Peter Van Riet

Designs by Peter Van Riet cannot easily be put into boxes and categories. This Belgian product designer uses cross-disciplinary methods to create products with a large surplus value.

Peter Van Riet’s professional career is marked by drive and a passion for the field. Upon graduation as product developer from the Henri Van de Velde Institute in Antwerp, he gained experience at various companies and captured numerous nominations and prizes.

Aside from his work as a designer and product developer, Peter has shown himself to be a successful entrepreneur as well. His instruction came from the Innovation & Entrepreneurship training at the Vlerick Management School. This training, combined with much of his own research, led to the founding of three different firms. He counts among his successes the founding of the first Belgian snowboarding magazine Prime Magazine (1996), design firm Product Projects (1998-2008), and the company Beyond Products (2004-2009), which developed a new snowboard binding under the name Beyondsnow. In 2009, he opened design firm Studio Peter Van Riet, later rebranded to Before the wave, which is oriented towards various sectors, from singular products to a company’s global image strategy.

In 2017 he was co-author of the book 'Create meaningful Stuff'. The motivation for this book was to share a vision on radical design and his methodology to create meaningful stuff. It's not just about creating an object, but about creating an experience. The process in itself is always an incredible journey.