For many years, I produced custom lighting for hotels, restaurants, and nightclubs. An early mentor once told me that gaining manufacturing experience early in your design career is a significant advantage for an ambitious designer. During my time at Lusive Décor, I had the opportunity to do just that. This period of my career allowed me to become intimately familiar with the realities of manufacturing products for the real world. That experience shaped me into a designer who is deeply empathetic towards practical manufacturing practices—a skill that has proven invaluable when designing for industries far more complex than lighting, such as aerospace.