Who is Philip Rivard?

It started with a wrong turn.

In 1999, I walked into a vocational training center to check out the automotive mechanics program. But on my way through, I passed a room full of drafting tables and computers — and something clicked. I signed up that day for technical drawing, almost on instinct.

It was only afterward that I realized my father had worked in the same field. That as a kid, I used to draw on the back of the large-format blueprints he'd bring home from work. Some things find you before you find them.

Now, in 2026, my son is heading into mechanical engineering. There's something quietly satisfying about that thread — three generations, the same language of lines and structures, each of us finding it in our own way.

I've been running my own consulting business since 2006. Over 25 years, I've worked across technical drawing, mechanical design, 3D visualization, architectural rendering, graphic design, print production, Arduino programming, 3D printing, and VR development. Not because I was trying to collect skills — but because each project pulled me toward what it needed, and I followed.

The way I work is simple: I listen fast, I understand quickly, and I always deliver more than what was asked. Not to impress — because that's just how I'm wired.

I also work alone. Not out of necessity, but by choice. Working alone means I control the chain from concept to final file. When a client needs a product brochure, I can model the product in 3D, texture it, render it, build the layout in InDesign, structure the technical data, and hand off a print-ready PDF — without a single handoff, without miscommunication, without delay. Everything connected, because I know how it all connects.

There's a detail I don't always mention in a professional context: I also play guitar, piano, bass, drums, and saxophone. I have a small recording studio. I perform live, looping instruments in real time, building tracks layer by layer on stage.

I'm not sure there's a clean explanation for what music and technical design have in common. But I know this — I've never been satisfied with technical work that isn't also beautiful. The aesthetic dimension isn't decoration. It's part of the solution.

If you're on this site, you might be someone with a project, a vision, or a problem that needs solving. You bring the locomotive. I've got everything else in the cars behind it — the tools, the skills, the curiosity to figure out what I don't know yet.

I don't chase visibility. I build things. And I document them here, so that what I make doesn't just disappear into a hard drive somewhere.

This is that record.

— Philip Rivard