Alex Nagel, Founder of ANCORD Design Co.
Alex Nagel · Industrial Designer

I design hardware
that's built to last.

I'm the founder of ANCORD, a sustainable industrial design studio in Victoria, BC. We design durable hardware where engineering and manufacturing reality meet design intent. This is where the not-studio stuff lives — mentorship, talks, and the thinking that doesn't fit a project brief.

01 / About

A designer by training. The rest, by doing.

I started ANCORD because I wanted to design products that outlast trends — gear that survives decades of use, materials chosen for what happens at the end of life, and manufacturing methods that hold up in production, not just on paper.

At home, I'm a husband and a dad. The "what we leave behind" question gets a lot more concrete when there's a four-year-old asking why the toy broke. And that's my why, in a nutshell.

Client work covers research, concept direction, scoping, production. We run lean — a small core team in Victoria with hand-picked specialists around the world, curated for each project. No account managers, no handoffs. The people you meet are the people doing the work.

Outside the studio, I mentor industrial design students from a handful of programs across North America, speak at universities and sustainability incubators, and run workshops like Lunar Design at Design Victoria — where kids dream, design, and build for life on the moon. I'm also slowly building a community of physical-product founders here in Victoria, mostly over coffee.

02 / Threads

What I'm working on right now.

/01
Writing the ANCORD Design Field Guide, Edition 01.
Twenty-odd design principles I've collected from a decade of getting products to production. Serialized first, then a printed booklet.
In progress · 2026
/02
Running Lunar Design: Life on the Moon at Design Victoria.
A drop-in workshop for kids and families — designing transportation and furniture for life off-Earth. Constraint-led. No simulation, just real making.
May 2026 · Victoria
/03
Building a small community of physical-product founders in Victoria.
Round table conversations, occasional events, a slow attempt to make this city a serious place for hardware companies. Mostly happening over coffee.
Ongoing · Victoria
03 / Elsewhere

Find me where it makes sense.

— Get in touch

For mentorship, speaking,
or anything that isn't a project brief.

For commercial work, head to ancorddesign.co — that's the studio site.