Hello, I’m Andrew Trujillo. I’m an industrial designer, specialized in transportation. I have worked in the industry for the last 35 years as a yacht designer, primarily on both interiors and exteriors. And I am also a lecturer at Birmingham City University in both product design and interior architecture.
This presentation provides an overview of the work I’ve done. Hopefully, it gives you an idea of what the profession is all about and the things that you might be able to do with a little practice and a little bit of dedication, shall we say, but hopefully it gives you a taste of what a yacht designer is all about.
Designing yachts is a beautiful profession; it is very varied. Sometimes you may be designing a fast yacht; sometimes you’ll be designing small yachts; and you may be involved in the design of interior spaces. A yacht designer needs a good understanding of materials, particularly for interiors, as well as some technical aspects of design.
And not all of the yachts and boats I’ve designed are big; some of them are quite small, and these are relatively rapid projects that I also enjoy taking on. I enjoy designing multihull boats a lot. I’ve designed quite a few catamarans and other multihulls. It’s one of my favorite parts of design, but I’ve also had the opportunity to design some very large monohull yachts. And, sometimes I collaborate with other designers and design very fast boats.
The yachts I’ve designed have been built in over 10 countries, and I have had the good fortune to see about 40-odd of them built. Amongst those are a 94 m Viva and a 107 m motor yacht Luminosity. Motor yacht Viva was built by Feadship in the Netherlands, and motor yacht Luminosity was built in Italy by Benetti.
What is exciting about yacht design is that no two days or projects are the same. So you get the opportunity once to visit a boatyard, maybe see the boat under construction, then take the boat out for sea trials, and, obviously, be involved in the whole process of designing the vessel, or sometimes just part of it. Some of the yachts I take on are more futuristic; others are more classic. That’s part of the fun and variety of this particular profession that we’re in.