Meet a Roadrunner: Alumnus creates award-winning furniture, carpets
Charlie Kane
Charlie Kane
Share this Story(Oct. 1, 2014) -- Meet Charlie Kane '94. After graduating from UTSA's interior design program in 1994, Kane has gone on to an impressive, award-winning, 20-plus-year career in interiors and product design.
Kane is the owner, founder and design director of XLG Design, a Dallas-based product design studio that offers world-class commercial furnishing, textiles and branding services for the architecture and design industry. Kane and his company are well known for designing sleek, modern cases for a variety of furniture, including chairs and desk units, showrooms and carpet collections.
"Charlie Kane is a stellar example of the high-quality graduates being produced here at UTSA," said Diane Hays, UTSA interior design program coordinator. "Kane is a brilliant designer who garnered attention and design accolades from the moment he walked into the design studios at UTSA. His eye for designing elegant showrooms, furniture and carpet tiles continues to impress."
Kane garnered attention early into his career at UTSA. In 1993, a design he entered at the behest of former UTSA interior design coordinator Mary Helen Pratte, FIIDA, won the International Woodworking Fair (IWF) student award. Kane said he would never have thought to enter his design -- an office armoire concept that would give executives somewhere to house extra clothing, a refrigerator and even an entertainment system -- in the competition without encouragement from his UTSA professor.
"The UTSA College of Architecture, Construction and Planning and the interior design program gave me the training that I needed to spend my life in design," said Kane. "I ended up in product design by accident, but I was successful at it because of the skills that I learned at UTSA. My time at UTSA was a really good experience. It made me see that a lot of people saw value in my work."
Kane added that instruction that he received at UTSA has repeatedly helped him excel in the industry.
"My color training under Diane Hays, for example, has been instrumental in helping me develop multiple color lines of flooring tiles," he added. "The training I received at UTSA has been essential to my ability to color the fiber banks for several leading commercial carpet companies."
Since his time at UTSA, Kane's work has been featured in industry publications such as Textile World and Interiors & Sources. His designs have been awarded the Best of NeoCon award five times by Contract magazine, the interior design industry's leading monthly publication, and he has repeatedly won interior design Best of Year awards from other industry publications.
This year alone, Kane released 10 new seating collections in showrooms across the country. XLG Design currently has more than 22 products available from a variety of leading furniture and textile companies across the country.
View a sampling of Charlie Kane's interior designs.
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Events
This event will acknowledge graduating seniors from the McNair Scholars program at UTSA before inducting the new cohort of scholars into the program.
North Paseo Building (NPB 5.140), Main CampusAt this memorable celebration, UTSA graduates will be introduced one-by-one to cross the stage and accept their doctoral degrees.
Arts Building Recital Hall, Main CampusRoadrunner Walk is an event for graduating students to have a memorable walk on campus to celebrate an important milestone and their achievements. Graduates will walk along the Paseo while being celebrated by the UTSA community, friends, and family members.
Student Union Paseo, Main CampusCelebrate the accomplishments of College of Education and Human Development, College for Health, Community and Policy, College of Sciences and University College.
Alamodome, 100 Montana St.Celebrate the accomplishments of Alvarez College of Business, College of Liberal and Fine Arts and Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design.
Alamodome, 100 Montana St.
