The designer
Alberto Villarreal is a Senior Industrial Design Consultant based in Mexico City, focused on product development and technological/cultural innovation.
Characterized by a diverse portfolio of projects and entrepreneurial drive, his work spans a variety of industries and products such as: sports equipment, private and public transportation, fashion, furniture, toys, consumer electronics, high-tech medical devices and appropriate technology.
His clients vary from Fortune 500 companies to small start-ups as well as non-profit organizations. Previous involvements include: Adidas, Nike, Hewlett-Packard, LeapFrog, SanDisk, Tokidoki, and Fila (to name a few).
Alberto's work has been published in books and magazines worldwide and several web portals have featured it. He has also participated in collective exhibitions in Asia, Europe, North and South America. Nowadays he is one of the Mexican young designers with more international recognition.
He has received some of the most prestigious awards of the industry, including: red dot - best of the best, Chicago Athenaeum Good Design Award, iF Hannover Product Design Award and IDSA/Business Week Industrial Design Excellence Award, among others.
Up to date, his personal goal as a designer is:
" To cultivate progress in society and environment through the intelligent merging of technology and culture "
Alberto started his career at automotive-design studios such as Pininfarina (Italy), Johnson Controls Advanced Design (Germany) and Volkswagen Design (Mexico). In 2004 Alberto joined LUNAR where he worked as Senior Lead Designer in San Francisco (USA) for four years and gained major experience leading projects with clients internationally. At LUNAR, he was also a founding member of the LUNAR Elements team (internal sustainability effort).
Through his experience in Europe and North America, Alberto has learned different methodologies that now help him tackle projects that vary in scale and scope, from large vehicles or precise medical tools to performance equipment for the sports industry or educational toys.
Although Alberto's work reflects a high charge of technology, he believes the cultural aspects are key in the design process and consequently in the success of a product or service.
He obtained a Bachelor Degree in Industrial Design from UNAM (Mexico) and a Masters Degree in Transportation Design from Umea University (Sweden). He is fluent in Spanish, English and Italian, with a basic understanding of Swedish, Portuguese and French. In 2000 he received the Medal “Gabino Barreda”, given to the best student of each major at UNAM, Mexico.
The philanthropist
Alberto balances his client work with humanitarian activity and is currently involved in Social Design efforts;
10 to 20% of his work consist on design and development of philanthropic projects for non-profit organizations such as the San Francisco chapter of Engineers Without Borders (ATDT group) and Project H Design (of which he leads the Mexico City Chapter through the group Razon Social, founded by him).
He is an active member of Fundación UNAM, where every month a percentage of his salary is donated to support educational and research programs in Mexico; he is an advisory board member of the Lifeboat Foundation and a supporter of The Designers Accord.
Besides his professional activity, Alberto has been co-founder and co-organizer of the San Francisco chapter of Pecha Kucha (a series of monthly events to gather the design community), for three years. He also ran a virtual community for art and design called Algorritmo, for four years.
The mentor
Alberto has been teaching industrial design courses at various universities since 2003 (UNAM, UIA and ITESM in Mexico) and has been invited lecturer in several ones, including the Haas MBA course at University of California Berkeley.
He's also participated as external advisor in critiques at California College of the Arts, Stanford University Engineering School, and Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Besides his academic activities, he has participated as Juror in design competitions.
Through his work, lectures, and as a pioneer on promoting industrial design on the web, Alberto has inspired dozens of young designers around the world. Some of his former students hold positions at companies such as Philips and Sony Ericsson. In 2002 he was awarded as Honorary Member of the National Association of Research in Didactics, of Spain.
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ZANIC: The name of the ants in the ancient book "Popol-Vuh" from the Maya civilization.
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