SIGD Alumni from the 2000s Take on the Tech World

The School of Graphic and Industrial Design (SIGD) celebrated 80 years of design education last fall, ushering the School into a new era of learning excellence. SIGD’s legacy can be credited to the hard work and dedication of its students—who, as alumni, have gone on to lead the industrial and graphic design industries in various ways.

Walk back through SIGD’s history with tech savvy alumni from the 2000s.

Blair Hasty ‘04

An industrial designer and product development leader, Blair Hasty is the founder of Crafted by, a product design agency based in Atlanta, Georgia. After earning his master’s degree in Industrial Design, Hasty spent his career developing consumer electronics, connected hardware, tech accessories, retail products and early-stage physical products for companies like Verizon, Griffin Technology and Chick-fil-A.

His career has included work inside large corporate product organizations as well as independent product development.

He created the Verizon Connect Commercial Asset Tracker, rugged connected hardware for commercial fleet and asset-tracking applications, where his role included industrial design leadership, form development, usability refinement, product architecture, cross-functional coordination and design-for-manufacturing support.

Hasty also runs BAIR, a product brand focused on thoughtful tech accessories, creating things like TAIM, a premium cable organizer. In this role, he leads the product from initial concept through prototyping, material selection, supplier coordination, branding, packaging direction, launch and fulfillment.

In his day-to-day work, Hasty draws on lessons he learned while a student at SIGD—particularly how to receive feedback without losing ownership over his work.

“Auburn taught me that design is not just about having good ideas,” he said. “It is about developing those ideas, testing them, explaining them clearly and improving them through critique.”

He thinks back on how studio culture—being surrounded by people who care deeply about ideas and craft, bonding over late nights and pinups—shaped the way he works.

“Auburn taught me that industrial design is a discipline of thinking, making and communicating. You had to bring an idea into the room, defend it, listen when it was not working and then make it better,” he said. “That prepared me for the real work of design, where the best ideas have to survive feedback, constraints, engineering, manufacturing, business needs and users.”

Ty Wilkins ‘03

His foundational education in SIGD’s Graphic Design program set alum Ty Wilkins on a path of creative flexibility and innovation that took him from the Plains to some of the United States’s biggest tech hubs.

Wilkins discovered his passion for logo design in a brand design course with Professor Emeritus Ray Dugas.

“Designing symbols, creating brand systems and working with type and illustration was energizing,” he said. “The graphic design industry was transitioning from predominantly print design to web design at the time, and I saw branding as a media-independent portion of the design industry that would retain relevance as technological shifts continued to reshape the industry.”

After graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design in 2003, Wilkins gained experience as an in-house designer at various companies in Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma and Kansas, working on packaging, logos and other branding projects. During this time, he began experimenting with illustration, drawing on the charming, minimal work of mid-century modern artists like Charley Harper and Alexander Girard.

Wilkins soon moved to Austin, Texas to become a freelance illustration and brand designer, working with Silicon Valley startups and tech giants, as well as creating editorial illustrations for Monocle, Wired and Bloomberg.

His freelance work brought him in contact with a startup called Robinhood that created a commission-free app for accessible stock investing. The chance to shape a rapidly growing company led Wilkins to Palo Alto, California, where collaborating with designers and software engineers was a turning point in his career.

Returning to Austin, Wilkins partnered with Google and artificial intelligence company Scale, where he served as the Brand Director. Meanwhile, he invested in other startups from the San Francisco Bay Area and became a limited partner in the venture capital firm Chapter One. Wilkins retired in 2025 and is now pursuing personal projects.

Catch up on SIGD’s history with groovy graduates from the 1970s, decadent designs of the 1980s and enthusiastic entrepreneurs from the 1990s.