Why would Airbus bring in three guys in a shed at the bottom of somebody's garden?

In this episode of Why Design, Nick Ford shares the belief that sits at the heart of his work: that a small, curious team brought in at exactly the point where others get stuck will outperform a bigger one, provided it is willing to break things to learn.

Rather than following an academic route into design, Nick chose the shop floor of a racing engine company, broom in hand, asking questions until the machinists taught him their jobs. That decision led to museum exhibits, an insolvency, Pipsqueak, more than a thousand jobs, and a tool Airbus uses to fit engines to wings.

This conversation isn't about a career path. It's about choosing who you work for, and what you are prepared to say no to.

Don't just listen. Go beyond the podcast.

Join the Why Design community → teamkodu.com/whydesign

What You'll Learn

• 🚛 Why Nick drove a 32 ton lorry over his own prototype, on purpose
• 🧹 How a cleaner with too many questions learned every machinist's job
• 🏗️ Why big engineering firms hand their £10k jobs to a tiny studio
• ✈️ What Airbus needed that only three guys in a shed could deliver
• 💷 How Patent Box can cut corporation tax on patent profits to 10%
• 🎓 What happens when a design studio commits to work experience for 18 years

Memorable Quotes

"But what I loved about being a cleaner is that I wasn't a threat to anyone."

"Children are the most constructive and the most destructive force known to man."

"And so it's very easy to be popular if you're selling pound coins for 50p."

"We are there to make our clients look good. period. If we can't do that, we are failing."

"if you don't understand IP, you don't understand business."

Resources & Links

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

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

📸 Follow @why.design_ on Instagram

🎥 Watch full episodes → YouTube.com/@whydesignpod

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

🔗 Explore Pipsqueak Developments → pipdev.co.uk

🔗 Explore Patent Ferret → patentferret.co.uk

🔗 Connect with Nick Ford → linkedin.com/in/nick-ford-ps

About the Episode

Why Design is powered by Kodu, a specialist recruitment partner for the hardware and physical product development industry. Through honest conversations with designers, engineers and creative leaders, we explore not just what they build, but why they build it; the beliefs, decisions and responsibility behind meaningful work.

About Kodu

Why Design is produced by Kodu, a recruitment partner for ambitious hardware brands, design consultancies and product-led start-ups. We help founders and leadership teams hire exceptional talent across industrial design, mechanical engineering and product leadership, bringing structure and clarity to one of the hardest parts of scaling. 🔗 Learn more → teamkodu.com

And so I was riding with a chap called Luke Tozer,

~ of ~ architect Pittman Tozer,

and just in commenting he said,

we've just won an award.

I said, he said, ~ yes, we we put in a design for

a new kind of delineator that goes between a cycle lane and the carriageway.

and ~ and and we run the competition.

I said, that's that's that's cool.

What what you gonna do with it?

He said, Well it it was all a sort of paper based competition but we'd really like

to make it. And I went, I'd really like to help you.

he appointed us and we found a commercial place that worked for both of us.

And so we ~ we employed a ~ young graduate,

Alex Douglas, to come and work with us on the 'cause we have most of

the stuff that we start with is d devices or designs that need improving.

We don't generally start off with an absolute blank sheet of paper.

And so form isn't where my expertise is.

So we needed somebody that did have expertise both in the structured design

and also form to actually create a design that fulfilled

the brief from the winning competition entry.

and so what it does it's to replace a standard sort of 80 mil diameter bollard.

With something that is more graceful and elegant,

has a bit of fun about it. but also the primary stakeholders are of course,

yes, the people that drive on those roads,

whether it's cycling or in vehicles,

but also the people that live on those roads,

they're the

Mm.

voters. and so we wanted to create something that fulfills the brief,

so s a much thinner stem.

And a a and a larger, more visible head that happened to look a bit like a tulip.

Now you can imagine the challenges

of having something as new road furniture.

It has to be able to be knocked over by a cyclist and not take the cyclist off,

but it also has to be able to be run over by a big truck.

So we were fortunate enough to do quite a lot of early iterative testing of

Let's bolt it to the road and run over it with a car.

And then once we got that working well,

let's bolt it to the road and we were working with Conway's and they had a

a a piece of the embankment closed.

And they said, and as we were working for Westminster Council,

they said, Well, can we come and bolt some things to the carriageway

and will you run over them for us?

What, you want us to run over them on purpose?

Yeah, please. And can we film you?

You

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No problem at all.

So so we bolted these the carriage carriageway,

the prototypes and the lorry driver said,

first of I want you to hit it nice and centrally and it bounced underneath

the lorry. Yes, he said. Can you put all six wheels over it?

He said, Are you sure? And this was a lorry filled with ballast,

so thirty two tons.

Hmm.

And I said, Yeah. And ~ this was our our first time we put that kind

of weight over it, it went boom

Hehehehehe

We had representatives

from Westminster there, with representatives from Conway so everyone

and they're going like Was that supposed to happen?

I said we learnt so much from that.

~ I learnt how it failed, I learned where the points of impact are,

and could we have done FEA that would have told us that?

We could have done FEA that would have told us a lot,

but

Hmm.

I guarantee there would have been variables that we'd missed.

And it was actually quicker and cheaper to ~ to bolt it to the road and

run over it and then film it from all angles,

lot more fun.

super slow motion, and see exactly where and how it's failing.

and so we've got to a point where we solved we hope we solved all all the problems.

We will only know so the the there we got a r a string of these going into Sussex

Gardens in Paddington.

and we hope that they survive well.

It's a bit like putting your babies

you

out there on the road. but it's designed to be a test and so we're evaluating them

over I think a year and a half.

But if they do well and they fulfil the needs of everyone,

all of the stakeholders, then we may see them go much wider in Westminster.

And the lovely thing about Westminster adopting these is that

if Westminster adopts them

A lot of the councils probably will.

So yeah, as a project it's been a delight.

But what

Hmm.

I loved about being a cleaner is that I wasn't a threat to anyone.

I could ask anyone anything, and at no point would they

put their armour on to go, why are you asking this?

Hmm.

And that's something I've taken right through my professional life,

and so I want in everything that I'm doing to not be a threat.

being a threat to somebody or being perceived as a threat to somebody

and those shutters come down. And that's a barrier to communication.

we work with teams of experts and as I have a

joy of people finding great people that are really good at doing what they

do ticks my box of I really like working with these people.

I love

people that are fabulous at doing and the fact that my bookkeeper gets pleasure

out of doing something that I regard as not just a chore but something horrendous.

and finding people that can do things that you can't do or won't do

and are both good at it and can knock it out and can knock it out the park

and enjoy it,

so one of the things that Pipsqueak has done for almost eighteen years

now is had people in usually year ten and year twelve to do a

a week a week's work experience.

So through June and into July we'll usually do five weeks five week long stints

of one to one work experience.

I believe

There is not a design business out there that couldn't do this.

If we can do it, anyone can do it.

So we've developed a program, we've developed a way of delivering it that

is very successful, it's very repeatable,

and I will share this with anyone that wants it.

and so we changed lives. So we've had forty something people through that

process in that time. Of that,

More than twenty are in careers in design or engineering,

some of those quite senior now,

and it's a joy to speak to them and exactly as you were saying earlier about

the reflected glory of o of those people doing incredible things,

seeing some of the awesome things that they're involved with and know that knowing

that I've been part of that journey is a special,

special thing. So I have on my wall

a little thumbnail picture of all the all the people that have been through

the studio and it just grows every year.

And if I'm feeling a bit down,

any founder has down days, I look at that and I go,

Well actually that's legacy. That's proper something we have done that have made

lives better.

we hope that they're not so attractive that they all get stolen.

So why design? Where did it all begin?

You know, from from our conversations,

you told me that it was an unconventional route.

You didn't start with a degree.

It started with a broom. Curiosity is just mentioned loads of questions.

So where did it all

So it

begin?

so in a lot of ways ~ so I'm in my late fifties,

so for education for me was a a state school and

we still had woodwork, metalwork and technical drawing.

And I didn't realise that I had a ADHD then.

and so a neurodivergent brain,

if you keep the hands busy

It gives you a chance to think in a way that if the hands aren't busy,

you can't think. And so the first time I really learnt to think creatively

was in a woodwork class. I was blessed with a teacher,

and unfortunately I can't remember his name,

~ who got me. And he allowed

me to discover that I was a creative designer.

That I was somebody who was a maker naturally and that got a great deal

of pleasure out of.

Turning a a lump of material into a thing.

Enjoying the process, but also he introduced

me to design as a as as a subject,

that everything is designed and that that takes time

and skill and effort. And I owe him a great deal for that.

and then

The the love of technical drawing on a drawing board with a pencil and

a rubber and a ruler and set squares and recognising that if you followed rules

you could draw things that were incredible.

I can remember the first time I drew a silhouette silhouette of an E type Jaguar.

And I just followed a set of rules about how these lines interacted.

And I followed the instructions,

and off this page came something that ooh,

hang on a sec. I've created that,

I followed the geometric rules,

and so I've always loved both working on a drawing board and working on

a CAD system that follows those geometric rules,

and geometry is a wonderful thing.

So from there it was only natural.

That I moved from ~ from school into a technical college to do an

O D in engineering. Unfortunately,

I had imagined that an O and D in engineering meant woodwork

and metalwork and technical drawing all day long.

that I'd spend all of my time in workshops making things

and learning from incredible people.

And there was a lot of theory.

I'm not very

I've never been great at learning from books,

I learn from people. I have I'm I'm not dyslexic as such,

but I have ~ trouble taking on knowledge from the written word.

and because of that, technical college wasn't for me.

They asked me to leave after a year.

They kind of insisted.

At they asked. Yeah.

From there so this was in Suffolk,

and this so this was mid eighties.

And at that time job centres were still very much a th

a thing that allowed people to go what job are you looking for?

something practical. And one thing led to another and through bouncing through

various other jobs I ended up finding.

my finding a job as a cleaner at a company that built racing engines.

and I'd imagine a company that built racing engines that's awesome.

And to be honest, it really was.

~ they they they did everything from turning their

own cranks from solid billets.

~ they took those all through the process of machining every every single

component of the engine.

Putting it together in the most considered and precise manner

in a surgical environment. And this all fascinated me.

And then they'd take them into the dino and they would absolutely

put them through the ringer. These these babies that they'd created,

they would then torture them. And it was a really exciting environment.

That's

awesome. Yeah, I remember you saying when we prepared for said,

I'm going to try and create here,

but I wasn't a great cleaner, but I was full of questions.

So talk us through. Yeah,

how your time on kind of cleaning the floors,

shape the way that you approach work today then.

Yeah, I I I I I think that might be a understatement of the century.

so I had a job that was all about making sure we were supporting

the machinists and the fitters to make sure their workspaces were tidy

and ~ they had everything that they needed.

And ~ I I wasn't overly interested in ~ in making sure that

everything was spick and span,

but I was very interested in

asking these old boys and they're mo they they're probab they're probably

a lot younger than I am now, but to me they're old boys.

what they were doing, why they were doing it,

but also getting in involved in the minutiae of the operations,

whether it was turning or milling or grinding.

and I was surrounded by eight or ten of these guys that

I could ask each of them questions

To a point where they go, Nick,

go away or get on with doing what you should be doing,

and then I could go and ask another one lots of questions.

And it meant that I took on board knowledge very rapidly and got to a point where

I understood their processes, why they were doing it,

the outcomes it was creating, but also some of the things that went wrong

and what they did about it. ~ so in about six to eight months I could do

a good amount of each of their jobs.

I couldn't do the top twenty five percent,

but I could do all the basic stuff.

I could set up their machines for them,

I could clean them down. they were very happy to teach me the next bit,

especially if it allowed them to get to tea faster.

So you've been curious and helpful by the sounds of it so good combination.

I thought so.

Yeah.

I'm not sure that the management would have necessarily agreed with

the helpful part.

Wonderful, that's really interesting.

how long was it then before you kind of formalized,

or you moved more into what we recognize as an engineering role versus

So so

helpful?

well there they recognised I was the management recognised that I was curious.

They recognised that I wanted I wanted

to acquire knowledge and that I wanted to move up in the company.

I desperately wanted to be a fitter.

I wanted to be the person that was in this clean environment that brought

all of these elements together to create an engine.

And I wanted to be that person.

they didn't want me to do that.

And they did a did me a huge favor not letting me,

because I would probably still be there now.

I would probably be the person that had lived there for years and years

and years and had no interest in doing anything else because I would have loved it.

I was given an office in a white coat.

~ that was the start of things going wrong.

they would then wanted me to collect all the timesheet data.

And anyone that knew me even at that time knew that that was not gonna work well.

The idea of me being sat at a desk collating timesheet data that

~ yeah, no. ~ and so relatively quickly it was like time to move out

and I loved riding motorbikes and so I came down to London to

be a motorcycle courier. because I'd realised that there was big money

to be made and ~ I could get paid for riding motorbikes.

Well hey. and on my first day I earned more than I did on my last week.

~ despite having no idea where I was going.

Yeah.

I w

just I was hopeless career to start off with.

I had to get quite creative about well I'm gonna have to actually find a job.

Well what can I do?

I was fortunate enough to be introduced to somebody that

ran an educational charity based in Hammersmith that built museum museum exhibits

for places like the Science Museum.

So interactive museum exhibits.

And the lovely thing about it is that the people there who were generally quite

young got to do all the design work themselves.

So a client would bring a concept that they wanted to show.

So for example, we want to show how locks work with canal boats.

we want to do it with real water,

and we want the kids to be able to get their hands in it.

And so you have to understand the materials,

you have to understand.

the principle you're doing and you have to understand all of

the constraints so build a design brief.

you have to do a lot of prototyping and understand unusual constraints.

So the biological side of having water in contact with small children's hands.

And that's deeply unpleasant. so I got a job effectively running

the engineering side of that workshop.

I got to put into play an awful lot of things that I'd seen and learn a

lot at the same time and improve their engineering side.

Children are the most constructive and the most destructive force known to man.

and so building things for them brings up challenges that are extreme.

Absolutely, yeah. If you want to ~ design something that's going to stand

the test of time, design it for children.

Well, let's move on to Pipsqueak now because that seems like a natural progression.

know, you've been Pipsqueak's been going for 20 plus years now.

Yeah, I think we're in our into our year now.

That's amazing. you and you know,

you've told me that Pipsqueak is not your typical consultancy,

your team's small, you're agile,

you thrive on projects that don't fit anyone else's process,

which, know, having talked to you,

and the listeners will probably go to this,

you know, you're not your typical engineer.

So that kind of makes sense there.

You know, tell us about Pipsqueak,

the types of projects you take on and how do people usually find you then,

given that you're so

kind of different.

So Pipsqueak came out of a company that I bought a partnership in,

and it failed. It went through insolvency.

so we did really, really well up to the millennium.

We failed to notice that a lot of that was being funded by Millennium Money

and that that tap was going to be turned off.

And so having a company go through insolvency,

you learn a great deal.

Painful, it's expensive, it impacts everyone around you,

but it's an incredible accelerated learning process.

It's a great example of what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

And so Pipsqueak was born out of those ashes.

And I said, well, what lessons am I going to learn so that I don't make

the same mistakes again? And so

We wanted to keep a small overhead,

because one of the things that killed the previous one was a big workshop,

lots of staff, huge overhead, a big monster to feed.

So I said that I wanted to keep a small over overhead and that

I wanted to work for people that I liked,

or that I at le at the very least I respected.

more importantly, we don't work for people we don't like.

and that we wanted to have the ability to

say no to jobs that we weren't interested in.

We didn't want to be forced to take work.

So we kept in we we keep enough of a reserve so that ~ we can say no

to work that might be very profitable,

but actually either is for a client that doesn't fit with our ethics.

So we were asked to be involved in a very large project out in Saudi

and it would have been worth a great deal of money to us.

And I brought it back. At the time the team was five people.

Say, well, okay, the upside of this,

we could all we're all gonna benefit from this.

The downside of this is that these are the people involved and this is the project.

And for a number of reasons, everyone in the staff

said we would rather not do it.

and if only one person had said we'd rather not do it,

we wouldn't have done it.

I'm driving down to a meeting last Friday morning,

and I actually have to pull over into a lay-by because I've got an idea.

and so Pipsqueak's journey is about people,

it's about interesting and unusual designs.

So you asked ~ how do we get our work?

Almost all of it is ~ through referral.

in twenty two years we've done more than a thousand jobs,

and one of the true delights is that almost everyone we've worked for

has asked us to either come back and do another job or has recommended us or both.

And

That's fantastic.

~ th th th there's a delight in that,

but also

We are aware that in our earlier days,

one of the reasons was that was because we were underpricing work.

~ and

Right, okay.

a and so it's very easy to be popular if you're selling pound coins for fifty P.

I'm with size of the business and your commitment to keeping overheads low,

~ you are able to offer it at

a cheaper rate card than some of the bigger consultancies with bigger overheads.

I'm imagining you're not offering a discount service though,

are you? Because

So

it's all relative.

so the the lovely thing about it is that the kind of jobs that we often engage with

really well and do very successfully might be the kind of jobs that

a large so it may be a la a relatively large structural engineers

has been approached by one of their regular clients for what is effectively

a very small job. It might have

£10,000 of fees. ~ and at that level,

they may know that they're at significant risk of not making their margins on it.

So what can happen is that that gets delegated to junior members

of staff, so that if they do take it on,

they're not doing as good a job as they would like to do.

So perhaps by referring us in.

They know that we will work very,

very closely with them. If the job expands,

we will spit it straight back into them.

But also

Mm-hmm.

we work at a level that is extraordinary right across

the whole project. And we

Mm-hmm.

will bring experience and expertise that is right for the project,

but also we've got to add value.

We are there to make our clients look good.

Period. If we can't do that, we are failing.

so I I I think that ~ quite often we are working

for Tier One suppliers. ~ and so we've done work for JLR,

we've done work for Rolls Royce,

we're currently doing work for Bentley,

~ not on vehicular design but on sales support design and we're currently doing work

for Harley Davidson as well. ~ we were brought in

for a project by Airbus. And you sort of think,

why on earth would Airbus bring in three guys in a shed at the bottom

of somebody's garden? And it was because we needed to understand their problem

completely and rapidly. And the knowledge and expertise that we needed

to solve that problem

It was to make a very specific tool to replace a tool that they'd been using

for decades.

Hmm.

But that tool was a metal tool.

They had they had a set of rules that with the carbon fiber wings,

they were not allowed to use metal tools in this particular space.

And so we had to redesign it as a plastic tool.

and it's a gauge that tells

the fitter which bolt to select.

The lovely thing is that so we designed that.

it was manufactured ~ by Gemini Prototype in Oxford.

and it got patented. ~

Mm-hmm.

and whenever I fly on an Airbus,

I can look out the window and know my tool was used to select the bolts that

put that engine onto that wing.

And I get a ridiculous amount of pleasure out of that.

So let's move on another one of your kind of ventures,

patent ferret unlocking micro IP because it's,

because it kind of goes, evolves naturally,

doesn't it, from the consultancy work you're doing,

but it's all about being curious and trying to find value.

I think you've told me talk to us about patent ferret and what that does then.

So during Pipsqueak's work and solving problems

and enjoying creating solutions,

a lot of those solutions end up as a patent.

and what I will say to your listeners is that if you don't understand IP,

you don't understand business.

And be curious about IP because ~ it's one of the

oldest parts of transactional business.

and so we recognized that we were creating disproportionate value for some

of our clients. And we reveled in it and we were really,

really happy that a huge number of patents had been granted.

Some of them I'm named as inventor on,

some of those are my patents. And and that's a joy.

And there's there's a lovely thing about being a design professional

and seeing your name on a patent.

it never gets old.

You

It really doesn't. but so over the last handful of years we recognised that

the value that we were creating was more than just about protection.

Because if you have a product and it's patented,

the company is based in the UK and is profitable and is paying corporation tax

You can pay less corporation tax by having a patent.

the HMRC provides an innovation incentive called Patent Box.

So you can check it out on gov.uk,

just put in PatentBox, and it's actually one of the gov.upayuk sites that

is really well written and is very informative,

a rare and special thing. but it means that the corporation tax payable

on the profits.

can be as low as ten percent from twenty five percent.

The whole reason for that is to keep businesses in in the UK paying some

tax rather than having very profitable businesses move out of the UK.

and and so it it makes a lot of sense.

So what the new business does,

it helps profitable businesses to identify patentable features within their product

or process so that they can

~ stay in the UK and that they can engage with this and they can protect rather than

the whole thing, they can protect a key feature.

They can protect a key feature.

and that allows them to engage with this innovation incentive,

but also it keeps that business in the UK.

a profitable company might go to their accountant.

Their accountant if he or she is really switched on they will ask Do

you have any patents? And the the profitable company will say no and

The accountant can't ask, do you have anything that might be patentable?

Because one, they're not in a place to answer ask that question,

but the company isn't in a place to answer that.

So I sit in between that question.

I you need an engineer to be able to answer that question,

and somebody that's a design professional to be able to work with the team,

to be able to turn it from a concept into

wow, actually we can get this secured and then we can create the benefit from it.

Hmm.

The bene the benefits when they're working well is for the life of the patent.

So it's for t every year for twenty years.

That can be huge.

huge amount of the patent box that is claimed,

more than 90%, is claimed by companies that turn over 50 million or more.

And that means SMEs are losing out.

vast majority of businesses fail in their first year,

let alone hardware business, something even more scary.

It's like 97 % of that hardware startups fail.

Yeah.

~

so you've got to be resilient,

but then those of those 97 % that fail,

there's a good chunk of those that are the same entrepreneur that,

you know, picks themselves up and goes on.

It it and

and

You

and I'm a great believer i that that that failure is almost the wrong word.

So me having gone through an insolvency and lost a business at the time would

I have said that I failed at that?

Well I absolutely would.

Would I choose for that not to have happened now?

I would choose for it to have ~ not cost me as much.

I would c choose for it to have been a lot less painful.

Hehehehehe

But I needed to learn those lessons.

And that was probably the only way that I was going to do it.

we need to find new language around it.

I think that we are grown up enough that we need

to have words that allow us to express some

of those things where they don't hurt our prospects going on.

Because if we're looking to raise money,

if we're looking to create confidence

It's very easy to play off anything that we feel might damage that as well.

I can't talk about that. I can't can't put the fact I'm sat at my desk crying

on LinkedIn. because ~ because somebody will think that either I'm less reliable

or that I'm more fragile or that they can trust me less.

let's talk very quickly about what's next then what were you kind

of most excited about in the year ahead?

Obviously the tulip project, but is there anything else,

either personally or professionally that you're excited about?

I think seeing patent ferret start to take off,

we've got an appointment that I think is going to be really pivotal that

we ~ a company that we can help massively.

But even just last week we came across a company that has a fantastic product,

they actually already have it patented.

Their their accountant has never asked them about I said

So you're paying corporation tax,

aren't you? He said, I certainly am.

And I said, I might just be about to be your very best friend because look,

I'll send you a link. You don't actually need to pay me anything.

You just need to take that link to your accountant,

and that could have an impact on your business that could be huge.

one of the projects that we're doing at the moment is a large double decker stand

for a big show.

And if we go back six or seven years,

we would have spec' that steel.

Hmm.

It would have been used two or three times and probably scrapped.

Now we've we've

Yeah, the waste at trade shows is eye-watering,

isn't it?

got ~ eighteen tons of steel that's being rented.

and what that does to the embodied carbon calculations is massive.

Because you take the steel out of a structure.

or out of its embodied carbon calculations and all of a sudden life gets

a lot better. And then it's a Micano set.

It's designed to be reused and it will do its days there and then it'll be reused.

And it's if we're using smart design and we're designing smartly,

what we can what we we do collectively can have less impact.

The smarter the the more we invest in in smart design,

the more impact that we ~ that we can have collectively.

And there has never been a time when design is more important.

it's been an absolute...

pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for being on the show.

It's been

~

it's been a joy, it really really

has. And ~ thank you ever so much for allowing me to come and talk to your

to your listeners, because I think sharing these stories is really important.