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Jeff Sokalski was one of those kids who was continually building something. Starting with tree houses and snow forts, he's always had a penchant for arranging space and the things within.

While he was at Ryerson University in Toronto, he spent so much time in the school's workshop that a couple of his professors said to him, "Maybe you should think about becoming a furniture designer."

It was probably the best advice he ever received.

Sokalski had grown up near another Canadian industrial designer, Douglas Ball. After deciding on his career path, "My goal was to work in Doug's studio," he recalls. "I knew they were very advanced in computer modeling, and I saw that as an important tool to master."

It didn't take long for the two to begin collaborating. In fact, over the years, he and Ball worked on so many projects together that eventually Ball said to him, "Why don't you just move your studio into my building; you're here all the time anyway."

Sokalski uses his highly-developed skills to create prototypes for pretty much every item he designs. Regardless of what that happens to be, he always tries to get to its basic, underlying need: What problem are we solving? What's the best solution for this?

He says he's learned to trust his initial instincts. "Usually, it's the idea I come up with right off the bat that turns out to be the best one," he says. "Of course, you always have to explore other things. But I've found that most of the time, your first idea ends up being the right direction to take. You just have to have the confidence to stick with it."

Seasoned designers also know it sometimes takes awhile for those ideas to come to fruition. The products he created for Hermann Miller's The Be Collection, for example, came as a result of his work with Ball on My Studio. "My Studio was all about increasing productivity and being more organized," he explains. "I had lots of ideas for smaller items, but we had to wait until Herman Miller was ready to launch its accessories line."

In addition to designing products for the world's top contract furniture manufacturers, Sokalski has worked with a number of museums, including the Museo De Los Niños, a children's museum in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he created 14 exhibits.

While these well-known projects are tremendously satisfying, one of his proudest accomplishments came early on when he renovated some old warehouses in Montreal's port district, turning them into livable loft spaces. "That was really fun," he says. "And it was great to be part of that whole community."

Sokalski feels very fortunate that he's found a career doing what he loves to do and can't imagine doing anything else. "I get to come to work every day and build things," he says.

Just like he did when he was a little boy.