Future Thinking
Future Thinking
Future Thinking
Future Thinking
Hello, I’m Sachiko Uozumi, a founder of "Design is Love” based in New York City, a trans-disciplinary designer, a design innovation consultant, and an adjunct faculty at School of Design Strategies at Parsons School of Design | The New School.
I believe design can be a powerful force addressing change. Through design, we can create positive and uplifting experiences for everyone.
My strength is bridging business, management, research, and design to create a cohesive, unique, and effective outcome in each project I lead. I identify common threads across diverse disciplines, set goals, and visualize viable and innovative solutions.
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My experiences in Japan, the U.S., Brazil, and Europe cultivated unique cultural insights, creativity, and design. These have equipped me to work in diverse fields such as design research, concept and design development, education, future studies, and future vision creation.
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I continue to engage company sizes from startup, small to global corporations, to governmental, to educational organizations.
From 1993 to 2003, I taught at Parsons School of Design's Product Design Department in New York City. In 1999, I began my independent consulting journey in NYC, and in 2015 co-founded Brainpool, a collective of design experts that specializes in helping organizations to bring radical and impactful consumer advocacy to the design table.
Ten examples of my design work are in five museums’ permanent collections throughout the United States and Europe, including the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City. She holds 22 patents internationally.
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Lessons learned growing up in Japan:
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As a designer working in the field today, I often think about the advice my mother gave me as a child. She told me to be creative with only a few toys. At the time those were crayons, clay, a sketchbook, Lego blocks and one doll.
When I was about ten years old, I made a full wardrobe for my doll. With the boots, bag, hat and other accessories, my mother said I should be a designer.
I spent time every summer at my mother’s mountain home in Gujo-Hachiman, in Gifu, Japan. I felt I was in a direct connection with the landscape; the mountain forests, the stars, the clearest water. This taught me that all of nature, especially the trees are to be treated well for future generations. This was a childhood sustainability lesson.
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As a young adult, examples proved to me that what I sensed about the world not many others saw around me. Nature spoke to me in a way that made the messages impossible to ignore. I embraced them.
Through my family history I received life lessons about preserving centuries of authentic cultural values existing in this area, local arts and crafts such as Washi paper making, Mingei wood working, ceramics for tea ceremony, Katana sword making, and authentic local cuisine. These disciplines are symbols of human sustainability and flourishing in a community that allows us to coexist with nature.
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