Carlos Setoain

This Is not my CV, this is a letter to my future employers.
(you can find my Cv and Portfolio at )
(Ask me for a copy of the letter in spanish or catalan if you so desire)

Hello,
Dear employer I live in Barcelona, and I have a place to live in London.

In this letter I would like to introduce myself briefly, talk about what my experience in the design area has been, and finally express my opinion on why I believe I am suited for a job in the design department.

I am an industrial designer, product designer and automotive designer. I am passionate about automotion (Cars, motorbikes, boats, planes…) electronics (PC, smartphones, TV, Monitors, gadgets…) and also about design. I am a hard worker that works better under pressure and tight deadlines, while having more time always means being able to work more on the details, I do not let pressure and stress to clog my inspiration and my ability to be creative and productive.

Now that you have got an idea on who I am, I would like to talk you through my experience and education.
I have a Degree in design from Elisava. During my time there I focused my career in the product design branch. I specialized in Automotive Design, Tools and manufacturing, and furniture design.
During summers I would work for an architecture firm helping them by building mock-up models, and in the summer of 2012 I took a class of Solidworks Advanced Technical formation at the Fundació CIM from UPC.
Right after that in August I went to San Francisco (CA, USA) to study for the first semester as a part of the Erasmus program.
There I took classes that helped me to further develop my design thinking process and skills. In addition to product design and design communication classes I decided to take a class in basic electronics and model making, Thus giving me the skills to develop quality prototypes that could have some functional parts on them.

While I was at Elisava, I started working for an Automotive Start-up as an automotive designer. My tasks there started as 3D modeler to what now are integral product design (from small mechanical pieces and details to the whole bodywork panels), chassis design and technical drawings for manufacturing. My tasks also include sourcing for mechanical parts and choosing the best options, as well as contacting suppliers around the world and building and designing prototypes, using CNC or laser to build easy to assemble structures and mock-ups.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, there is the question you would be asking yourself.
Why do I believe that I am best suited for this job?
While I’m not an engineer I have always liked how things are made. You could find me disabling and taking apart calculators, cell phones and watching How Its Made on my free time… just to see how things were built.
At my current job, since we are designing a car (currently on prototype phase), I have been applying the knowledge I have about manufacturing processes with great results.
So even though I am not an engineer I understand how manufacturing works, understand how tolerances and demolding works. After all you are most likely to already have a team of engineers dedicated to manufacturing, and all you need is someone that can and will understand the limitations and specifications of certain manufacturing processes, and will be able to make designs according to those limitations.
With that in mind I would like to tell you that one of my favourite parts of product design, is the design process itself, going from a briefing, and multiple initial concepts and ideas, to further develop the one that suits more the target. Making adaptations required for manufacturing while maintaining the design language and philosophy. Is that challenge of how can I make it so that this is not visible but without compromising the overall look, that fuels my illusion to keep designing.
Anyone can make a beautiful design that looks good on pictures and in a promotional movie (where none of the features it says it can perform, don’t actually work) but is harder and more challenging to make something aesthetically beautiful while being 100% operative, functional and ergonomic, and that is what I love doing.

Thanks you for your time and consideration,

apologies for such a long letter,

Best regards, and hope to hear from you soon.