Meet Dorsey Cox ’85: SIGD Advisory Council Member

A 1985 graduate of Auburn’s School of Industrial and Graphic Design, Cox has spent much of his career designing furniture, although his design portfolio includes other products as well, ranging from medical device solutions to hunting cameras. Soon after graduation, he started his long furnishings career as a designer for Thonet before spending eight years as Director of Design for Falcon Products.

After his time at Falcon, he became a founding principal of PUSH Product Design before starting Dorsey Cox Design, and later, the STREAM Collaborative. Today, he is design manager at his Leeds, Alabama-based Dorsey Cox Design, which boasts numerous nationally recognized clients, including Bostrom, SitOnIt Seating, Thonet, On-the-Level, Artco-Bell and Smith Systems.

Cox’s designs are recognized as some of the most innovative in the industry and he has won numerous international design awards, including the IDSA/IDEA Gold Award for contract furniture. His “Primaries” line of children’s furniture developed for Thonet was also selected as one of the “Best Designs of the Nineties” by Metropolitan Home magazine.

“We design commercial furniture that inspires and allows people to work in diverse environments,” Cox says of his company’s approach. “We place a premium on ergonomic research and user validation to simplify complex performance requirements into beautifully refined solutions. We have the passions and skills of artists combined with the reasoning of scientists.”

Cox credits his Auburn Industrial Design (INDD) education with helping develop that approach.

“I remember the curriculum as a challenging and life-changing education,” he recalls of his time on the Plains. “I struggled to mature into a designer who could look at the world through the eyes of other people. Industrial design is not art—art is too self-expressive and personal. Instead, industrial design requires the ability to put your own personal and preferential desires aside. You must consider the perspectives of the many other people who are your end-users. There is no place for selfishness.”

Now, Cox hopes to pass along some of his hard-won experience from a 35-year career to today’s Auburn students. “I hope to help today’s INDD graduates be outstanding innovators and remain current to the profession of industrial design,” he said, “while holding to the unique and timeless traditional methodology that makes Auburn INDD graduates stand out among the very best designers in the country.”