By: Daniel Roman

            Today, the idea of making something by hand is getting out of date. Which means if someone is at home and is in need of a small coffee table, the first thing that comes to most of people’s mind is let me got to IKEA and see what they have. It is a bit different in the field of architecture, most of the students or designers who are in a field like this one have a different mentality. When in need of something, the first question I ask is, can I make it. Do I have the resources in my hand to where I can create such item? When designing something there is a sense of pride and accomplishment. As a designer one takes a design and make it better, or design something to make the life of the user better, or allow to improve for sure.

            Then there are those who see a problem and flat out fix it. There are some people who can fix things on a small scale, and those like Elon Musk who take that to a high level. Elon Musk not only is he a visionary but a designer from who takes his ideas and makes them realistic. He has been able to make his name a house hold name from which you can own a solar polar car, to being part of his Space X program. He has made companies such as Pay pal. When ask how he has been able to work on all these programs he wasn’t able to answer, and in reality he is a designer who has the confidence in his ideas, and knowing that they can make them work. Musk sold his first company Zip-2 at the age of 28 to what is known today as Compact, making him an instant millionaire. He could of retired and call it a life time, but he did not stop there. He took what we take for granted; and founded x.com which was able to make payments online. There was another company that he competed with and they joint forces to compete against companies such as Ebay. Eventually Ebay thru in the towel and bought the new company Paypal.

Ebay acquired Pay Pal in 2002 for 1.5billion he was the highest share holder and walked away with 180 million dollars. After not being complete satisfied he went to the next level and go to space. In the early years he fully funded SPACE X, which cost him almost all that he is worth at a tune of almost 100 million dollars. He knew we had a way to get to space, but he wanted to design a way to get to space cheaper. Rockets had not been redesign since the 60’s. He became henry ford, ford did not invent the car, but he made it better and more affordable for the consumer. If SPACE X was not enough, he helped fund and a Solar Network. Solar City, is the largest solar provider in the united states, by no money down, making eligible for many home and business owners. His life became similar to an infomercial, “but wait there’s more”. He wanted to bring an electric car to the market. In April 2004 he helped establish Tesla Motors, 6.3 million dollars of his own money, it was the first car start up in a really long time.

            He has been able to break thru many obstacles, financially and morally. I have looked up to him as a designer for a very long time. He has been able to take risk and invest almost all of his personal money, and was able to make a fortune with his crazy scary investments. It is there to learn to believe in ourselves in our design ideas and life goals.