HELLO!

HOLA!

With a solid background in design and teaching, I founded Designthropo, a design studio specializing in driving strategic projects for clients, companies, and institutions. Through a broad network of key collaborators in industry and academia, I facilitate effective connections to optimize resources, costs, and timelines.

Designthropo either takes full end-to-end project leadership or integrates at an operational level in whichever phase you need: ideation, brand strategy, UX/CX, product development, or manufacturing.

My role is to bring the rigor and design management needed to turn your project into reality.

I’m Iván Vidal, Designer and Project Manager.
Founder of Designthropo.

Industrial Designer
Project Manager

Disruptive Innovation strategist
certified by

FULL BACKGROUND

My career in detail.

I’m an Industrial Designer, Project Manager, and consultant by training.

From 1997 to 2000, I worked as a mechanical designer in the engineering department of Inelectra, an international engineering consultancy. There I internalized the rigor of technical drawings, budgets, organizational hierarchies, and deadline-driven projects.

From 2009 to 2020, I served as Director of the Design Undergraduate School and Master’s programs at the Istituto Europeo di Design (IED) in Madrid, and until 2022 I led FITS (Future Innovation Tailor Made School) for IED Spain. Leading part of this institution allowed me to build an invaluable network of contacts and to mentor hundreds of projects within academic and professional frameworks with companies of all kinds.

While directing IED, I worked in parallel as Head of Design, designing urban and commercial furniture for large retail installations (duty free), advertising displays, and street furniture for Latin America. I designed complex large-format infrastructures, furniture, consumer products, and medical equipment.

For years, I have worked as a design leader and consultant, collaborating on design and innovation training for companies across diverse sectors, including Microsoft, Nike, Ford, Leroy Merlin, Medical Simulator, Formica, Bruni Glass, and Stor-Disney.

I have taught, served on juries, and been a guest speaker at institutions in Spain, Italy, Germany, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. I have taught at IED (Spain and Italy), DMAD, the IDC in Venezuela, SENA, Universidad Externado and Universidad El Bosque in Colombia, and UFIL (Urban Forest Innovation Lab) with the University of Castilla-La Mancha, among others.

Another facet of design is my role as Operations & Project Manager at PET Lamp, where I managed teams, the supply chain, inventory, imports, exports, and certifications such as CE and UL, in addition to product development and exhibition design.

Among other credentials, I earned certification as a Disruptive Innovation Strategist from the Swiss Institute for Disruptive Innovation. I am also an SME consultant in Artificial Intelligence applied to Industrial Design for Micro1, a leading AI company in Palo Alto, California.

Today, through Designthropo, I act as a project manager with a 360º studio approach, surrounded by tailored collaborators depending on the scale of the challenge.

Alongside my studio work, I maintain my academic role as Professor of Brand and Identity Management at DMAD Design School (Spain). I also channel my more analytical side through the Designthropo blog, a space of my own created to practice and understand design through an ethnographic lens, focused on design strategy, people, and society.

Shall we design?