…and this is why they’re $8K.

Via

Also: how to hire employees that will work for you, not just for your money.

I came across this and sat dumbfounded. I thought back to all these things I’ve been searching for over the years and realize this is the subtle clicking of pieces, the thing that’s been on the tip of my brain and needed just a gentle nudge to get rolling: operate not on what but on why.

And it’s true (though not in the neuropsychological sense – his brain map is a little bit off) – we have these other divisions for it: classical and romantic schools of thought. That one controls the concrete and the other abstract. Logic v. intuition. What and why.

Because ‘why’ isn’t really a thing. It’s just a reason for a thing, and even then, just as often not because it’s a precursor; a filter for bad ideas, for things that have silly answers to itself: why?

It’s also the answer I’ve been searching for with regards to a specific subsection of the market I call curated brands. Best Made Company stands out, but there are endless examples. They aren’t a company that makes and sells axes. They’re a company that believes people should be well equipped for adventuring. That’s why they also sell all of these other, often unrelated things. They don’t exist to sell axes, they just happen to sell axes.

So I think this is a piece that slots into my artisan question – how can I, as a person, feasibly do these things? It’s “unheard of” (which, as I’m learning, isn’t true :: it’s far more common than we think) to be such a generalist. Every startup advice book I read repeats the mantra of focusing on the one thing you’re truly good at but I wonder – what if that one thing is curation? What if, and I ask this about myself specifically, my passion is in the act of curating and the store aspect isn’t actually the point? Best Made, by those definitions, should only sell axes. That is the core one good thing they’re good at. But I suspect that if they only sold axes they would be fulfilling the ‘what’ and not the ‘why’ which would result in a lesser business because the people who follow them aren’t interested in axes, they’re interested in adventuring.

There’s something of a paradox there, and it’s very interesting. Maybe not a paradox… a tipping point. There’s a graph with a curve that says doing the one thing you’re good at is a good thing – it’s focus – if and until you can generate more support by selling a belief or passion instead of a product.

But there is a self loop inside there: that one focused thing should also be inspired by a belief or passion instead of simply shipping for money.

My new conclusion, from the above two paragraphs, might be something like this:

All business ventures should be driven by a belief or passion and the number of types of goods sold should be inversely proportional to the amount of internal work required.

So that allows you to sell one awesome idea – let’s say… an app you’re developing internally – and really focus on it. Or curate, since while it’s work in itself, it’s still supplied by external manufacturers and therefor less internal worry. It’s a spectrum. Best Made falls in the middle: smaller selection, but they also make a lot of things in-house. Same with Apple. So the scale of the company is independent of the spectrum’s scale and location. It’s a 2D spectrum, then, really. Okay, so maybe it looks like this:

Size v. scale is an interesting subtle difference. I’m not sure I’m using them quite right here, but up is bigger (often richer) companies and down is smaller, more indie companies.

You can place people as you like: Apple v. Dell, Ferrari v. Ford, Best Made, Instagram, Facebook, Red Lobster.

In the end: sell your passion, not your product. In successful companies, that’ll be one in the same, but remember the order for marketing.

It should be noted that I don’t condone violence or weapons, but I do really appreciate the design of them.

I watch the two videos and love both of them in their own right. Projectile weapons, as terrible as they are to the health of living things, tend to have a really cool design outcome. It’s raw functionality. I can’t really say they’re precision things, because there are many examples like the AK-47 whose famous reliability is based entirely on working with sloppy tolerances, but there is something inherently precise about the design of weaponry. It’s rarely arbitrary; the outcome design is based on examples and data. The aesthetic is the realm of the neo-classical mind and is appreciated for it’s reasons and purpose, not it’s overlaying being. It’s gorgeous. Like the tiny gears and ticks inside a watch.

Part two is the difference between them: one is made in a factory or machine shop and each will come out 99.999% identical to the others. The other is made from a plant that is found and chosen by a man and then crafted into something by him, by hand (or foot, as it may be) and will be very different from the one beside it in form, but ideally identical in function. This, I feel, is an important distinction.

You can tell, for those who have already read the book, that I’ve been looking at the world though these lenses (or divisions of Phaedrus’ knife, as his metaphor would suggest) lately. It’s not a new concept to me, certainly, but it’s nice to look through someone else’s eyes for a while; see the world anew.

I’ve learned something about myself recently: I’m much more artisan than I thought. Originally – and realize this is untrue – I equated artisans solely with hand spun clay pots and woven wicker baskets. The people who sell laptop bags on Etsy made of sewn together scraps of old mens’ tweed jackets. The essays with reference to Yanagi Soetsu in Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams (towards the back half, pages ~716 if I remember correctly – forgive me as I don’t want to look it up) feature his philosophy as a counter-point to Rams’ (representative here as all of industrial design) way of design for not only specific objects, but how those objects relate in context to the mass production and usage in culture. His point, from the perspective of craftsmanship, looks at objects in an uncannily similar way to the mass produced method: a means to achieving a goal. If the industrialist and the artisan both make a thing it should look to first achieve it’s intended task. Makes sense. This is where my misguided preconceptions come in again; I thought they inherently had to differ after they agreed on that. The industrialists to the neo-classical function and the artisans to the romanticist to the aesthetic. But! As I’ve recently discovered, not true. Not quite.

Aesthetics, of course, are a tricky thing to nail down. They’re different for everyone. I equated function with minimalism and practicality and ruggedness and the things that I personally appreciate and like. I was an industrialist, then. That’s what they do. The things that are frilly and useless and mass produced are just misguided. The artisans who made minimal things were rare and the minimalism was probably a result of skill lacking rather than intentional functionalism. They’re supposed to make what I deem gaudy. The ornamented and decorated. The bright and flashy and visually loud. They’re artisans, which I say (and, I apologize, still do) with a certain pretentious derision.

So aesthetics aren’t a function of romanticism but rather outside of those classifications, like a heading under the two forming a four box chart.

You’ll laugh, but these past few months have led to a lot of personal discoveries that are so obvious. I’ve shared a few others previously. How did I miss them? I’m not sure. But I guess that’s the point of being young and curious. I’ve come out of it with an even more apathetic spirit, though. Before there was a conviction for “right” and “wrong” where my personal standings were concerned, and while I still vehemently defend things, they are broader ideas instead of specific (and often meaningless) examples. Namely the ‘problem’ or ornamentation. I hate it and that’s okay, but I might design something that’s ornamental because I know you like it. I wonder though where the line is drawn between selfless and spineless, but that’s a question for another article.

If aesthetics are independent that implies I can be a minimalist artisan. I still dislike that word. Sorry. But I like the design philosophy of wabi-sabi so much. I’m not saying it can’t be incorporated into mass manufactured things because the design definitely can use elements of it, but there’s something inherently at odds when having objects being made identically imperfect. The idea of the imperfection is the beauty of it’s uniqueness.

Uniqueness. Each of those Yumi bows is unique, but they all provide the same function – accelerate an arrow using a string and the materials’ natural properties. Each of those crossbows has the exact same function and as a result of mass manufacture has the exact same form. There’s something beautiful in both, though, don’t you think? Something romantic in buying a hand-made bow (or a hand machined gun) but also that there’s a machine somewhere in the world that makes the same piece over and over again at a speed that would stagger the mind and that piece gets assembled perfectly into that spot on every single product. It’s just, beautiful to think about for me. That’s my fear though; I think hand made things resonate with people better in general. It takes a very functional mind like mine to appreciate a factory.

Now, am I giving up my industrialist tendencies for a life behind a potter’s wheel? Certainly not. But I do wonder where that broad, overarching line is. I have such a passion for the method and craft itself that the outcome seems almost secondary – whereas a true blood would set up a factory without a second thought and have the focus be entirely on the output product.

I’ll be coming back to this topic; I have other examples and explorations.

TL;DR Aesthetics are independent of design philosophy divisions and form and function are independent yet again of both each other and the previous classifications, creating unique possibilities I hadn’t considered before.

I realize the title could be interpreted in a lot of different ways but I’m not talking about the obvious conclusion from words like those.

I’m talking about extrapolation of outcomes and what that means with creatives such as ourselves.

Where do the parents come in? Well, a quick anecdote:

Since sitting at my desk all day is sometimes boring I often go for a walk or take the train downtown and set up shop in a cafe or food court. As a designer of human products, watching people is somewhere in my job description and although I try to not be creepy, it’s always good experience to be around people and watch how they interact with things. Door handles, actually, are fascinating. But that’s for another time (also, read this book). So. There I am in the corner with the ol’ laptop in front of me, reading and writing as I usually do and I overhear the mother a few tables over trying to coerce her son to eat something that apparently he didn’t like. The argument I was waiting for came out: “Well if you haven’t tried it, how do you know you won’t like it?” and it’s a familiar one to my own childhood – How do you know the unknown will / won’t hurt you unless you try

It’s a dangerous thing, really. Reductio ad absurdum: If you haven’t tried stabbing yourself, how do you know it will hurt you?

Well. Extrapolation.

Humans (and a lot of animals, actually) are remarkably good at seeing patterns and behaving on them. We see a friend get hurt in some manner and we think “Hey, maybe I shouldn’t do that.” because the outcome is undesirable to us. Similarly the opposite: “Hey, he looks like he’s having fun, I should try that.” but we can also take these patterns and continue them. Swimming pools are cool, hot tubs are hot, steam rooms are hotter but blast furnaces are too much. There’s a line there. We don’t even need to know the temperature number – but we know that there is some point where the heat becomes harmful instead of soothing. How do you know the blast furnace will cook you if you haven’t tried?

So it’s pretty terrible advice, right? There’s lots of things that could harm you that you can really only try once. You’re not going to learn that poisons are bad for you by drinking them and realizing it.

But what about ideas.

Like, as creative people we have all of these ideas and some are awful and some are decent, but how do we know which they are without trying? There’s a balance there, somewhere. You can be in a small group brainstorming session and censor your own ideas because they’re ridiculous (to you) but maybe that spawns another train of thought in someone else that leads to a viable solution. The trick is to throw it all out there but throttle back afterwards. Unlike the poison you can only drink once, putting an idea out (probably) won’t kill you. Unless it’s the guillotine, which of course is just tragic irony. So while the advice isn’t particularly good at choosing what you put in your mouth, it can be excellent for getting the creative ball rolling. What’s the worst thing that could happen?

Yeah yeah, “Cider is a girl‘s drink” you say, snickering at me across the bar table. But truly, all of my associations with the word are of houndstooth tweed Jay Gatsby hats and fox hunting with a break-action over your vested shoulder in the rainy forests of Britain. The contrast there is the warmth of the heavy stone pub and ornate oak tables, fireplace roaring in the corner quelling off the pea fog.

So whatever.

Anyway, I’m sad to read that I won’t be sipping this any time soon since the curse of most small breweries is that they don’t ship very far outside their zone – so unless I fly to Austin, it seems slim. The packaging itself is brilliant. Screen printed bottles are, of course, held in the very highest esteem. That’s how they used to be done, and for good reason.

Artistic credit goes to Simon Walker, who’s done an absolutely perfect job recontextualizing an entire genre of drink. But, really, everything is he does is just dripping with talent, so I guess I shouldn’t act too surprised.

You can read a full interview with Ed Gibson, the main man, over on The Dieline which is also where the above photos are from. There’s also the Austin Eastciders main page for more product information.

Well done, gentlemen.

So, Jeffrey, tell us a bit about yourself / how did you first get into design?

During my time at Ohio State (1997-2001) working on a degree in sculpture, I kept finding myself leaning more and more towards furniture design. Sadly, my profs didn’t tell me that there was an entire program geared towards that one building over, and instead just pushed me to refocus on more conceptual and less functional work.

After I graduated, I started getting one-off furniture into galleries, but the prices were always a barrier to entry for the people who really seemed to like my style. I ended up focusing on how to build simpler designs in ways that I could produce multiples relatively quickly and affordably. When I told my sister-in-law that designing for production was way more fun than actually making the stuff, she arranged a tour for me of Fitch, the company where she did copywriting, and introduced me to the world of industrial design.

Alas, I had just finished my 2nd degree, in automotive technology, and didn’t have the money or the drive to jump right back into school. So I continued to work on projects on the side while trying to make a living doing just about everything else.

It wasn’t until 2007 that I was thinking about going back to school for an MBA that my wife asked me if I shouldn’t be thinking about something more creative. That got me to remember my previous dreams of studying industrial design. Going back to school filled in all the gaps between the skills I already had, and introduced me to the world of 3D CAD, which has been a life changer.

Could you describe your approach and philosophy to design?
As far as aesthetics and products, I try to bring something new to everything I do. I want as diverse a portfolio as I can get. If I have designed something, the next project is an opportunity to try something different, within the confines of the client’s desires, of course.

As for work that I do under my own name or my label, FurnLab, I work to make most of what I do open source. I focus heavily on CNC processes, whether 3D printing, laser cutting, or a router. I figure if I can look at other people’s work and cough up my own versions, there certainly isn’t anything preventing someone with access to the same gear from doing the same to my designs. Instead of spending my time obsessed with protecting my idea, I’d rather be working on the next project.

So I make my work available and just restrict commercial use. If someone likes something I’ve made, let them build it. Who knows, maybe they’ll give me some feedback or make some awesome improvements.

What do you love the most about the open source world?
People who understand the concept are very positive and supportive of the work. Open Source implies that you can make changes to your design down the road without implying your previous version is flawed or the the new one is the final iteration. I’m still evolving one of my oldest designs, The Mod, which is about 11 years old now.

I have more ideas than I have time to develop. The open source concept allows me to develop an idea as fully as I can within my budgetary and time constraints and put it out there for the world to see/enjoy without having to make the promise that it is a perfect design, just a worthwhile idea.

I love feeling like a pioneer. There is plenty of open source software, but beyond Thingiverse and its audience, most people have never heard of the idea of an open design for a physical object/product.

What do you hate the most about the open source world?
Ha! Explaining to friends and family that I’m not sinking my career by giving away my best ideas. I restrict commercial reproduction on my designs, but it still seems risky to them. The funny thing is that my brother used to work for the Eclipse Foundation, one of the biggest open source software organizations, and no one seemed to bat an eye. There just isn’t the same kind of precedent for open source product design.

The documentation. Even an 85% developed idea still requires documentation and this is where I am the worst. I have about 4 or 5 fairly complete designs that I haven’t made available simply because I haven’t found the time to provide documentation/instructions and I don’t feel right putting out a DXF without any additional information. My most recent product, Xylotones, are Half-tone images cut on a CNC machine. The individual products are custom and I’m still scratching my head about how to open source the work.

What’s the hardest thing about what you do?
Did I mention the documentation?

As far as consulting work, there is always something the client wants that you either dislike or are pretty sure won’t work but can’t talk them out of.

Getting strangers to understand open source is pretty difficult. I mean, if I can’t get my own family to fully understand, well, a 3 minute introduction typically leads to more questions than understanding.

As I mentioned, sometime I have trouble figuring out how exactly to open up a design.

If you had any advice for young designers, what would it be?
Draw, draw, draw. I don’t care if it is is pen/paper or digitally. There is absolutely no replacement for good drawing skills. Furniture design is one of the few places where you can get away with mediocre drawing skills, but you have to be good at what you do to overcome it. 3D modeling will never be as fast as sketching for throwing out quick ideas. Do no let your equipment be an excuse to no draw. I’ve got friends whose napkin drawings make my best Wacom work look like a kindergartner’s work. Well, that may be an exaggeration, but, you get the point.

If you could instantly change anything about our society, what would you change?
Planned obsolescence and the culture around it. I wish we still designed things to last, be repaired/upgraded, and be treasured. Sadly, people are not willing to pay higher prices for well-built things because they expect to replace them sooner than later. The cost of hitting the prices that they are willing to pay takes an incredible toll on our environment, and on the quality and timelessness of design.

Describe your favorite colour using only nouns.
Yikes! 1st gen Porsche 911, 1970s VWs, clementines, construction cones, discontinued iPad Smart Covers…

This calculator app from Berger & Föhr has been making waves in the blogosphere and I wanted to mention it not because it’s pretty and novel – which, it is, and that’s all fine and good – but because of what it represents.

When computers started they were a complete abstraction, lines of text that did things inside this box. Later the then-fledgling Apple added a GUI to give a better interaction between human and that mystery backend. They used metaphors in both interactions and terminology. The “desktop” held “folders” with “files” in them – none of these things exist, but it’s a good way to communicate it to the users, especially when all of this was starting and people were initially confused.

Since then, we’ve come a long way. That was 1983, just a hair short of thirty years ago. Ten years before I was born. We’ve brought up an entire new generation of people who have grown up and just accept these things; it’s not really that hard of an abstraction anymore. So it’s cool (for me, as part of that new generation) to see these things being streamlined and refined past the typical, and by that I mean, clunky and old school.

You pick up a physical calculator and you have buttons for operations because a) that’s how it’s always been and b) that’s really all you can do. You can rearrange them, sure, or maybe change how they work, but ultimately they have to be there in some capacity. Enter touchscreens. Not really new either, we’ve had iPhones for five years now, yet the calculator apps have always included the operator buttons as a direct analogue for the physical kind. They just remade it directly. Easy to understand? Sure. Familiar? Yeah. Efficient? Not really, no.

Again, and I said it a mere paragraph up, that’s so cool. We can make things better.

We’re at the point where we’re comfortable enough with the old abstractions to go past them and make new ones – more efficient ones. I think I’ve written about it before, but the ultimate UI is blank. At it’s ultimate, perfect state the program (whatever it is) should work in such a way that it always knows what you want to do. Since that’s an extraordinarily tall order, we do have to settle with buttons and elements as we do now. Gestures are good, but they don’t always work and they don’t always do what you want them to do, which goes against the above ideal. In this case the compromise is struck because it’s kept (in theory) simple and done in such a way that is easy to remember and use. Having never used it I can’t truly comment, but. With that said, if every app had it’s entirely own set of gestures (which is something we’re running into recently) it becomes even more convoluted and in the end less useful. It’s inefficient to always have to look up what the gestures to do an action is; this too goes against the ideal.

TL;DR We can make new abstractions because the UI is evolving and the new generation is used to it, which is both a power and a responsibility. And wherein I reveal my age.

Via

After receiving some good response with the Max interview, we’re back with another:

Alex Jones of Cambridge Industrial Design

So, Alex, tell us a bit about yourself
I am an industrial designer based in Cambridge, UK. I have been a designing stuff since I graduated in 1994. I am currently the managing director of Cambridge Industrial Design Ltd. I have worked on lots of interesting projects from loudspeakers and Hi-Fi to lab robots and a motion capture suit. Living and working in Cambridge means you are close to a lot of exciting new technology and ideas.

How did you first get into industrial design?
I did a 4 year BSc (hons) Engineering Product Design course at South Bank university in London. The one year placement in Sydney, Australia with a small manufacturing company was the main highlight for me – and not just for the beaches! Getting the placement was just luck – I happen to be looking in the right place at the right time. Abberfield Technology is a small company designing and manufacturing ticketing machines and I was the design department with the MD and Production manager guiding me. It was a really great education – learning about technical drawing for the real world, dealing with suppliers and working in a team were all elements that are actually essential for a industrial designer. Looking at today’s students I feel getting some experience of manufacturing to be even more vital. There are a lot more design graduates out there now…

Could you describe your approach and philosophy to design?
Get a good design brief – try to get as much information as possible and listen to the client (something you don’t get in college)
I design from the inside out most of the time. Improving a product or coming up with a new product – you have to do that from the inside in my view. What is the target price and volumes? Therefore what manufacturing processes are available to me? What value should the product convey? The list goes on but they all affect the design from the start. We try to give clients concepts that have a wow factor but also designs that will work.

What’s the hardest thing about what you do?
The hardest part is also the most satisfying – go over the design detail again. And again. And again. Refining the detail can be very hard and time consuming but when you get a mechanical prototype that works – it’s a great feeling.

What’s the part that you love the most?
Seeing people use a product I’ve designed. A few weeks back I saw a busker in Cambridge use a Fender Passport. Last week an engineer at a networking event said how much he liked the Sureflap cat flap. Makes all that detail work worthwhile!

If you had any advice for young designers, what would it be?
Get some experience with a company that actually makes stuff. In my view you can’t be a good consultant with out that experience.
Don’t just focus on sketching – get up to speed with materials, tech, manufacturing process
If you have just graduated and love industrial design – stick at it.

If you could instantly change anything about our society, what would you change?
UK engineering to be prized and respected – engineering is undervalued by many in the UK and yet can solve big problems with such elegance – most of the time : )

Describe your favourite colour using only nouns.
Ferrari

I want so much to like it. The matte black and swooping flatness. The subtle red trim and the huge front disk. The way that mid plate flows into the rear arm. These are things I’ll always love.

So it pains me, in a way, to say that I really don’t. The creator, who stands proud like a father (which is admirable in any designer – I do greatly appreciate that) was inspired by a charging buffalo, and I do see that. The stocky front and heavy forward balance do portray this very well, but from where that excited tautness comes is also it’s weakness: it’s aesthetically (and physically) unbalanced. It just looks wrong.

This review should not be scathing, because I love everything about the project: the brick walls and wood floors of their office are perfect, the interviews and quotes seem like a man truly inspired and driven – these are awesome, awesome things. I just wish that front end were different.

Photos via

Occasionally there comes along a design that is so simple and so brilliant that your head screams “Why didn’t I think of that?!” and you smile in appreciation. You sir, well done. Indeed, Tan Mavitan (a name with excellent flow) has captured the usefulness of both sides of the paper here, something that I admit I don’t do nearly enough.

It was a limited edition from MOMA and it doesn’t seem available anymore, sadly. When you could buy them they went for the very reasonable $17.95.

Via