I’m Katharine Tessier and I’m an industrial designer who has been working in Toronto as a product designer, lighting designer, and designer engineer since 2003. I’m accustomed to taking new designs and getting them ready for mass production both locally and overseas. I’ve experienced the pros and cons of both.

I’ve also experienced the frustration of having a great design go into the manufacturing phase, only to spend weeks trying to understand why a particular manufacturer couldn’t produce it, and then more weeks spent changing the design so it could actually be made. It sounds painful, right?

The remarkable thing is that if I could get through that first production of a design with a manufacturer, work out the kinks and reach an understanding of the manufacturers strengths and abilities, the next design is much easier to produce. That’s because all the things I learned the first go around were considered in the next design at the beginning.

I’m super excited to try to get this kind of worthwhile information into more designers’ hands and encourage local manufacturing at the same time.

The task I set out for myself is to launch a line of purposeful and beautiful items for the home that incorporate this new way of working while showcasing the people and the magic that go into making them. Locally designed and locally made goods made with pride in a way we can fully know. Each item will tell its own story of how it was made, who made it, and who designed it.

I hope you look around the site and meet all the designers and manufacturers participating in M+Dc, take a look at the first products to come out of this project, and check out behind the scenes of the project on our tumblr page. A selection of my work outside M+Dc can be found here.

Our exhibition Jan 24 to the 27th, 2013 is just the beginning of the M+Dc story.

Katharine