The Designer
Alberto Villarreal is a Senior Industrial Designer 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, transportation, consumer electronics, furniture, toys, high-tech medical devices, and appropriate technology.
With more than 20 international awards over the past decade, his work has been recognized with some of the most prestigious honors of the industry, including: Red Dot Luminary Award, Chicago Athenaeum Good Design Award, iF Hannover Product Design Award and IDSA Industrial Design Excellence Award, among others.
His clients vary from Fortune 500 companies to small start-ups as well as non-profit organizations. Previous involvements include: Adidas, Nike, Hewlett-Packard, SanDisk, Konica-Minolta, Mercedes-Benz, and LeapFrog (to name a few).
Alberto's work has been published in books and magazines worldwide as well as in the global leading design web portals. His work has been exhibited in Asia, Europe, North and South America. Nowadays he is one of the Mexican young designers with more international recognition.
Up to date, his personal goal as a designer is:
" To cultivate progress in society and environment through the strategic management 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 group).
In 2009, Alberto partnered with architect Michel Rojkind to start AGENT, a Strategic Intelligence Embassy with a disruptive approach to the product development process, where he currently leads the design team and company strategy.
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 Umeå University (Sweden). He is fluent in Spanish, English and Italian, and has 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;
a percentage 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 he gives monthly donations 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.
In parallel to his professional activity, Alberto was co-founder and co-organizer of the San Francisco chapter of Pecha Kucha (a series of monthly events that gather the creative community), for three years.
The Mentor
Alberto has been teaching industrial design courses at various universities since 2003 (UNAM, UIA, Centro, and ITESM in Mexico) and has been invited lecturer in several ones, including the Haas MBA course at University of California Berkeley. Starting on summer 2011, Alberto will be invited professor at the DeTao Masters Academy in China.
He's also participated as external advisor at California College of the Arts, Stanford University Engineering School, and Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Besides his academic activities, he has been a Juror in design competitions.
Through his work, lectures, and as a pioneer promoting industrial design on the web, Alberto has inspired hundreds of young designers around the world. Some of his former students hold positions at companies such as Royal Philips and Sony Ericsson. In 2002 he was awarded as Honorary Member of the National Association of Research in Didactics, of Spain.
Sports & Design
Of all the industries Alberto has touched with his work, the Sports industry has been the one he has enjoyed the most working for. Alberto has been involved with sports for a long time and finds sports' design & technology just as exciting as the passion that sports themselves trigger.
He's been a runner for over 20 years (including 5K, 10K, 15K and half-marathon), practiced Karate-Do for 4 years and has always been an avid soccer player. He has participated in several competitions including The 24 hours of Adrenaline mountain-bike race in Laguna Seca, California in 2006 and The Relay (a 320Km-long relay race from Calistoga to Santa Cruz, California) in 2008.
In the book Sport Design (published in 2004 by TeNeues Publishing Company, Germany/Spain), Alberto was the only independent designer featured in the book next to large sport equipment companies.
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ZANIC: The name of the ants in the ancient book "Popol-Vuh" from the Maya civilization.
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