“The world needs design more now than ever.” 

Most designers want to make beautiful things. 

Dan Harden wants to make meaningful ones. 

From building dangerous go-karts as a kid to designing more than 1,000 products (and winning 350+ awards), Dan’s career has been a masterclass in lasting impact. As CEO and founder of Whipsaw, Dan has shaped the modern design landscape while staying grounded in what truly matters: solving real problems for real people. 

In this episode of Why Design, Dan shares how he turned a passion for sketching and making into a globally respected studio, why the best designers obsess over details, and how to cultivate curiosity, clarity, and creativity over a 30+ year career. 

Don’t just listen. Go beyond the podcast. Join the Why Design community → teamkodu.com/events 

What You’ll Learn 👇 

🌀 Why the “why” of design matters more than ever 

🪚 The discipline behind great design (and why it's more than a sketch) 

🔥 How passion, grit, and inspiration fuel longevity 

📐 What makes a design transcendent, not just functional 

🌍 Why industrial designers must think beyond consumerism 

Memorable Quotes 

💬 “There are fundamentals about design that haven’t changed.” 

💬 “Creativity is not a tool you turn on, it’s a way of life.” 

💬 “Don't contribute to the malaise. Don’t do shitty products.” 

💬 “You can be creative designing a bolt.” 

💬 “Design should be gifting, not just commerce.” 

Resources & Links 

🧠 Connect with Dan Harden on LinkedIn: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-harden-62389435/ 

🏢 Explore Whipsaw’s work: 

https://www.whipsaw.com/ 

🎧 Listen to Prism, Dan’s podcast: 

https://open.spotify.com/show/1ZHZoL0hOdzZfRcgAXeuvh?si=40de5239ef2548fc 

🎥 Watch full episodes on YouTube → youtube.com/@whydesignpod 

📸 Follow on Instagram → @whydesignxkodu 

🎵 TikTok → _whydesign 

👥 Join the Why Design community → teamkodu.com/events 

🔗 Follow Chris Whyte on LinkedIn → linkedin.com/in/mrchriswhyte 

🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube & Amazon → whydesign.club 

👉 Keep the conversation going. 

Join the Why Design community → teamkodu.com/events 

📲 Subscribe on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube so you never miss an episode. 

👥 If this resonated, share it with a friend, designer, or team leader navigating their own creative journey. 

About Kodu 

Why Design is produced by Kodu, a recruitment partner to ambitious hardware brands, design consultancies, and product start-ups. We help founders and teams hire top talent across industrial design, mechanical engineering, and product leadership. 

🔗 Learn more → teamkodu.com 

So Dan Harden, welcome to Y Design. Finally, we're sitting down to record. It's great to see you. So you're in San Francisco. I'm in New York right now. So time zones aren't too bad for a change. But yeah, it's really, really good to sit down. Yeah, it feels like a long time coming.

Hmm.

And I'm glad we were able to finally do this, Chris. It's real pleasure talking

Agree.

So yeah, we met for the first time at CES. So Anne was fantastic in kind of arranging that and getting us to sit down and have lunch. And just that hour or so that we spent together in the story story, you know, I've got to get done on the podcast. So it's great to have you. So I'm going to do a, I'm going to do my best to do a bit of an intro. Please do chime in and correct me where I inevitably get something wrong, you know.

I'm looking forward to it. I'll be curious to see your entry.

I prepared this a few weeks ago, so maybe those numbers have gone up since then. either way.

So far so good. What you mean by powerhouse, we're not a utility company, we're a design company.

No. Yeah, absolutely design firm. Yeah. You've been described as design's secret weapon by Fast Company. And you've been named as one of the hundred most creative people in business, which is a pretty cool accolade. Your work is in the Smithsonian and the Henry Ford Museum. And as a leader, you've steered Whipsaw through decades of creative and commercial impact, blending strategy, innovation and aesthetics to build truly meaningful products.

Hahaha

Don't worry, this is the most cringy bit of the podcast. We'll get into the conversation soon. But before you started Wip Sword back in the late 90s, you held senior roles at Frog Design, Henry Dreyfus Associates, and you worked directly with George Nelson. From medical devices and robotics to furniture and wearables, your portfolio kind of reads like the greatest hits of design over the last 30 or so years.

Sure.

And today, your company Whipsaw is known for its cross-disciplinary thinking, its culture of sunrise innovation, and its mission to create design that is beautiful, functional, responsible, and most importantly, human. So how was that as an intro?

That was beautiful. I'm guessing you had a little chat GPT help on that.

You shouldn't tell people my secrets, but yes. And you know what, we didn't rehearse that either. Usually I do a few takes of where I just kind of trip over my own words, but same.

It was very comprehensive. Thank you for that. it sounds like a lot of accomplishments, which I suppose it is. But at the end of the day, what really matters to me is doing the work and striving to just make as thoughtful a contribution to society as possible through this medium we call design. And when you do this consistently over

like you said, decades. When I look back at that, it's like, Jesus, we have done a lot of work. And that's fulfilling. it's often, it's the work that we're doing now that always excites me, because present moments mean everything in one's life. But yeah, thank you. Thank you. That was great. I don't really have anything to add to that.

Not at all. think a running theme through kind of recording this podcast, and we guess it is like a look back through the career and it's quite cathartic in some ways to kind of back. Quite often people are so fixated in the now and looking forward that they don't take time to reflect. It sounds like you do kind of take stock and you do reflect fairly frequently.

I think it's important to just consider, I think even in every design project, context is so meaningful and historical context means a lot. When looking at innovating for potential clients, you always want to know, what have they done? What are the issues that they have faced? What's worked in the past? What hasn't? What are the competitors doing?

How has culture maybe been formed, partly by whatever they've done in the past? So yeah, think reflection is an important part of the design process.

Absolutely. Well, let's do a little bit more reflection now than down. So I always open the episode with the name of the podcast, Why Design? So how did you get into design? Do you remember the moment where you knew you wanted to be a designer?

yeah, I remember this quite well. A lot of industrial designers have a similar kind of story. you, for example, like when I was a kid, I could draw, I could paint.

And I can see things that maybe my friends couldn't. I also like to make stuff. You know, I made a lot of things like go-karts and mini bikes and attempted to make a helicopter with plywood and lawnmower motors. And I couldn't get off the ground with that, but my go-karts were very fast and dangerous. So by the time I graduated from high school and applied to different design schools,

Did it take off?

I came in with art and an interest in engineering. And that crossover between these two disciplines is industrial design. And then I had my first internship at Richardson Smith, which was the leading firm in the United States at the time. They ended up being purchased by Fitch in the 80s or 90s maybe. I think early 90s. That just...

Right, okay.

ignited something within me that was, to this day, I remember it so well. It was just an absolute, talk about it, catharsis. it just lit me up. was like, man, I can do this. I'm going to be great at it. I love doing it. The act of designing felt natural to me. And from that day on, it was just up, up, up, and go, go, go.

To this day, that passion I feel for my profession remains. And sometimes I feel even more passionate about design than ever. One's passion does not have to wane as you age. It can stay very strong, but it's important to keep finding new sources of inspiration. Keep turning yourself on by finding new ways of viewing the world, people.

how they interact with one another, find your inspiration in new places, always stay awake and alive. yeah, it's really, that's, guess, how I started my career with that foundation.

When you look back over the years, clearly, the passion oozes from you. But what's kept you excited about the craft all these years? And has your why changed in that time?

Has my Y changed? Yeah, it's become more nuanced, a lot more nuanced. I think in the, here's your New York silence.

Yeah, can feel it. This microphone is good.

Yeah, speaking of science, think design, should be a sense of urgency when you are solving problems. I think you have to feel that even sometimes like an emergency, especially when you look at what's happening to the planet and how designers can make an impact, there should be an urgency. And that's related to the why.

You know, I see so many annoying problems in our world. Everybody senses this when you wake up in the morning to when you go to sleep at night. There are annoying little things in our world, right? And a lot of them can be mitigated or even solved with just a different way of thinking about a problem and a solution. In the earlier part of my career, I think I was more focused on

believing that design was primarily about creating beautiful objects that solved a problem and made a statement while they did it. But I think nowadays, my feeling about design has evolved quite a bit. I love the fact that it's now almost as much of an action.

it is a result. It's much more social, it's more collaborative, it's more team-based. You need to take in so many different viewpoints and understand different disciplines in order to actualize your design. Of course, all the tools have changed, right? There was a time when I was dreaming that it would be really cool if you could take your sketch and like somehow magically

send that across the world. And then there was a fax machine and wow, how cool was that? And then we thought, wouldn't it be amazing if you could just take your computer content and actually make a model directly from it, 3D printing. So the tools have changed. It's gotten a lot easier to move faster through a design process. And now, of course, with AI, everything is changing yet again.

Yeah.

can take that sketch and throw it at a computer and it comes up with something that kind of looks like what your imagination had.

Yeah. So, but as those tools changed, a lot of things in design have not changed. The way I feel about design, the way that I interpret ones, the end users, feeling towards brands or how they interact with physical things. There are fundamentals about design that haven't changed. the way that I, the way that I personally,

do design hasn't changed that much. I still like to be, I guess you could say, I like the rudiments of design. I like these moments when you are just being with the problem, you're observing, just silently observing, watching an end user deal with whatever their condition is, and then you as a designer, imagine something else. Imagine an alternative.

and begin to maybe sketch, maybe write a note to yourself about an observation you've made that could be the underpinnings of a new kind of insight about the way to solve a problem.

And I could be anywhere and just get some kind of strange inspiration. I often sketch on airplanes. I don't particularly love flying, so when we just start shaking, I get out my sketchbook and it relaxes me. It's a go-to. That's what I by the rudiments of design, just getting to the...

Like the real source. don't get, I try not to get too carried away with too much technology. I think that can, that can sidetrack your, your thinking. Just staying very real with what design can offer and the way that you go about solving the design problem. I think you have to be very, just very grounded, very real and never lose your sense of wonder.

and curiosity. That's all related to being inspired and when you are in this inspired state is when you're going to be doing your best work. That's when you're graduating.

So there you go.

That's wonderful.

And by the way, when you are in that state of inspiration, to be able to extend that to others, to be so open with your whatever your whatever your inspired state is, however you express it, whatever your own personal, like inspiration medium is, I think it's important to socialize that.

because you can't do it all yourself. are people that have to help. And that's how design has changed, I think, as well. There's just more people involved. It's more complex in so many different ways. Marketing is involved more in engineering. point being that the enthusiasm, I have found that even my own enthusiasm for design, when you openly share it,

Absolutely.

It's infectious. And I love it when I see a relatively stale engineering group at a client that doesn't really, they're not that excited about their product or whatever. To watch what happens when you can inspire them with a vision, it's really extraordinary.

Yeah, absolutely. And it is infectious, isn't it, being in that kind of place and the questions that are asked and the thoughtfulness that's kind of inspired by those questions and the problem solving. I was telling you earlier, I spent some time with Sprout Studios in Boston last week. And.

that was a luck enough or privilege to be invited into a kickoff meeting with one of their clients. And that was fascinating to be, I wouldn't even say a fly on the wall because they actively involved me in the discussion. The client was at the table, we had some of the team dialing in remotely and we're talking about this rebranding exercise. I obviously won't go into the details but.

You know, it was a food based company. So they bought some samples of the food and we're talking about packaging and you even as a non designer, you know, being at that table, you can't help but like, just get sucked in and ask questions. you know, and it felt in some small kind of way I contributed as well, like, because it was infectious and it felt

it didn't feel like, who's this outsider kind of the non-designer asking questions. It's like, it's just another person observing, you know. So I think I've heard that from other, sometimes when you bring in the non-designers, like the IT or the marketing, you know, all the engineers, you know, to get their viewpoint, it stops you getting, you know, just going the way, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I think, I think viewpoints are very interesting. mean, it's one of the things about just research. Everybody has an opinion, especially about food and food packaging. We, we grow up with these experiences. So one's opinions really matter. I think it's up to the designers to have the listening skills and the observation skills to actually make something better of it. And I mean, that's the key.

think one of the keys to design is to just be a really good listener. Just, you know, there's nothing worse in my opinion than a designer that says, you know, I know the best way forward. This is what's best for you. And it's one thing if they're right all the time, but usually you're not. You have to fail a lot. think, you know, somebody recently asked me, well, you know, what, have you guys failed? Can you talk about failure?

and your process, you know? I'm like, man, every single project we fail. If you look at what we produce on one project through experimentation, through concept development, we may look at, oh, 30 or 40 different alternative solutions. Well, guess what? 99 % of them fail. One of them goes to market.

But the other, the failures are what help to guide you to the right solution. And it's not because we are paid to just experiment and just try a bunch of different things. You have to learn from these trials and errors. And you find your edge conditions, whether that is too big, too small, too expensive, not expensive enough. And all these different criteria you have to weigh and measure.

and learn from. Sometimes we like to show clients a solution to demonstrate what they should not do. And then they might even file IP for it, just so they've got a defensive portfolio as they enter a market. But if you get back to your question, has the why changed?

I think for me, the why has become more important because the world needs design more now than ever. When I look at the mess that this world is in, the list is long, and we all know what they are, the climate change, the ridiculous politics, economies that don't really work.

A misunderstanding about how products are made, where they should be made, how they're designed. There's just misunderstanding everywhere. And I think a lack of general consumer fulfillment. see a lot of unhappy people. Also the over consumer, the consumerism that I see in our world, it's just the way that people are consuming.

design products is kind of alarming to me, the way that they will buy a design, use it for a month or two, and then it's discarded, or it's put in a shelf, and then they get another one. It's like, where's the meaning in that? I think the why, why do this, it's like, I'm even more dedicated to helping companies.

produce products that really do make a difference. And that are as timeless as possible, that are as smart as possible, whether that is, you know, it's the way something is made with the least amount of energy or better material, but do something good. I mean, I think there's more of an urgency now to do good things than ever. And I think the world is in a place now where

the type of sensitivities or compassion.

that designers bring forward kind of naturally. Designers are normally very good at feeling a sense of empathy about people. That's often why some industrial designers are industrial designers, because they want to help people in some way. They want to improve lives. I feel that way. And it's not just being over altruistic. It's really a

such a joy when you can actually create something of meaning that is benefiting people in so many different ways. But point being, the world needs more of that now, more than ever.

Yeah, we could all do better by being more empathetic. And it's certainly a theme that, you know, was, talked about a lot last night at the DMI event I went to at Lixle. you know, we talk about data bias and, you know, designing to outdated standards that haven't been updated in decades, but, you know, the overarching theme was designers want to do better. They're empathetic.

want to make the world a better place through great design, whether it be physical or digital, they were experienced design. So, wonderful. Let's talk about Whipsaw. So, earlier on in your career, you led teams at Frog, you worked under Dreyfus and Nelson, and then started Whipsaw in 99, I think. But before we get into the launch of Whipsaw,

What were the kind of, if you can think back to some of the pivotal moments or defining moments of your time at Frog and with Drophis Nelson, you know, that you think back on it. yeah, like I say, we're pivotal to then you starting Whipsaw.

You know, I have had a pretty amazing career, and I've been very lucky in the people that I've been able to meet and work with. So I think, let's see, the most pivotal. Well, one was that first relationship I built with actually the founder of Richardson Smith, Dean Richardson. You know, I was just a kid. My God, I was 19 years old when I my first internship.

And he just, he, he liked me and I liked him and I watched how he was able to sell design. I'd watch him give a pitch. was like, my God, he is so, take up so good. And he actually took me down to this meeting at NCR national cash register. drove the truck full of hard models down to this meeting in Florida. And before.

the meeting, he came up to me. And by the way, I was the only designer he took down there. Now I worked on the projects, but I still to this day, I don't understand, like, why did he take the intern with him? And it wasn't just to carry his models, although I did carry the models. But he whispered to me, goes, all the engineers at NCR pretty much hate us right now, but watch what I'm going to do.

And I was super curious. I met dinner with him, my boss, and all these engineers from NCR. And I watched him take kind of an aggravated team of engineers that didn't want to produce this stuff. They weren't into the design. They weren't really listening. maybe they thought it was just too much trouble. And the way that he turned the situation around, just using

you know, his skills is very persuasive skills and talking about why this design solution was going to be good for them and why it's not going to be so difficult to engineer. And he knew his stuff. was. I was an inspiration. I'd say that was impactful. Working with George Nelson was impactful in that he kind of shocked me in his real world.

He was pretty negative about society and clients. He was at the end of his career. He was kind of tired of doing this. And he just alarmed me to say, yes, I like your passion, Dan, but look at all the crap. Literally, used that word. We were standing in...

and the bathroom and the floor were overlooking Gramercy Park on the 18th floor. And he'd look at the city, look at all this crap, look at the pollution we're making, look at all the junk that's being sold at Bloomingdale's and Macy's. I was like, wait a minute, I thought you were an industrial designer. So I was taken aback by his almost acerbic kind of attitude about the world.

cynicism.

But it was a good impact. It was a good thing for me to hear. It was a really good thing for me to hear. Dreyfus was, I learned so much about how to build a business or simply by learning how to write proposals, how to strategize a design program and then present to major companies like Polaroid, AT &T, John Deere. These are great clients.

Yeah.

It was just me being thrown into the world of consulting. I was able to build a great portfolio there and then join Frog where it was just like getting in a high-speed elevator. Just incredible experiences from day one. Just, bam, you're going to be working with Steve Jobs and the founder of Logitech, the founder of Sun, and make it all happen. And it was just a...

Talk about an impact, my God, was just, it was so exciting. Prior to founding Whipsaw, that was the most exciting job I've ever had. It helped to form who I am, that philosophy at Frog that was so design forward. They had a kind of a company ethos that became well known and that was kind of,

gutsy design, gutsy business practices where they were being very convincing even to the point of being pushy, big budgets, very much around the, and the budgets being built around the value of design and being very convincing about that. And ultimately,

world-changing solutions. So that was an inspiration. It was kind of like, you know, I kept getting green lights there. You know, I'd be like, what if we tried this crazy idea? Yep, why not? What if we asked for X millions of dollars for doing this kind of design? Sure, Dan, go for it. You know, it was just, it was gutsy. you know, that was Hartmut Eslinger. That was working with him was that way.

Did they ever say no to your ideas? Did they ever say no to anything radical that you asked for?

I recently did a... What's that?

Well, mean, sure, clients would often say no, but we were, I think we were given maybe a little more carte blanche than we deserved at times, partly because Frog was getting a name for being like, if you're going to go that firm, you're going to be getting something exciting or pretty extraordinary. There was an expectation there. So, you know, when you've got a client that comes in with expectations,

Yeah.

is how they work.

Yeah.

than your, we got more yeses than we got nos.

Yeah, sounds like you weren't, but as a, as a consultant in, that agency, you were empowered to ask questions and go for it. Whereas I think what we're to see with a lot of smaller, less confident agencies and professional services is that they kind of think they can often fall into the trap of like limiting beliefs and, no, we can't ask that. Or we can't ask for that much because, you know, the client was saying no, you know, but

What's the worst that can happen? They'll say no and you know, that's fine. Yeah.

And that's pretty much my attitude even to this day. think that's why I just kind of like fit right into Frog. As soon as I got there, was like, yeah, this is the firm for me. It felt very right in many different ways. that's what you want is you build a design career. You want to feel like you are

being listened to, that you're able to fully actualize on your design visions. That's what designers want in almost every job. You want to be able to actualize on your vision. And designers hate being told, that won't work, or that's not attractive, or that's not possible.

Man, you tell me, even today, tell me that's not possible. Really? I'll show you. That fires me up. Because it should. That's like, that's the beat of creativity. That's what it's all about. Like, otherwise, why innovate? Why say that you innovate if you're not really going to innovate? Too many designers and corporations like to talk about innovation, but they don't really do it.

Ha

It's just iterating. Yeah.

That's one of the beautiful things about being an independent consultant. It's like we, we can be a little crazy. We can be really brave. We can propose the nuttiest ideas. Of course, they're not, you know, a lot of times they're backed up with research and lots of reasoning and rationale, but we're not afraid to try something really different, really new. And especially if it's called for.

And I've found in my career that if you're just very genuine and knowledgeable and there's lots of content behind your, maybe it's even wild innovation, your client will listen. But it has to be backed up. It can't just be raw confidence. But if you have all of that competence and you join it with confidence, man, you can move mountains.

as a consultant.

Massively. Yeah. I think, you know, I've this conversation a few times this week as well. If you kind of, you know, you shoot for the stars or you propose something that is so radical or so wild, the client might not take on the first idea, but where you end up is still a way past where their comfort zone might have been. And you end up with something that's still kind of revolutionary, but not as radical as, you know, as the client. And you kind of stretch in those.

short.

stretching those boundaries, stretching the innovation. It's like with concept cars, they'll never be made. They look cool, but then some of those features end up in production cars. And I love that. I think it's really interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes, very true. creates pull. The crazier idea is that it pulls, it lifts, it attracts through its inspiration. that lifting effect that it has does bring up maybe the right solution into it and even a better place.

Yeah. So you were at Frog for about 10 years, I think, before setting up Whipso. So what prompted the move to start your own studio after all that time, and how did that come about?

Yeah, exactly 10 years.

Oh, you know what? That feeling of wanting my own firm I had had for a long time. It was a feeling I had when I was in design school. I like, I'm going to eventually have my own firm. But I suppose I could have started a firm earlier, but I really felt like I wanted to see what the world was about, the world of design, to work with other great designers.

just really learn. I want to just really learn and build my craft. I just had so much fun at Frog that, you know, 10 years just kind of seemed to fly by. But, you know, Frog was evolving. Frog, at that time in the late 90s, Frog was moving much more toward digital. They were doing more work called, we were calling it new media at the time. That new media was technology, designing websites. Apps weren't even a thing yet.

Yeah.

but designing products that were driven by the internet mostly and software. So that at that time just wasn't my interest. I have always felt that, well, industrial design is my first, my love and frog was changing. It was growing. was becoming a little bit more.

I don't know. It got to the point, you know, it was interesting when I first joined. In California, Frog had maybe, gosh, we were small, 15 people.

And I mean, it was an absolute rush, because of our success, we just started to grow. The team started to break up a little bit. It was harder to manage everybody. And it lost some of its mojo, felt. But the change ended up, I think, in the end, I

depends on whose viewpoint it is, but they grew, they moved in a different direction and they're thriving now. I think they're still doing well. And it's an amazing brand. I still have a very good relationship with Hartman and Patricia.

Yes.

back then what they've done and I just did a podcast interviewing Hartman. He doesn't grant interviews very often. I basically just gave him the microphone to talk about things that he cares about. He cares about a lot of different things and yeah I was really happy that he did that for us.

What's the podcast called? Prism. I'll make sure people check that out. That came up actually, one of my podcast guests this week mentioned it. I was trying to find it, but he couldn't recall the name. So it's definitely going on my listening list.

Prism. Yeah.

I've interviewed some really interesting people. I don't do this like you do, right? So I'm not as consistent with doing Prism, but my PR group wanted me to do this starting during the pandemic. She was like, you know, Dan, we're to just get you out there and talk to these different people. So I have enjoyed it. There's some great guests. And you can find it on Spotify at Prism.

Like a glass prism, my intention is to expose one's inner color, people that I talk to.

I like that. Yeah.

That's awesome. So in terms of Whipsaw then, so you've been going quite some time now haven't you? How did you celebrate the 25th?

26 years.

Now what?

How did you celebrate your 25th year? imagine that was a quarter of a century.

We had a blowout party. was really wonderful. I had some clients talk. We had some amazing people. It was at our studio. It was a real celebration.

Yeah.

So you were talking before we clicked record about the space that you've got in the studio. Perhaps you could give us a verbal run through of this, tell us the story about the space you have there.

Yeah, so we're in the area of San Francisco called Portrero Hill. And it's kind of a design district. a lot of different furniture stores around there. So when I got the company started, we wanted to be more in the southern part of Silicon Valley, because there weren't many design firms down there. But there were a lot of clients down there. So in the early days, we had like

you know, Cisco, Extreme Networks, Creative Labs, a division of General Dynamics that were making computers. And they were all down south. So it served us well to be in San Jose. And we all thought that San Jose would flourish, but it didn't. It's still kind of just good old San Jose. So we opened an office in San Francisco about eight, yeah, was about eight years ago, pre-pandemic. We had this really cool

kind of very industrial space that was a ball bearing factory during World War II. But during the pandemic, both of those studios were empty. So we decided to close those two and then find one grand space, the ultimate design space. We did not want to compromise after the pandemic. So we wanted it to be easy to get to.

Okay.

from the south, from the north, in this cultural hub of San Francisco. We wanted our own freestanding building with a parking lot, which is a problem in San Francisco, and a garden, because it's California, with lots of lights and a lot of space that we could create our own little micro-environments within.

So we found it and we now have a wonderful studio. Everybody loves coming here. It's very high ceilings and tons of light in the right location. We have different zones, little work zones that you can go and be very much by yourself. Or there's some areas that feel even more cozy than maybe your own living room or family room.

You

And it's super collaborative. Sometimes it gets noisy, but that's OK. We kind of like this noise. So it's worked out really well. It seems to be kind of one of the design centers of San Francisco now. And we're very giving in how we share the space. We have all kinds of events and parties and different organizations asked to be.

awesome.

asked to use our studio to host their special events. We always try to relate it to the design world in some way, but we feel like, especially after the pandemic, when a lot of that design mojo in the community in San Francisco kind of started to wane, we wanted to bring that back. So we have great events, and that's great. We even have concerts.

Awesome.

We invite, we have musical concerts that go on in cyberspace, which is really, really cool.

any bands that listeners might recognize.

Probably not. These are all indie bands. We give young musicians opportunities to get an audience. It's really fun. Really fun. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That sounds cool. I was at Boston Dynamics last week. One of my contacts has recently started there, and he gave me the tour. in their town hall space, where they're canteen and breakout spaces, they've got a stage as well. And they've got a few kind of Boston Dynamics bands that rehearse and do shows for the staff. I just think I love that. As a musician myself, it's like, that's cool.

yeah, that's great.

That's certainly given me something to think about for my 10-year plan with Kodoo and Y-Design. It's like, hmm, house band maybe, yeah. I do, play guitar. I've been in bands for years, but I recently joined a, say recently, about 18 months ago, joined a New Wave band, kind of very 80s kind of inspired.

Neat. Yeah, cool. Do you play?

and I used to play kind of rhythm guitar and I was a front man in my previous bands but this one I've just joined as a secondary guitarist and synth player and I love it. I love just the vibe and just contributing to the whole and the theme music for the podcast is actually instrumental from our first single so there's a blatant plug there if anyone wants to check out Glass Ghosts.

how fun!

Yeah, it's good fun. I love it. It's very different to the kind of music that I used to do like indie rock, kind of radio friendly music. I'm a big fan of Green Day and Weezer and bands like that. But this is very much different, very synth heavy, very kind of intricate guitar, a bit like The Cure and bands like that.

Okay, yeah, sure.

Alright.

I just love it. It's good fun just flexing the creative muscles. That's my creative outlet.

I think it's important if everybody had a creative outlet. You would think that I would get enough creative outlets with what I do for a living, but I also play the guitar and try to write songs. You I really do enjoy that, especially writing melodies. I like acoustic guitars. I've got a whole bunch of those. And then I also paint. Yeah, it's a really great outlet.

Yeah.

You

where I don't have to listen to any client except my own inner soul.

It's just play, isn't it? It's just, you know, I write my own music and I don't do it as much as I would like, but like recently, you know, I like kind of learning new bits of theory and like I watch a lot of YouTube videos and kind of people write in songs and then I'll kind of like, how could I use that bit of theory or that technique and then start playing around with it. And then before, know, the structure of a song's come out and then

then I'll take a day off and go and do my stuff and I'll be thinking about how the song could come together and I'll go back to it and I finish it off and yeah it's really really satisfying.

Okay, so you are experiencing a lot of what designers experience when you are writing songs. a little bit like the design process I have found. And, you know, it's a lot about preconceptions. You're thinking about something, you might have a notion, a feeling that you might want to bring forward. You might not be able to identify it. It might just be kind of a...

Yeah.

some inner kind of yearning about something. And I love that particular moment when you don't really know what you're going to be doing with your design or your song. You just feel something. You feel this need and your intuition tells you to move forward and start experimenting. And you play certain notes or chords and

start building combinations the same way that when you're sketching or building your CAD file, you're experimenting. And at each step, there are effects that you are producing. is this result, the thing that you are actually creating is making you feel something.

Yeah.

And there is an urgency in that. We're talking about urgency. I think it's really important to answer a creative call with urgency, especially when you feel it. A lot of songwriters feel that. They can't stop. They can't sleep. They won't eat until it's there. And I get that way when I'm solving a design problem. I get very

Yeah.

overtaken by it in a lot of ways. It's almost obsessive.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's not something you can just switch on either. You when I've tried to force sit down and I've got to write a song, it's like, it's, it's really feels really like work. But when something inspires you, it's quite often I have a, like a lyric running through my head in the shower, or when I'm driving, and then I have to record it like on my phone. then, then that's the start, that's the seed then. And then then you start playing.

Yeah.

And like a few weekends ago, I was playing around with this song and it was getting quite heavy, you know, in terms of the overdriven guitar at the core of the song. And it was kind of palm muting. It was kind of a bit punky. And it was fun, but I couldn't see where it was going to go. I couldn't hear it in my head. I couldn't hear a melody kind of forming. And then I went out for the next day with my fiance.

And I just, when I was driving, I thought, what if I just take the kind of the chugging kind of the palm of your guitar and swap it for synth?

What if I just make the bass line a lot simpler? So that's what I did when I got home. I just went straight on it. So exact same chords, but I played them on the synth and then sought the bass out. I thought, I wonder what happens if I a disco beat on it instead of a rock beat. I I've got this really catchy kind of disco kind of indie disco song. Still got guitar in it on either side, but the synth at the core. it's like completely different vibe. And then it was just then like the next few hours I just finished the song off.

There you go, design.

like really really satisfying. Yes I'd love it.

Yeah, is the satisfaction one gets from that process. The same in design. It is truly a...

One of the best parts of being alive create when you're creating What you said about you know, like maybe sometimes something strikes you in the shower the good old proverbial light bulb going off You know when you're sitting on the toilet, you know There's a lot of truth in that I think it's important to be able to like freeze those moments

Yeah.

Yeah.

But there's also another side, the other side of design, which is just sides to everything, and that relates even to the word whipsaw, this two-handled, two-person saw, which balances the kind of like these more romantic and classical or art and science. There's also this, the more disciplined scientific side of design, which you can sit down and say,

From 3 o'clock to 5 o'clock, I'm going to solve a particular problem. There is design rigor. And you need to sit down and just figure stuff out by just using good reasoning and understanding about functionality and taking the time to detail things right. A lot of designers

think maybe it's just about, or people that maybe don't know that much about the design process, think, well, all the designers are just these talented guys, and they sit down, and they draw this thing out, and they get paid too much money for just having this, they're born with this gift. It's really not that way. mean, there are some things you're more intuitive about than maybe most people when it comes to solving problems.

But it's also the detailing. It's the hard work of trial and error and working out the nuts and bolts of problems. At least if you're doing industrial design, there is a lot of hard work to be done on almost every product to make sure that it will function for a long period of time, that it will be durable, it will last, it will be efficient from the moment it is manufactured.

So yeah, there's that side too, which is also very satisfying because then you know you've done, when you do that right, that feels good too. It's not just that moment of creation, that fleeting moment of creation.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I think a lot of people mistake rigor and process for lack of creativity. actually, it's just creating structure and making sure you're not missing anything out. But it still leaves you loads of space to daydream and think of it.

you got it. And these creative elements must always remain interwoven. When you're solving the problems, when you are going through the more pragmatic side of solving a problem, always weave in, what else can I do? Has anybody tried it like this before? What if I use this material? Let's try that.

always be creative. You can be creative with the design of a bolt. mean, no matter what, find it like creativity has no limits. That's what's misunderstood about creativity. Some people think it's something you turn on and off when you need it. But to me, creativity is more a way of life. It's the way you view the world. And I think

If more people would consider just creativity in general and weave it into like everything that you do, I think that would make us all better parents, better people.

Just solve your own problems in ways other than just getting on Amazon and buying a little doodad. Because so many things that are conceived by designers and engineers, they're not really necessary. I mean, let's face it, there's a lot of dubious products out there. like, wait a minute, what? What kind of peeler? Come on. Just get a good knife and.

Yeah.

Enjoy the process because everybody's gotten so darn lazy. think just engagement in one's present moment, engagement with the objects that we surround ourselves with, more engagement with the people that you like or love in your life. And when industrial designers can respect those very precious moments like that.

Absolutely.

then they're gifting. You're not just creating things for commerce, you're creating things for gifting. That's a different frame of mind, a very important one, I think. And we all know what that means. It might be that, people say, like, well, how many friends do you really have? And you count them on one hand.

talking about.

You can say the same about maybe your favorite products in your own life that industrial designers have created. You know, think about how many products you have in your life. If you counted them up, it's crazy. It's ridiculous. There was a book that came out about 15 years ago, forget the name of this book, but they asked families around the world to bring, this photographer asked families to bring everything that they own and put it in their front yard.

every piece of furniture, every single book, toaster, every single thing that you own, your car, put it in your front yard. And then he took pictures of this. I gotta find this book. It's very cool. Now, of course, the American front yards were just chopped full. was all, psst, you shit, you know. And it was really fascinating to see these different cultures and what they actually had in their front yard. Like, compare the, you know, like Americans to,

Yeah.

Swiss to Vietnamese to Uzbekistan. Like everything changed. The objects, the type of objects, the colors and the materials, it all changed. It kind of set it all, right? But at the end of the day, the things that really matter to you, those maybe, again, that single hand full of...

Yeah.

Products you can probably bring down like what your like five friends You can probably very easily say well these products These are the five things that I really enjoy the most it might be the simplest of thing it might it might not be a simple thing it might be your car and If you really think about like why do I really like these things well they They say something about your own identity

you feel an intrinsic attraction to something, often because of the way it looks or the way it's made, the sounds that it makes, the pleasure it gives you when actually using it, especially when the design, during the use of that product, the design itself, the more traditional definition of design, maybe the way it looks, kind of

is no longer important. Like I'm sitting in this air on chair right now. I don't think I'm like, I don't care what it looks like. It's comfortable. It's all I care about, right? At that moment of use. Well, these are the things that create this connection that I'm talking about. And you realize, one realizes quickly that man, you really just don't need that many things in your world to make you happy.

good.

It's not just about these things. And I think it's important for industrial designers to be very aware of these facts when you're designing anything, anything. To build in those values of goodness that are lasting, that are really meaningful, that provide the kind of like prominent connections.

that end up being deserving of being one of those five things.

Yeah. Maybe put you on the spot here, but, you know, your catalog of products that you've developed over the decades, you know, is quite extensive, quite really, really impressive. Could you kind of, there any, are there a top five, you know, projects that you look back on or indeed kind of products that you interact with, your chair, like you just said, you know, that make it into the top five?

Sure, yeah, you are putting me on the spot because I to represent all my clients. Yeah. Wow, let's see. Well, okay, let's start with the chair. really, a few years ago, just decided to design something without technology. I wanted to just use hardwoods and design a beautiful chair that was made in a very different way.

Well, that's yeah, I imagine that's a fairly contentious question.

and I call it Scrola. We manufacture and sell these. It's a lounge chair. It comes in a teak and walnut and oak. It's comfortable. It's very unique in its appearance. That has these kind of like timeless qualities that I was just talking about. I live with it.

And we have them in our office as well. So it has those qualities. A lot of people have enjoyed the tonal strength training system that we help to invent and define. Mostly because it was like,

That's kind of like the opposite of scrolling. This uses technology. This uses an electric motor instead of weights to provide resistance. And there's software that's controlling that electric motor. So when you're working out with it, you are, it's like driving an electric car, for example, you know, it's very smooth. You're pulling against a motor and it's because it's software controlled. can do all kinds of these remarkable things. It can spot you. can increase.

Okay.

Okay.

the resistance pressure when your muscles are being extended out, not only being compressed, but extended out, and that's where you have more gain in a workout. So for a lot of these reasons, and the way that that all came together and it bolts onto your wall, I like that one. I think that's a good example of that.

I like working on these housewares products. We did like the Brita Stream, the Ouala bottle, which I mentioned, and the Adiri baby bottles. And those all kind of, that would be, I would collectively put those together as like the way that we consume liquid, whether it's a baby or an adult. We gave that a lot of thought and created.

Yeah.

unique solutions that make people very happy and it helps with one's hydration and general nutrition. Gosh, you all the recent things are on my mind. So like doing the first robotic massage system for escape, spelled A-E, escape was

A feat of design and engineering to say the least. mean, you lay down on this thing and you think at first, my God, it's a robot giving me a massage. It's wonderful. It's wonderful. It's smooth. It's it's repeatable. You don't have small talk with it. It will never sneeze on you. It's and it's cool. mean, if you like technology, boy, you know, you'd love this thing. And we designed it with.

Really.

Hehehehehe

gosh, kind of the opposite of what you'd think. It's not overly teched out. It has this brown leather and it's faux leather and it looks like Italian furniture. It's a multi-sensory drop-in experience where you are just taken away to a different world. It's pretty lovely.

Okay, yeah.

Ancient ritual sauna is like that too. It's the solitary sauna that we designed and it has this. Well, it's, you know, this whole wellness category is expanding. I'm happy about that. We designed it during the pandemic and when we were really all seeking

meaning in our products and questioning what does quality of life mean? What does quality of product mean? And we just wanted to create an other worldly experience for someone. You know, it was a sauna, but it's also a bit of a light experience. It's super comfortable. It like a lounge chair inside it. It almost feels like you're

like on the equator because it's the heat, but while you're looking at the northern lights because there's like this beautiful like cascade of lights on the walls of this thing. And it's for one person, it's small. It's like you're in a little chamber. But because we built in this light horizon, it feels like you're sitting in this vast plain. No, not at all, not at all.

Okay, so humid, yeah.

Hehehe

Cool. Yeah.

Yeah.

So doesn't feel claustrophobic then.

You know, every project has been just, they're all so much fun to work on. Chris, you know, where I like to call out five of them, I don't even know, I'm seeing them now I'm rolling on and on here. They're just, I had fun designing this piano recently called Ravencourt. It's an all acoustic piano. And it was just.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

Hahaha

Literally, it was inspired by me listening to some classical music and visualizing every instrument in the orchestra while I was listening and realizing that the piano is maybe the ugliest instrument.

Because unlike a harp that very much exposes the way it works and therefore makes a contribution to how you feel about the music, or even a timpani drum or violin or an oboe, you see how it works. And then you look at the piano and you look at this black box, all the cool stuff, you can't see it.

Yeah.

And then there's this big apology. Oh, we have to open the lid because the sound is going up and down. So we put this lid on there. So the sound has to bounce off of that. That didn't make any sense to me. So anyway, that was the inspiration for us listening to this on a flight, actually. And started to sketch and created Ravencourt like on the spot. And that's what I meant about like when creative inspiration hits you, have to answer. It's like you were doing in the shower with your song.

So I mean, these are some of the things that have meaning to me.

That's awesome.

And when you think back over your career, whether it's products or people or anything else, what have you learned about running a studio that you wish you'd known early on?

Are you ready to answer that question? Because I have to run to the restroom really quick. edit this out. It's not a blooper. I want to answer that question thoughtfully. if you can, I'm going to put you on pause for just a minute before I pee my pants. Yeah, do it.

Okay, I can. Yeah.

Cool. I'll do the same. Yeah, that's a good, there you go. I'll see you shortly.

Okay, we can see whose bladder was the fullest.

Good time, just realized I've still got my lapel mic on so I'm definitely gonna mark that. Jeannie, make sure you delete it. The last minute and a half. So I've got about 15 minutes before I need to trek across the city but I want to ask you about... Where's the questions gone?

Gosh, yeah, that's really good.

just dived away. but yeah, in terms of, you know, lessons learned over the years, you know, in the 30 plus years, you've been in the industry, you know, and looking back, anything you would, you know, had, having a time again, what you would kind of advise? Let me start that again, because I literally had the question written out and lost it.

So yeah, start again. What have you learned about running a studio over the last 30 so years that you wish you'd known early on? Stuff you'd share with your younger self if you had a time machine.

Yeah, well, I'm getting weird.

Roll.

there you go.

That's my foot. How's that?

Yeah, there we go. All right, you're to have ask it again if you can have a smooth.

Let me just check.

Yeah, okay. Apologies about that. So, yeah, what have you learned about running the studio that you'd wish you'd known early on?

Well, know, prior to founding Whipsaw, I had some really great experiences. So I had learned a lot, which I suppose is a real benefit, not only with, you know, having met a lot of people that would soon become my clients, but, you know, I had learned a lot of the mistakes.

the potential mistakes already. So I don't really have any like, you know, big aha, like revelations now about what I would have done different in the beginning. I think I so I don't have any regrets. I've always stayed true to what I believe in and focused on doing the best work.

we knew how to do and made sure that the team that I was building, we had this shared purpose while we were all very different. And I love working with different kinds of designers that always gives us more depth, like hiring people from all around the world.

I think where some firms go wrong is they think maybe they want to start a design firm so that they can make more money because they now have more control or they feel like they want to have more variety but then they might get overwhelmed with what actually happens when you have that much variety. You can lose your focus if you're not careful.

But I was kind of already aware of that when founding WipSlaw, when really getting into it, I kind of knew what I wanted to do. that's, suppose, why I don't have any... So what advice would I give? I think the advice that I would give myself maybe applies more to when I was 20, 25 years old. When I had a vision that was maybe more individualistic.

Yeah.

I was recently asked what kind of inspiration that I have early on and I answered by saying, well, I remember reading the fountainhead and the main character, Howard Roark, this very individualistic and uncompromising young architect. He was doing everything by himself and I realized

The advice I would have given myself is expand your horizon. Realize that there are so many people that you're going to enjoy working with that are going to be better at some things than you. And you will have so much more influence in the world the way that you want when you open your arms to the way other people think as well.

I think that's really important advice. When you realize that design, especially if you want to do thoughtful industrial design that gets mass produced, that goes out into the world and really does influence lives in a good way, if you really want to do that, you have to start thinking about collaboration and people and...

How can you not just be inspired, but to inspire others? Like learn how to inspire others. And always stay very, very true to your beliefs. You don't have to sell out. Don't sell out. A lot of musicians sell out. I don't know what happens to so many musicians. Yeah, they do this amazing work when

And then you listen to them now, and man, you just haven't produced a hit in a long time.

But design certainly doesn't have to be that way.

What else, what other facets of that question would you like to talk about?

We have a lot of young designers and engineers listen to the podcast. We have lot of young entrepreneurs, suppose, studio leaders or design leaders within in-house teams that...

If you had any advice for those listening, that might be inspirational for them. You might have benefited from earlier on in your career. It doesn't have to be massive, but just that one thing that you found has been most important to you.

Sure.

Dan Harden (01:14:14.316)

Yeah, there's a lot of things we could talk about. Yeah, in that regard. So I'll hit upon a couple of ones that I think really are most meaningful to me. One is to trust your instincts as a designer. There really are too many external influences. They're around us all the time.

Yeah.

I think you need to stay insanely curious about the world around you, almost with like childlike wonder. I always let the kind of like the strange idiosyncratic things inspire me. I think there's gold in there. I don't like to become too cynical.

It usually doesn't help you as a designer to become too cynical or even complacent about creativity. I think it's important to always look beyond yourself, to go beyond. It's super important to not think that there's a formula in design. There is no formula.

Maybe you have a process that you can connect with and you're good at, and it works for you, but don't become formulaic about it. Basically, in short, I think you have to always cultivate your inspiration. And it doesn't matter where you get it from. For me, just walking around an old Italian village inspires me.

And it's the design thing that ignites me. doesn't have to be a... I don't look at other industrial designers' work and get overly inspired sometimes. Sometimes I do, of course. There's a great design that's happening around the world. I think you have to have a... almost a gritty determination to be a good designer. You have to be able to go very, very deep into your solution. You've heard the...

You know, God and the devil are in the details and I've definitely found that to be true. I've experienced the greatest joys of discovery. I've also experienced agony, trying to solve certain design problems that were resisting almost every attempt. But you can never give up.

Absolutely,

Too many designers will be satisfied like, okay, I think it's there. think our, they call it plan a record, poor.

Sometimes people say, well, the plan of record is good enough. The POR, we're there. And I just have this, I don't know, I just want to tell some designers and even clients, like, no, we're not there yet. It can be better. I can't tell you so many enough about how many things that we have created that I've been involved in where we just took it another step and then another step.

Yeah.

That's what I mean by gritty determination. Another piece of advice for designers is to be more clear. Designers are being creative people. Sometimes they're pretty wishy-washy. think clarity in general is very important. I'm talking about communication, verbal communication. Having a clear idea of your concept. It's OK to have a blurry

idea of your concept in the beginning, but bring clarity to it. That's part of what design is about. You are establishing clarity. Find a very clear purpose.

Make sure that there is clarity and meaning in what you're doing. And then, especially as creative people that are all right-brainers, learn a new communication modality that left-brainers understand. Because a lot of times your client is going to be a left-brainer, whether it's a CEO of a company, maybe an engineering team, maybe the marketing team, but they're going to want like,

Lots of linear thinking, there's an expectation for that. As a designer, you don't think that way. Lots of times you're scatterbrained. I can tell you that because I'm You know, I'm speaking from experience. But I have learned that I can take some of these very nonlinear, very fragmented ideas, you funnel it.

and make a statement about what you're trying to do with such clarity that people understand it. That's a lot of the success that I have had is a lot of that. It's the communication of what we're actually trying to do as a design team and why and placing it in terms that bean counters can understand.

and engineers can understand and respect. Learning to speak their language. It's like learning other languages and you have to do it if you want to, especially as a consultant.

Yeah, absolutely. you've got the you could have the best product or solution in the world, but if the story isn't in the right language or the right medium for the audience, it just it's not going to get through. It's. Yeah.

Yeah. And then lastly, think it's important to kind of take yourself as a creator kind of out of your own frame of mind. In other words, try to, when you're solving a design problem, especially, I find it's helpful to sort of just diminish the self and

It allows you to watch and listen to your subject with almost like a meditative awareness. And if you're not thinking about yourself, what you're trying to achieve, blending in your own ego into, know, what are people going to expect that I'm going to produce to remove all that crap.

focus on the subject. And the subject is the problem, it's the context of the problem, and it's the user. Like, what are they feeling? What are they going through? And then through this diminishment of the self, you start to internalize your subject a lot faster and more naturally. You're removing all that other stuff.

And so all of a sudden you realize these truths that you've been seeking are suddenly presented to you like opportunities and they bubble up and then just sort of pop in your imagination. You're like, we could do that.

And I think that's really important. And I think design is all, you you're seeking transcendence. That's what you're after. You're trying to create. Yes, you're trying to create like successful products, right? That's, you know, like go back to Raymond Loewy's time during the Depression. They were hiring Raymond saying, help us sell more refrigerators and pencil sharpeners and trains, you know, OK, I'm going to make them more beautiful.

I don't really agree with that. mean, yes, there is commerce. You're helping economies doing what you're doing. You're fueling this construct we call capitalism and consumerism with really good design. But to me, design goes way beyond that. Design is, I think it's more defined than that. I think you should be seeking transcendence in what you're doing, even if it's a little

It's a little thing. We did the tile line of trackers. And just that little thing, that little piece of electronic. We were seeking transcendence in that little thing. And so when you really look at that thing, put that in your hand, this newest generation that we just did. it's just a lovely little thing. And think about it. It's in your pocket. It's on all your most valued objects. That's where its context of use is.

So we felt it kind of deserved transcendence or something, know, something important, something good. So anyway, these are, hope these are some pointers that your listeners can make use of because to me, these are a lot of the things that make a difference.

Yeah, something kind of functional doesn't mean it can't be beautiful.

Yeah, massive. You know,

throughout our conversation today, there's going to be so much that people can take away and reflect on and action in their careers and in their businesses. So yeah, that's really useful. We're rapidly running out of time, Dan. I could sit and talk to you for hours. And you did warn me that this would happen when we prep. But I think I'd just like to round it off by asking you kind of

Ha ha ha!

What are you most excited about for the year ahead for Whipsaw or for the industry? Yeah, perhaps you could give us some insight into the future.

Yeah, well, this would not be a proper podcast if I didn't talk about AI. I am both scared to death of and also super excited about AI. It will, without a doubt, replace design jobs. It's already happening.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It will, I would guess that it's going to take over 50 % of the design jobs within about 10 years from now, maybe less. Maybe about like five years. It's very concerning. But you know what? It's also, we're starting to use it more and more, especially in the early scaffolding of projects, like when you might want to.

create like an environment that you think your product is going to be used in that you're not that familiar with. We end up doing a lot of projects for really interesting vertical markets that we are not users and we don't have easy access to understand them. And this might be like, you know, whether it's let's take.

like the construction industry, for example, where we're not allowed to be on the top of a skyscraper, but we're designing robot for use in the construction field. And we'll create an AI environment where designers can be there artificially to understand it. We're using more VR as well, combined with AI. So we are like in our designs. so there's...

maybe a little, an earlier connection with the realities of the problem that you're facing by using AI. And that's how we're using it. Pretty effectively. We're not relying on it to design products. It sucks at that.

Pretty cool.

I'm excited by a whole bunch of projects in the healthcare industry and the wellness field that we touched upon briefly, where design is very important. We do lot of like diagnostic, therapeutic wearables and even surgical products that are fascinating to work on. So I'm excited about that.

I'm also excited about us getting more into the furniture world. We're doing more and more furniture. That's fun. I am at the same time very concerned about things that I can't control. Geopolitical things that are driving me nuts. I can't stand what's going on with tariffs and people talking about

Okay.

tariffs like it's gonna help us, no it it never will, makes no sense. And a bunch of idiots. that's frustrating. We should be doing, and at least this country, should be, just much more thoughtful. We should like sit down and shut up and, you know, really.

provide, I think, well, just generally more compassion for the world and look at all of the parts of the world that could really use our creativity and what the United States has built over so many centuries. It's kind of embarrassing what's going on right

It's a bit of a mess, isn't it?

It's a big mess, and we're creating our own mess. And we all know who is causing it. But as it affects me as a designer, a lot of our clients are very concerned. They've pulled back production because they don't know how to produce anymore. They can't add a kind of margin on top of what they already sell their product for.

Yeah.

We are about to produce some of our own products. I'm most excited about that. And we are faced now with the same problem that a lot of our clients are. It's like, where are we going to manufacture this? We were intending to produce these things in China because we have so many different relationships with different OEMs there.

great factories, great capabilities, super high quality, and yet are we going to be able to add 100 % and more tariffs on top of that?

Who knows? I think it's the uncertainty that is what, obviously the tariff is a problem, but it's just the uncertainty of what is the tariff going to be? Is it 100%, 140? Yeah. Because you can't plan, can you?

Well, just the uncertainty hurts economies.

So, you know, there are a lot of things that I'm excited about, but I'm also really, really concerned about. And consulting is not getting any easier.

Yeah.

There's too many.

I was with a business on Monday who are manufacturing in the US. They've got a supplier that's making their plastic housings for their product.

that company's experience has been in more, you know, fire alarms, of infrastructural kind of projects. mean, I'm looking at one here. It's funny how you see those things when you spot them out. And what their standard of what good is in terms of the quality of the mold, you their acceptance of like defects and tolerances for a

you know, a smoke alarm or a fire alarm, it's still functional. It's just it's not beautiful. Compared to this being a consumer product, you know, it's a re-education, like the potentially got the ability to do it, but it's the, it's the, issue was the re-education of what good looks like and the standards of kind of quality, you know, the wall thickness and all those little details that

that supply wouldn't, it doesn't matter for their other products, but for this consumer product, it's like, well, we do care about the bevel there, or we do care about the ball things there, you know, and the feel and that sharp edge, you know, and that's going to take a lot of time to get right in kind of factories that just aren't used to it. Yeah. Yeah.

we've been left in the dust when it comes to that. But it's OK. You know, I think Americans need to just embrace the idea that we're really good at a lot of other things. You know, like, my goodness, we don't have to be mass producing plastic clamshell housings of products. No, let it let other countries that are really good at this do that. Let them do that. So, yeah, there's a lot of misunderstanding and.

ignorance, that's frustrating. And that doesn't help the world of consulting. It doesn't help that a lot of maybe in marketing, especially a lot of people have taken design thinking courses and they think they know a lot about design. But design is like a culture and it has a vernacular, you know, they,

There's a depth, such a depth to it. It should never be commoditized, and yet I see it happening. And it doesn't help that so many things can be manufactured relatively quickly and easily. So people have an idea, okay, I just want to go make this thing. And they don't really consider it. And so you have a lot of mediocre goods on the market that are not well designed.

So yeah, I'm saying that I'm becoming a little bit cynical in that regard. so not in some way. yeah, I know. And I do, but it's okay to be cynical about these things as long as they inspire you to go fix it, right? Or to never contribute to that malaise. Don't contribute to it. Don't do shitty products. And I tell our clients that even if they say,

But you've gone back to your point, you must avoid that.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Hey Dan, can't you just do a, maybe we'll pay you half as much and you give us half of a design, know, like do it quicker and don't do quite as good of a job that you normally would. I'm like, I don't even know how to do that. So no, get out of here. That's true. I've been asked so many times.

Yeah.

No, yeah. Love that. Well, it's been amazing talking to you, as always. I've got a dash for another meeting now, so we're going to have to wrap it up. I'm really looking forward to this airing. really looking forward to the feedback that we get from the listeners and the people who watch it. And I'm really looking forward to

my market is exact kind of going through and pull out some clips for the people because there's going to be a lot to choose from in terms of, you know, insights. So thank you so much for being on the show. I'm really looking forward to catching up.

good.

you're very welcome. I really enjoyed talking to you. You great questions. And I liked the conversational nature of this. So I personally enjoyed it. So thanks for the invitation, Chris.

me anything you are more than welcome