Aaron Hughes is a very talented Industrial Designer currently working for Astro studios. We featured Aaron not so long ago on the Design Porn section of the site and we we're lucky enough to sit down and ask a couple questions about how he gets his ridiculous looking sketches looking so...rediculous, the difference between college and the pro's and other interesting stuff. Scroll down and check out what he had to say...

How long have you been a designer and what is your schooling background?

I've been a professional designer since I got out of college. Graduated in 2002, so 7 years. Went to a private catholic high school. The Summer before my senior year I spent the summer in LA for an program at Otis Parson College. After high school I moved to Detroit to go to school at the College for Creative Studies. Was either there or Art Center in Pasadena, CA cause there really the only two legit schools for Transportation design. I've never been like a serious car buff, but I knew i could actually make some real money doing and I also loved the strong/powerful look of the art and the balance of elements to make nice designs. If your a good car designer I think you can pretty much kill any product design. Gotta do more problem solving and innovative ideas in product though, can't get away with just some slick lines.
So I got my BA in Transportation Design at CCS and actually have ended up being a product designer since I graduated. Most of the stuff you posted on that blog of me is just illustrations that I do on the side for fun cause I get bored with the ID stuff that pays the bills so its nice to do stuff that only I give a shit about and I enjoy doing it.

What form of media do you prefer to work in and why? (from sketching to rendering etc...)?

In school primarily pencil, markers. Wasn't until senior year before I started using photoshop and alias. Was good though, i think you need to get all that manual ability down first before you go digital. Now I still sketch the design, then probably overlay it and correct perspective, change design elements, etc. Flip it over so I can see whats wrong and fix it. If it still needs correction overlay it again, but thats rare. Either way the final overlay is done in black ink pen. I block out the blacks, shadows, outlines, etc. Scan it into photoshop, make it the top layer and make it a "multiply" layer, basically a transparency. Then I just start layering all color, dimension, shadows underneath that top sketch layer. That simple.

What was the biggest difference from leaving school to working in a professional environment?

You can't get away with poppin' out turds. Everything needs to be thought and backed up and you better be ready to defend it in a very confident way. Layout needs to be clean. Work on a little tasteful graphics for your pages but not over the top. you try to hard or add too much dumb shit around the idea it comes off amateur. Your presenting to real clients now, not your teacher so it actually matters and whoever you work for is paying you for a reason.

Any advice for student designers?

My advice, sketch, sketch, sketch, sketch. That what made the car guys so good cause we were forced to draw so much. It sucked but thats why we got great jobs. We used to take those big 18x24 pads of cheap paper and run them half way through the band saw in the shop. Basically doubling the pages. We had Trans class twice a week. Each class we usually were required to pin up around 18-20 pages, with at least 3 cars on each page. So around a 100 cars a week, every week, plus rendering, marker, so on and so on. It sucked, but you got fuckin' good. Gather as much reference as you can, pin it all around you and soak it all in. borrowing technique isn't stealing, make it yours but surround yourself with inspiration and strive to be that good.

Thanks to Aaron for answering some of our questions, and check out his portfolio for more of his rediculous work.