— About · Lily Ren

An industrial designer working in hard goods, CMF & automotive.

— Portrait · Pasadena · 2026

I'm Lily Ren, an industrial designer at ArtCenter College of Design.

Born in Beijing, raised in the Bay Area, now based in Pasadena. My work focuses on hard goods, CMF, and automotive interiors — with an emphasis on clarity, surface, and proportion. I'm drawn to design where aesthetics and function are resolved together rather than competing.

I design by reduction — understanding how something is made, then removing what doesn't need to be there.

Education
2023 — Present
ArtCenter College of Design
BS Industrial Design
"Started in Illustration (2021–2022), then switched into product design — and that's where everything clicked. Since then, focused on CMF, form development, and rendering, with a working fluency in sketching, CAD, and design systems."
2021 — 2022
ArtCenter College of Design
Illustration (transferred)
"Foundation in drawing, visual storytelling, and composition — skills that continue to inform my approach to form and communication today."
Skills

Tools & capabilities

3D & CAD
SolidWorks · Rhino · KeyShot · Blender · Gravity Sketch · CLO3D
Prototyping
3D printing · Foam modeling · Surface finishing · Shop fabrication
Visual & UX
Illustrator · InDesign · Figma · Procreate · Vizcom
Languages
English (fluent) · Mandarin Chinese (fluent)
SolidWorks
Rhino
KeyShot
Blender
Gravity Sketch
CLO 3D
Ai · Illustrator
Id · InDesign
Figma
Procreate
Vizcom
Shop tools
— Outside the studio

I ski, bake, and read about historical disasters. I'm also a signed model, which has shaped how I think about form, presence, and proportion — perspectives I carry into the work.