Build It And They Will Come

Ti Chang is utilising social networks and a fearless, feminist approach to her craft to help women infiltrate the ‘boys’ club’ of industrial design

- Laura Chubb

  

When Ti Chang started studying industrial design at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, she never imagined she’d be back in the city 10 years later, teaching women to build vibrators.

Nevertheless, that’s exactly what she was doing at Atlanta’s Museum of Design last summer, having already taken her ‘Build-A-Vibe’ workshop to South by Southwest in Austin, and San Francisco’s California Academy of Sciences, with great success. “The last workshop we did at the Academy of Sciences, we had to turn away about 400 people,” Chang says. “It was insane.”

Though small in stature, Chang wears a determined air of don’t-mess-with-me fearlessness. There’s the large, intricate tattoo on her arm, sure; but, more potent, a palpable sense of courage and conviction. That she would even dream up the Build-A-Vibe workshop, never mind make it a hit, says a lot about the kind of designer she is.

Her products are not just objects, but impart a world view. Crave, the company she co-founded, produces chic, discreet vibrators, the antithesis of typically ridiculous-looking, maledesigned contraptions. And, by opting to show her customers how to make them, her world view is clear: more women should be designing and building the products they use.

“It’s my mantra: if you don’t see what you want, build it yourself,” Chang tells me as we arrive at her studio in SOMA, San Francisco’s abandoned warehouse district turned start-up hub (Twitter, Uber and Airbnb are neighbours). Crave is clearly doing well – the company has the whole building, spread over two floors. And it’s thanks to Chang’s mantra that she’s not just busy with Crave these days – she also co-chairs the San Francisco chapter of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA).