Episode 2: Philippe Nigro Interview

Subscribe via iTunes

I’m not usually easy enamored by designers but I’ll admit, I was very nervous chatting with Mr. Sanders. Maybe it’s the sheer brilliance or maybe it’s realizing this guy not only designs beautiful objects, but he’s an engineer at heart. That’s very rare, especially among the new crop of up-and-coming designers.

People in Asia are probably well aware of his folding cutting boards and One Touch can opener but its the bikes – the bikes that garner so much attention. Now in its 21st edition, the original folding Strida bike is still selling strong. The unique triangular a-frame bike was an unorthodox approach to what a bike was supposed to look like. The proportions seemed off but the ingenious design lets your ride sitting upright (as you should) and utilizes less energy thanks to the smaller wheels.

Fast forward 21 years later and we have the IF Gold awarding winning IF Mode, a gorgeous exercise in consumer design. Yes it folds but it doesn’t look like a toy. It doesn’t look odd and is quite sexy with the perforated leather wrapped handle bars and seat. Perhaps the most innovative feature is the simple latch system that enables the front wheel to fold parallel next to the rear wheel, essentially turning into a monocycle. Talk about easy transport!

As a designer, I’m always fascinated by what inspires and motivates other designers. Mark isn’t shy about discussing his past. He loves what he does and more importantly hasn’t forgotten why he became a designer – to make the world a better place. He even has some sage words for those who are just beginning their design career. It’s a daunting path but hold steadfast and stay true – the message is common but cliche holds truth. Thank you Mark!

Episode 1: Mark Sanders Interview

Subscribe via iTunes

IF Mode Bike production model

 

IF Mode BIke sketches

 

Billy May:  To start out, I was doing some research and your Linked-In profile has you listed as a “post-industrial designer”.  Is that a reflection of your current work in more interactive and experiential design?

Tucker Viemeister:  I’ve been focusing on this idea of designing in “multi-media” instead of things, which started when I started working with Razorfish, which is a digital design place.  We were seeing the whole experience, and so that’s why we call it post-industrial.  That’s the future of industrial design, it’s more about the gestalt than the little pieces.

BM:  What do you think has specifically drawn you towards these different technologies as you moved throughout your career?  Obviously interactive software has been around for some time, but is there something that’s pushed you towards that more recently?

TV:  I’ve been doing these projects with Rockwell Group that are much more about reactive environments which are very interesting to me now.  There are a lot of installations where you walk by and something blinks, but I think the next step is to make it a more informative and compelling sort of experience so it’s not just a one-to-one interaction.  If you walk by some flowers and they blow from your breeze, that reaction’s too normal.  We’re trying to do stuff that’s more compelling and interesting for people.

BM:  A lot of the projects The Lab has taken on have been design for its own sake.  Like the Venice Biennale for instance, while mind-blowing, it did not have a whole lot of utility behind it.  What do you think might be keeping a lot of these technologies from making that leap into consumer markets with something you might be able to pick up at Best Buy?

TV:  Well, we’re exploring new territory and obviously the stuff that’s the most successful is going to make it to market for larger audiences.  But who knows what that’s going to be now.  I really do think that passive downloading of information like watching TV or movies is nearing its end.  I think people will want things they can be involved in like games or sports. As people are forced to do less and less physical work, this other stuff is going to take its place.  What can be more boring than going to the gym and riding one of those stationary bicycles?  But people like it, so that kind of stuff is an area for entertainment as well as exercise.

BM:  I think the Microsoft Surface Table is probably one of the most prominent examples of a lot of the reactive technology pushing into the consumer market, but even so it still kind of stands as more novelty than useful tool for living.  Do you think a lot of these technologies are solutions that are still looking for problems to solve?

TV:  Well, the table is an example of them pushing the research level of stuff, but I think they got bogged down in turning it into a real product.  What we’re doing is stuff that’s more interesting, the hardware is unimportant; it’s what you do with the hardware.  Like the GE website and the wind power plant with 3 dimensional things showing up.  Its magical how it works and how it draws you into the experience.  Those are the kinds of things we’re doing right now, stuff that requires very little setup.

BM:  Now since around ‘97, you’ve been integrally involved in the startup or creation of Frog NY, springtime USA, Razorfish, studio red and now the lab.  What drives the serial entrepreneurship for you?

TV:  Well part of it was just the economy, but the other part was the digital technology.  The reason I went to Frog was because they had just acquired this digital design place in Austin and they were really incorporating digital interface stuff into their work and I was into that.

BM:  So as your passions arose, you hopped around to places that could accommodate that?

TV:  Well, I didn’t “hop” around.  It was more of a straight line; it was all about the digital convergence.  I was working with Frog and we were having discussions with Razorfish about merging Razorfish with Frog, but after it didn’t happen I was much more interested in working with Razorfish.  After the bubble burst I started working with Springtime-USA at Rockwell and Studio Red in doing interdisciplinary work, including the digital stuff.

BM:  At a lot of these places you helped bring about, you’ve held extremely senior positions, do you enjoy from that vantage point to sit back and oversee multiple projects as they go on and support those or do you like getting hands on and jumping into projects that excite you personally?

TV:  I think you have certain advantages of being one of the leaders but what’s great about design is that you have both ideas and real tangible things.  When you’re in design everyone puts their real stuff on the table and its right there.  I think that having a real touchstone of what we do is powerful and important whether you’re talking about the big strategy or more granular tactics.  It’s the specific within the broad that makes design fun.

BM:  I was reading your article on Beautility and I was struck by one of your observations that an object can effect one of those transcendent “flow” moments of awareness.  Do you find those moments only in appreciating a project’s final execution, as it’s done; or is it something you work to find in the process?

TV:  No, you’re lucky if you find that along the way, but I think that projects have an emotional wave.  Projects start off being exciting with making up concepts and stuff and then, “Oh my God”, none of these concepts are any good and the client picked the wrong one.  But you have to be practical so you start making stuff and you’re like “oh, this is coming out good” and finally you present and you get the post-project let down.  With industrial design, it’s weird, you’ll get a sample 5 months later and you’re like “wow this came out pretty good” and finally going in and seeing it in the store and you’re like “wow my thing is in the store!”

BM:  In your talk you brought up your fathers career in industrial design.  Are there any specific stories or instances that affected your development and career in industrial design? 

TV:  Well, there’s a lot of them I think.  For me what was interesting about my dad was that on the one hand he was very decisive and regimented in his lifestyle, going to work at 8:30 and coming home at 5:30.  But at the same time, his design thinking and stuff didn’t stop at work at all.  Everything about our family was designish.  Not necessarily like living with Philippe Stark, but more of a “Hey, you can make this better,” “Paint the room for the party, ” “You can arrange this lighting to be nicer” or “Hey, look at that cool thing”

BM:  In your talk you spoke about wealth versus design, discerning which is the driver of the economy.  Do you think that some of the design-for-its-own-sake can overlook some of the more pressing human problems out in the world that economic progress aims at?

TV:  I think the making spinach into candy example is a good metaphor. Basically, designers should be trying to make stuff that’s good for us into stuff we want.  As long as you’re doing that, you’re doing things for the betterment of humanity and your problem will be solved.  And I was more referring to the whole Bruce Nussbaum in Business Week thing about making design important to business and showing how design helped businesses make more profit.  Really it should be the other way around, business should be trying to help design

BM:  Is that a fine line you’ve had to walk throughout your career?

TV:  The point is that design helps people sell stuff and make things more appealing so business can make more money from it.  But that’s not the reason to do design.  The reason that business is around is not just to make money – it is to help make peoples’ lives better.  For instance, there’s a company in Yellow Springs, Ohio (where I’m from) that’s in the business of not just making sensors but supporting all the people who work for them.  So they’re a community of people who make these things so they can all work.  They don’t go “Oh man we could make more money if we made these in China” because that’s not the reason they’re in business.

The problem with corporations is that they exist on their own without being human.  And they don’t really care if they destroy the environment.  They live in a different world, so we humans have to take charge of the corporations to make them act right.

BM:  Do you think the economic situation might start affecting some of the deliverables we produce as far as fewer tangible products and more experiences?  Has Industrial Design peaked in cultural relevance?

TV:  Yeah, I think experience design and service design is leading in that direction, but I also think that the objects will be designed in that context instead of on their own.  I was thinking about the hotel room this morning and how it was all designed to work together, the wall paper, the light, wall fixtures but then there’s this telephone that has nothing to do with the décor or anything, it was just stuck in there.  It reminded me of historical homes built centuries ago where you say “Oh my God, look at that stove they put in this house, it doesn’t fit at all.”  I think we’re going to look back on our time and say “look at those weird pieces of technology that are just sticking out like sore thumbs.

BM:  My editor was actually hoping I could get you to trash talk some stuff going on in the industry.  Can you relate any client horror stories or projects that put you through hell?

TV:  I think the project we’re working on in Las Vegas is totally crazy for a number of reasons.  Las Vegas is crazy, the economics of how things work are never as straightforward as I think they are.  Because hotels in Las Vegas make most of their money on slot machines, you can’t change them at all or they’re going to lose money.  Everything else is very flexible, but the slot machines are there to stay.

BM:  Having heard Cooper Woodrings’ talk, and having had the positions that you’ve had, which of his seven deadly sins of design management do you think you’re occasionally guilty of?

TV:  Oh my God, do you have the list?  Stubborn, of all of them, stubborn was the biggest one.  I think it has something to do with being unable to articulate what it is I want, so people think I’m just being stubborn.  I think people also think I’m indecisive at times, but I have an excuse: design is a collaborative process and sometimes you have to say, okay that direction didn’t work and some people would think that’s indecisive.  If you’re going to be experimental and successful, you have to expect a bunch of mistakes.  I think one of the best things I do is to take any kind of project and figure out what’s good about it and turn it into an exciting project.

Basing his conference talk on the influence of outsourced design and how we need to change as designers to stay relevant, Jon Kolko urges us to become more culture-centric to stay afloat (see his presentation’s slide deck here).

_______________________

Billy May:  Your career has had a predominant focus on interaction design and even software, yet there has always seemed to be a affinity for industrial design lingering just behind the curtain.  What continues to draw you to that field over the perhaps more germane (or at least typical) field of graphic design?

Jon Kolko:  I have a degree in Industrial Design, and I think standard industrial design training – basic form exercises in the context of a traditional Bauhaus studio model – helps forge a fundamentally different way about thinking about more timely design problems of time and behavior. I can keep a fairly complicated problem of interaction in my “headspace” at once, much like an industrial designer can keep the complexities of a physical object in their working cognition and manipulate it as they desire, flipping it over or cutting through it. An interaction problem has nodes and branches and ultimately takes up an artificial “mass” when visualized. Consider a concept map, or a flow diagram; this can be navigated and manipulated in the mind just like a toaster or a blender.

My draw towards interaction is kind of ironic, I guess, because I love beautiful objects but I hate “things”. I’ve never really been passionate about mass produced items, like an iPod or a car, only with art – one offs, made by hand, crafted and cared for. Design is less, to me, about the output and more about the process.

BM:  In an earlier talk, you professed a love for configuration software; besides fun projects like that, what kind of problems and projects really get under your skin and excite you?

JK:  As tongue in cheek as that point may have been, I do enjoy designing configuration software, and pricing software, and the other gnarly problems of the enterprise, not because I’m some sort of configuration masochist but because these problems are hard. I’ve worked on the entire spectrum, from consumer electronics to software and to the web, yet the design problems I enjoy most are the ones that are difficult to solve.  Un-fucking the complex is one of the things that I get the most excited about. This is true in the public sector – where the problems are complicated by various stakeholders, agencies, and a lack of resources – and in business, where the problems are fueled by competing groups, quarterly priorities, and a tendency to latch onto fads and trends. Taming complexity, making sense of chaos, and generally righting the wrong – that’s what design’s all about.

BM:  Your talk gave a lot of attention to the aggressive expansion of outsourced industrial design and designers’ need to gird their careers by reaching deeper into research.  Having a background in both education and curriculum development, what challenges do design schools face in the changing market and how do they need to react to keep their students relevant and marketable?  What do students need to start doing themselves if their programs fail to adapt fast enough?

JK:  There’s no “if” about it; with some obvious exceptions (such as Delft or University of Cincinnati), design programs in the United States and Europe haven’t adapted fast enough. It’s a strange time for graduating seniors; the economic strife we have going on in the states is a red herring for design graduates, who should really be looking at Asia and thinking about how they can stay relevant when the million Asian designers hit the global marketplace.

I think students need to focus on the intellectual aspects of design, rather than becoming enamored with the more obvious, traditional, and seemingly glamorous parts of design. Many students see Karim Rashid, or other flamboyant form givers, talk about design, and fail to realize that these are purposefully produced public approaches to a profession, much like Paris Hilton is to media. Design isn’t about that, at least not the design that’s going to land you a job and help you pay your mortgage. It’s about something thoughtful, and methodical, and useful, and beautiful, all at once. The design I talk about, and the design work we do at frog, is so far away from the “making beautiful objects” of yesterday that it’s almost a different job entirely.

BM:  Many of the designers I spoke with at the conference shared your conviction for a greater amount of responsibility on the part of students for activities upstream of form giving.  Do you think design programs need to append more skill sets on top of the typical foundation of form giving or do you see the intellectual side of things cannibalizing other course work?

JK:  It’s a difficult line to walk. Having built a curriculum in Industrial design, I feel the pain of any educator trying to balance the increasing demands of the design profession with a constrained set of “slots”. The constraints are actually larger than simply fitting in all of the required design courses; most accreditation programs require a percentage of classes as general education or liberal arts, which ultimately may be the most important classes students take – but are viewed by both the students and the faculty as “wasted space” that could otherwise be filled by more drawing courses.

I’m a proponent of the foundational studies programs at most art and design schools, as they teach the care, craftsmanship, and appreciation for quality that is critical for any type of design (form giving or otherwise). What I’ve found, however, is that 17 and 18 year old students are obviously too “green” to understand and appreciate the point of the foundational program, and so the exercises seem pointless and time consuming; as an example, most designers can recall a freshman year exercise of being forced to draw something (a bell pepper, usually) very small and then VERY LARGE. Theoretically, this is a great project to introduce a sensibility of scale, perspective, craft, and detail. Yet most students see it as a waste of time and a waste of resources (those prismacolors are so expensive!).  This is not a fault of the student, as they should not be expected to value something that has little relationship to their world or life. In fact, this is less a problem that design schools can “solve” as much as it is a critique of the base education system (grammar school and high school) in the United States.

BM:  As designers make their way to higher, more cerebral climbs of design output to safeguard their jobs, do you see the jobs themselves becoming harder to justify as the deliverables become another step removed from the final tangible products?  Or do you welcome that separation of thinking from product?

JK:  I long for a day where designers, without long and convoluted explanations and examples and spec work and hand waving, are paid for the output of their mind, rather than their hands. We produce artifacts to visualize, and to illustrate, and to show what we mean; these are ancillary to the things we think. Doctors, lawyers, even smarmy politicians aren’t compensated directly based on their output – only on their intellect. Ultimately, we need to realize – and we need to communicate to our clients and to the general public – that design is a culturally embedded phenomenon about changing behavior.

BM:  How do we, as designers, validate our quality of thought, what metric do we grab hold of aside from our occasional excel spreadsheet and powerpoint?

JK:  We need to exhibit value during the process of design, rather than placing emphasis on the value we added to the output of design. The “litmus test” for designers to claim success has frequently been to gather awards, or to point at a finished product on the shelf; this implies that our role is in the development of a static artifact. As a first step, we need to care less about the outcome and more about how we got there. Then, we need to educate those around us – in a non patronizing fashion – why our process is valuable. This education usually comes by example, and with patience; I’ve heard so many designers bemoan the “stupid client” who “doesn’t get it”. This is like faulting a five year old for not understanding complex trigonometry; of course they don’t understand it – you have to teach them. And just like the five year old, they aren’t going to learn it because you said it to them once, and they aren’t going to learn it by getting mad at them. We need to evangelize, and teach, and show, and do these things methodically, overtly, and patiently.

BM:  As Yanko Design caters to just as many designers outside the US as it does those within, what advice would you put to those trying to bridge the gap culturally, if not geographically.  Are channels like the internet breaking these cultural barriers down or is geographic relocation a must?

JK:  If designers are going to take on larger problems than those of form and function, I think, to some degree, we need to “be in the culture” we are designing for. This does mean that we need to move around geographically; the internet is great, but it hasn’t broken down any geographic barriers in any substantive way. As a parallel example, a recent post on core77 implied that the flickr group “what’s in your bag?” can substitute for ethnography. Steve Portigal took this to task as being the “lamest post ever”, and to some degree, he’s right. When we reduce culture down to a set of differences, like “they eat different food” or “they like vibrant colors”, we only serve to paint ourselves as ignorant; if we actually act on these reductions and design based on these silly observations, we end up with some awful results. Culture is richer than that, and so – as hard as it may sound – to design for the richness of any culture, designers need to go absorb that culture and become part of it.

Let’s start with your winning concept, the Fluid Rocker. Was this an original idea you came up with specifically for the contest or was it something you had brewing prior?

The Fluid Rocker concept was an idea that I came up with specifically for the Relax competition. This competition seemed like a good opportunity to create something new.

What’s your design process like? Do you brainstorm  wildly and let experimentation lead or do you systematically go thru a defined procedure?

My process depends on the nature of what I am trying to design and what issues I want it to overcome, but it follows a fairly defined procedure. If there is a specific problem that I am trying to solve, I usually start by researching the problem and determine how the object needs to function in order to overcome the problem. From the function I begin to develop the form, starting with loose gestural sketching and refining as I go.

What was that process like for the Fluid Rocker?

First, I thought about what piece of furniture I found most relaxing. I settled on the rocking chair because it is one of the few pieces of furniture that is active, where the user controls the experience through their own motion. It is this control that makes the rocking chair experience so relaxing. From here, I broke the rocking chair down into its basic components:, rockers, seat, backrest, and armrests and began experimented through sketching to find a shape that gracefully unified all of these components into a single form. Once I found that form, I played with several materials, and construction methods. and I decided that a smooth organic look would be the most comfortable and visually suggestive of relaxation. Fiberglass seemed the most suitable for the form because of its strength, ability to create a flowing form, and color options. I then softened the form of the chair a bit to take advantage of this material. I added the felt to the upper surface to make the chair more inviting and comfortable as well as to create some visual and textural contrast with the fiberglass.

What’s your response to people who say Fluid Rocker is an imitation?

Thought the Fluid Rocker has similarities to other chairs designed by various other designers, I think it stands on its own as a unique design.

Did you see any of the other entries? What did you think about them? Any favorites?

I looked at all of the entries posted in the Flickr gallery, and I enjoyed the vast range in style and form of the entries. I thought it was interesting that most of us chose to design a chair. Even though we have obvious difference in style, we all like to relax the same way. A few of my favorites in no particular order; Peanut Bed, End, Hive, Cloud Sofa.

What inspires you as a designer?

I often find inspiration through nature and the human body. Especially when viewing things at a macro scale to see how objects come together. Of course, nothing is more inspiring then finding a situation where a suitable product doesn’t exist or being annoyed by problems with an existing product. Music always helps the process too.

Do you admire any other designers? Who are they?

To name a few: Poul Kjaerholm, Buckminster Fuller, Charles and Ray Eames, George Nakashima

When did you know you wanted to be a designer?

I knew I wanted to be a designer as soon as I figured out what a designer was. Of course, there was a little desire to be an astronaut mixed in there too, but for as long as I can remember, I was creating things. When I was in my early teens, I was mostly driven by invention and a desire to build things. It wasn’t until later that I developed a passion for form.

Favorite color?

It changes fairly often, but I always seem to come back to orange.

Do you work best during the day or night?

I am most often inspired during the day but I get most of my work done at night. I am also a procrastinator so it usually just works out that I am finishing projects late at night.

Nick Trincia graduated from NC State University’s College of Design in 2003 with a degree in Industrial Design. After graduating, he moved to Baltimore, MD where he worked for several years as a designer and fabricator of custom furniture, lighting, and architectural metalwork at Gutierrez Studios. Throughout his career, he has worked on various freelance design and build projects for residential and commercial clients. He currently resides in Boston working as… wait for it… a designer and even showed us a little something he and his brother are working on. Check it out. It’s a laptop bag that unfolds into a lap desk!

Designer: Nick Trincia

But what about Linksys? What about the old workhouse – black and purple with more antennas than you can count. If you haven’t noticed, Linksys has evolved. Design is now taken seriously within the company. I spoke with Chris Landry, Senior Executive Director of Worldwide Design & Experience within the Cisco Consumer Business Group about where Linksys was, and where they have come since his entrance 2 years ago.

When Chris Landry took up residence at Linksys, now a part of Cisco – there was no real design ethos in regard to their products. The designs usually came straight from OEMs. He initiated a worldwide visual audit and with his new design team based in Irvine, California – took 3 months to evaluate every hardware collateral they had.

Meanwhile their competitors were selling sleek shiny routers with internal antennas and the public ate them up. I myself remember shopping for a new router and walking right past all the Linksys products because they were a bit underwhelming. Sure it had 2 giant antennas but the perforated black plastic and purple face looked like a rush job. I opted for the alien saucer shaped Apple Extreme instead. Was it better? In my mind yes – mostly because if a company spent that much time on the exterior, then it only made sense the same was given to the innards. In reality I know the exterior could be used to hide a shitty interior but that’s the point – design not only communicates who you are, but also shifts what a consumer thinks. Landry’s job seemed titanic and if his direction didn’t work – the proverbial ship would have sank.

Routers are a balance between precise engineering and for the consumer’s sake; aesthetics. They extensively tested the new routers to make sure internal antennas would be as powerful as the external ones. The challenge and risk was to convince people nothing was sacrificed. People equate antennas with wireless transmissions and when they don’t see it, they think it’s subpar. But Landry likens the evolution of his routers to that of the TV and auto industry. Take a look at where their antennas used to be and how they’re engineered now.

The new generation of Linksys routers are sleek, softly rounded, accessible looking and dare I say sexy? The old monotonous blinking lights are now replaced by LED lit iconography. Landry describes it as “aspirational, bringing emotional connectivity.” The “new way” has even opened doors to a new design center in Copenhagen. The two teams work closely together with Landry at the helm. Design and engineering now work in tandem as designers spearhead initial concepts, but never at the detriment of performance. In just 2 years time the new Linksys product line can stand toe-to-toe with their competitors. When routers were still wired, it made sense to tuck them away with all the other cables. In our wireless world the freedom from those cables have moved routers up front and center. They’re the communication hubs between all of our computers, TVs, and game consoles. Linksys is on a mission to change the minds of everyone who doubted them. Their new renaissance has even reached into interface design with the recently launched line of wireless home audio products. I’m personally amazed how quickly Landry was able to change Linksys and as their design language continues to evolve, I’m itching to see more.

Company: Linksys

Mr. Landry is currently Senior Executive Director, Worldwide Design & Experience within the Cisco Consumer Business Group headquartered in Irvine, CA overseeing design offices in the USA and Denmark.  In this role, he has effectively transformed the look of the Linksys by Cisco product line, which is now emerging with a more cohesive, sleek form for every product. He has hired industrial designers from all over the world and established design centers in Irvine, California and in Copenhagen,Denmark, resulting in a truly global collaboration for the product line. The “remixed” Linksys by Cisco networking devices were conceived through inspirations by contemporary furniture and automobile forms.

Prior to joining Cisco he held positions as Vice President of Corporate Design and Product Development at Polaroid Corporation in Boston, MA and was Design Center Director for Strategic Design & Innovation within the Personal Systems Group (PSG) at Hewlett-Packard Corporation in Houston, TX.  While at HP, he established key partnerships with external companies, customer accounts and institutions for potential design innovation in defining the next perceived “cool products” to help drive tactical design development teams in delivery of their product roadmaps.  He has appeared on Tech TV and been interviewed by CNET, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Popular Science, PC World and Mobile Computing surrounding his initiative on the product concept called “Dual Worlds”.  He was chairman of the Innovation Forum within the HP division, a member of the inter-division Design Council and an advisory member to the HP task force on designing for persons with disabilities.  While at HP (prior to the HP / Compaq merger),  he was Design Center Manager for the Commercial Portables Division at Compaq, responsible for the visual (DNA) appearance strategy overhaul of that divisions product design in bringing a holistic design strategy to their entire line of portables and options in building brand worldwide.

He has been a guest speaker at numerous international design management conferences discussing the topics of  “Remixing Design Into Corporate Culture”,  “ViBE, Making Brands Real”, “Managing Design To Enable Far Thinking Beyond the Speed of Business”, “Ground Zero & Managing Design Strategies To Improve Brand” and “Creative Design Management: Who Needs It?

Prior to joining HP & Compaq, he was with Digital Equipment Corporations Design Group located in New England where he managed Industrial Design for both retail and commercial lines of personal computers.

Mr. Landry was instrumental in the development of a cohesive “design language program” for visual brand consistency across all Digital products worldwide helping to provide one visual voice for the company.  While at Digital, he received more than 15 US & foreign patents and frequently lectured on the topic of design.  He was a guest speaker at the International Design Conference, on the topic of “Repositioning Design for Leadership & Moving Design to a Core Competency”.  He also lectured at the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA) conference on the topic of “Developing Design Resources for Accelerated Product Development”.  The design and development process he implemented while at Digital on the VT320 Terminal was featured in the London Financial Times article “Competing with the Far East, Digital Learns To Run A Better Race” authored by Christopher Lorenz.  His work on the VT320 was also published in the book titled “Design Success” by the Danish Design Council and became part of the Design Management Institutes “Triad Exhibition” and continues to be a teaching case study at the Harvard Business School.

Mr. Landry was the recipient of the IDEA Silver Award for the design of Digital’s HiNote Ultra Notebook

PC featured in Business Week magazine and the IDSA INNOVATION yearbook of design excellence.

The design of the HiNote Ultra also received the G-Mark by the Ministry of Japan (MITI) for good design that

same year.  In addition to his product design career at Digital Equipment Corporation, he designed the interiors for the corporations first retail computer stores located inNew Hampshire and Boston’s financial district.  Prior to its move to downtown Boston, the original “Computer Museum” located in Marlboro, MA was also designed by Mr. Landry which incorporated a significant number of donated and privately owned artifacts in computer history.

Early in his career he was an exhibit designer with the design firm Lynch Industries, NJ and collaborated with Raymond Lowey International Ltd., NYC on the 14, 000sq.’ exhibition for the Living History Center in Philadelphia, PA. utilizing high technology interactive exhibits to tell the story of US history.

He is an active member of the Design Management Institute (DMI) and the Industrial Design Society of

America (IDSA).  He served as a juror for eight years in General Electric’s International Student Design

Competition and continues to support the IDSA National Student Mentor program in the USA.

Mr. Landry received his BSID from the University of Bridgeport, CT and has done post graduate study at

Boston University, University of Illinois @Champaign/Urbana and Drexel University, PA.

List of our favorite excerpts.

On choosing strategy:

“We do no market research. We don’t hire consultants. The only consultants I’ve ever hired in my 10 years is one firm to analyze Gateway’s retail strategy so I would not make some of the same mistakes they made [when launching Apple's retail stores]. But we never hire consultants, per se. We just want to make great products.”

On Apple’s focus:

“Apple is a $30 billion company, yet we’ve got less than 30 major products. I don’t know if that’s ever been done before. Certainly the great consumer electronics companies of the past had thousands of products. We tend to focus much more. People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.”

On managing through the economic downturn:

“We’ve had one of these before, when the dot-com bubble burst. What I told our company was that we were just going to invest our way through the downturn, that we weren’t going to lay off people, that we’d taken a tremendous amount of effort to get them into Apple in the first place — the last thing we were going to do is lay them off. And we were going to keep funding. In fact we were going to up our R&D budget so that we would be ahead of our competitors when the downturn was over. And that’s exactly what we did. And it worked. And that’s exactly what we’ll do this time.”

Via: Mac Rumors

Interview: Three Layer Cake

Mr Thomkins, what inspired you to create this special product and what was your intention behind it?

Stones that have been hollowed out by the surf; sand dunes in the desert, which appear and disappear again within a single day and into which you can embed yourself and drift along.

What are in your opinion the special challenges designers are facing today?

To react to the omnipresent sensory overload with modesty, following the ‘Smart’ dogma: ‘reduce to the max.’

What would you as a designer like to achieve in the future?

The sustainable integration of so-called developing and emerging market countries into our economic system by design transfer.

What economic significance does design have in your opinion?

Design is the trigger of desires and therefore the trigger of the buying impulse in a saturated society.

Designer: Nicolas Thomkins