The National
Industrial Design Archive
The stories behind the world's products by those who designed them.
An archive built by the people who designed things.
The National Industrial Design Archive is a community-driven record of the products, designers, and manufacturers that shaped American industrial design. It exists because the people who spent careers building things that worked — that held up, that helped people — are the ones best positioned to document them. Not institutions. Not historians. The makers themselves.
Preserve the decisions, materials, and stories behind the objects.
Make the record accessible in every format the future brings.
Link designers, manufacturers, and eras into a living network.
Your body of work deserves a permanent record.
Whether you're deep in practice or reflecting on a career's worth of decisions — the constraints you navigated, the problems you solved, the things you made that held up — that knowledge belongs in the archive. Not historians. Not institutions. You. The NIDA exists to make that easy.
ID is to business culture as art is to human culture.
Designers act as corporate storytellers — distilling thousands of decisions into a single, beautifully crafted, functional artifact that solves a human need. America has saved millions of lives with medical devices, transformed air travel, and made the hardware that ushered in the computer age. That story is undertold. The NIDA exists to change that — and to make sure it can be experienced in every format the future brings.
"Recording the stories and lessons-learned of the past and present encourages responsible reflection, promotes human-focused values, and connects creators in position to address the rapidly changing needs of society."
Place any product in your space — at full scale, in context.
Walk through the archive. Handle the objects. Understand the craft.
Every record is structured data — ready for whatever comes after.