projects with Fiskars. The relationship, he says, helps “students solve for real-world solutions with practicing product development teams, and delivers fresh new ideas to Fiskars that tap into the innovative young mindset of our future customers.”
Provost David Martin remembers Daniel as a student who “was interested in addressing the contradiction between his interest in nature and natural, organic form, and the lack of integrity in so much contemporary product design.”
Fiskars Rear Pivot Bypass Pruner (Small), designed by Daniel J. Lipscomb ’98
Daniel agrees that his long-time love of gardening makes it “a pleasure to solve garden product issues. A good tool is designed by the use and handling of objects, not by idle thought or the use of a computer mouse. One of the GOOD DESIGN Award winning tools started as a thought I had while harvesting vegetables in our home garden.”
