Every summer three talented students go through the Objex Design's QUANTUM program.  Ten intense weeks of hard work and creativity culminates in a presentation of the interns’ final designs before a panel of designers, entrepreneurs, and industry executives.  Each year has been a big success, and last year’s presentation in particular generated a lot of buzz that quickly resulted in meetings about acquiring two of the three products presented.

 

At the beginning of the program each year, we combed through our catalog of internal product ideas and identified an appropriate concept for each intern to pursue.  In addition to helping with client projects, the interns were charged with developing these concepts into market-ready products.  Designer and engineering mentors guided the interns through ten weeks of brainstorming, sketching, concept refinement, CAD modeling, and prototyping until they were ready to unveil their final designs.  

 

QUANTUM was created to fuse the practicality of a traditional internship with the focused rigor of a design competition.  We wanted our interns to get the most out of a season with Objex, and we wanted to get the most out of them.  The result was a win-win scenario where the interns received hands on guidance and experience on real design projects, and Objex was able to have some of their back-burner projects given proper attention so they could be turned into licensed products.  

 

In ten short weeks the QUANTUM interns were exposed to a wide array of industries.  The competition products have included a backyard activity center, a power tool accessory, an outdoor storage product, and an innovative wagon.  In addition to their individual projects, the interns have helped our designers and engineers on many different  client products such as toy lines, sunglasses, and a furniture project, plus they assisted with internal work such as managing the 3D printer and making updates to the website.  Objex also worked with some local clients to give the interns factory tours at an injection molding shop and a lean vacuum manufacturing facility.  To round out the experience, there were also visits to some of the more fun cultural destinations in St. Louis.  

 

Entering its fourth year running, the summer internship and design competition keeps getting better and better.  Four of the six student-developed products are currently  in the process of being licensed and sold as real consumer products.  In addition all interns received invaluable experience both in taking a single product through the whole design process and in working side-by-side with the Objex team on clients’ projects.  To a greater extent, Objex is honored to have had the opportunity to shape the careers of so many extremely promising young designers.  

 

Here's what pervious interns had to say about their experience at Objex.