Hi, my name is Emmi Harjuniemi and I´m a designer and brand strategy consultant
I am an inspiring and supportive technology oriented designer, entrepreneur, researcher and University Teacher. I am especially skilled in combining technology and design. I´m always seeking new opportunities to develop my know-how of new technologies.
I´m a designer, but I´m also following my passion to design when I´m designing courses. I´m comfortable to be in a leading role of the projects and I like to challenge myself to leave my comfort zone. I enjoy doing collaboration with people who share the same passion for design and doing things, and those projects in teaching, research and art have been very fruitful.
From industry to teaching Design Technology
I have graduated as a Designer and I have Master of Arts in Clothing Design. I studied also design technology, marketing, design management and art. After graduating I wanted to know how the industry works. I got the job as product assistant and designer from Luhta, the biggest international fashion company in Finland.
I was good at what I did and I got change to do different kind of tasks. I think I learned enough there and I left th eindustry. The most important thing I learned, that I knew, that I wanted to work with people and have more variable days at work. I started as project researcher in University of Lapland in beginning of the year 2010. At the same time I finished my pedagogical studies and started to teach design technology courses in the Clothing and Textile Department in University of Lapland.
I´ve challenged myself in every course to achieve a better outcome, but not forgetting that teaching and learning should be fun. I have the opportunity to share my knowledge and to notice that I´ve always learnt also in the process. I have taught over a decade and over a hundred courses. I´ve listed some of the courses here.
My journey in researching e-textiles and wearables
I started to work with wearable technologies back in 2010 when I worked in the research project in the University of Lapland. The project explored the possibilities of body scanning technology. Among other things I designed winter outerwear where was attached the wearable technology. My job was to sew it into the garment.
The research project ended, but something has changed.
I started to work full time as a university teacher in design technology. I saw the rapily evolving technological development throughout these years. I saw tehcnology was a tool in creating process, but could it be integrated to the artpiece itself.
I decided to learn how to do wearables and e-textiles, which I was sewing to my designed clothes in the project. So in the end of 2013 I ordered Arduino Uno and components and started to learn how to program. Later I took few courses to learn these new terms in Finnish.
I thought and I still think that it is important for designers learn the basics of electronic engineering and programming. I was so happy that we got the course of E-textiles to the curriculum 2015 and it is now part of the Faculty´s minor studies Creative Technologies. I am happy to have colleagues who are interested in same topics and doing collaboration with them is awesome.
In my Ph.D. research I´m interested in designing aesthetic wearables and e-textiles and also explore those in pedagogical point of view. I am also interested in how to teach these things to design students. It demands a different mindset from creative people.
Me as a entrepreneuer
It started with a simple question: ”Could I teach e-textiles?” In order to do that I need a company. So I started one back in 2018. I have developed the teaching of e-textiles for common people since that. I´ve also established website and Instagram account.
In 2021 I started the company of portfolios. Just because I thought that I have something to give people in that sense. It started well and I got to keep webinars and other educational things. But recently it has evolved to brand building and portfolios are just part of that.
I´m also interest in copywriting. It´s so rewarding to make a selling text! I am very good at Finnish grammar, so it became a natural continuum for entrepreneurship. And I have done some graphic design task too.
Only the future will show what else I´m going to do!