The role of the designer is to truly design the context, and
it's not actually to design the tree.
Hello everyone. Welcome back to a new episode of
the AIGA Design Podcast. I'm Julia Donatello, design
competitions and Event manager at AIGA, the professional
association for design. And I'm Li Shan Huang, Co
executive director of learning and programs here at AIGA.
This season on the show, we're exploring the theme Eyes on
Design. Zeus team is inspired by the
legacy of the AIJ publication called Eye on Design that ran
from 2015 until 2022 and challenged us from the design
community to look deeper and critically about the role of
design in today's society. So for this season we have three
different eyes, which are the lenses that we're looking
through the programming this year.
The first one, the critical eye, which is about moving beyond the
surface with analysis and critique of how we design and
how design shapes the world around us.
This includes rigorous examination, challenging
assumption and providing the well reasoned perspective of
essential and healthy perspective around the design
practice. We also have the connecting eye,
which bridges design with other disciplines like the arts,
business, education, technology and beyond.
And finally, the Future Eye, which involves navigating the
disruption from AI and new technologies as well as keeping
our eyes on the targets for sustainability and equitable
development. And now to introduce our guests
for this episode, we have Todd Breacher.
He's an award-winning industrial designer and founder and
principal at Breacher, recognized for blending human
centered innovation with sustainability and purpose
driven design. He's named International
Designer of the Year 3 times and recognized by Wallpaper Magazine
as a top top global design influencer, and he has also led
the design of innovative products and strategies for some
of the world's most iconic design and fashion brands.
Welcome, Todd. Thank you.
It's good to be here. I appreciate it.
Yeah, it's great to have you, Todd.
Let's just jump right in. Let's start with a bit of your
origin story. You have had a career in
industrial design. You studied interior and
furniture design and grad school.
Can you tell us a little bit about your origin story, what
sparked your curiosity and your interest in design?
And yeah, we'll go from there. Sure, it's kind of, I don't know
if it's an unusual story, but I had a school teacher mother and
a Carpenter father father. So right there I think was
enough of the recipe for building and learning.
But I applied to design school in 1996 as an illustrator and to
get into, I didn't realize it was actually design school.
It was a Pratt Institute and but to get into the schools to
become a drawer, you had to take sort of a visual course and the
visual visual exam. And one of the requirements was
to design this kind of respirator situation.
It was quite a complex brief and, and remember, I did this
whole thing and I really deep dove it and I found it really
fascinating. And at the end of it I said,
well, what was that? Because that wasn't just
drawing, it wasn't, you know, architecture, it wasn't, it was
something new. It combined physics, it combined
science, it combined illustration sort of
engineering. What is this thing?
And that's when they said it's that's industrial design.
I said, OK, that's that's what I want to do.
So right there in 1996, I just took that decision and it was
sort of interesting because at that time there weren't really
design schools. I mean, there were of course,
there was a handful, but now you can study industrial design
online, you know, it's everywhere.
So it's amazing how much it's evolved just in these few, but I
think are a few short years. Awesome.
Very cool, Todd. And also we learned that you're
launching a new book next month, so March, and it's Fiden's first
monograph called Observations, Research and Design.
Can you give us a little sneak peek of what to expect from this
book? And also, what does this
project, the there's no project mean to you personally in in the
current moment of your career? I appreciate it.
Yeah. So I'm thrilled to have this
opportunity with Fiden. It's the first monograph by an
American of an American designer.
So that's quite, quite exciting. American design always tends to
take second fiddle. So this so to speak to European
and rest of the world. So I'm.
I'm excited to have a little bit of staking the flag, so to
speak. And so 25 years of the business,
I've been very quiet and kind of live under the radar and quite a
bit behind the scenes. It's kind of the way I like to
be and sort of have this opportunity to really reveal the
stories over the last 25 years and to show the insights and
hopefully transfer of knowledge to another generation is really
what I'm thrilled about. So it's a, it's, I'm really
honoured to have this chance to, to do that.
And the book takes you through 25 or 26 different chapters and
various experiences, and some are quite abstract, some are
very tangible, but it's very different from a typical
monograph. I'm less interested in showing
you what you know, cool things I think I made.
Instead, it's really about the things I've learned, the
insights I've gained, the things that didn't work, Really just a
different take on a monograph. And I'm really excited about it.
Awesome, I'm curious to read it. Yeah.
So we've covered sort of a bit of your origin story and now
your most recent chapter with this upcoming book.
Let's take a moment to explore some of the many hats that
you've that you wear, that you have worn.
So as mentioned by Julia in your intro, you're the founder and
principal at Bracer. You also have a relationship
with Better Lab. So let's learn a little bit more
about those different practices. And yeah, how do you split your
time and stay grounded across these different projects and
organizations that you have working with?
Yeah. So there's a couple of ways to
look at it. There's.
So the bracer is the the studio, right.
That's really where the, the service, I guess you could say
where I'm there to serve client asks, client needs.
And, and over these years, it's been great.
But at the same time, these get a bit frustrated because you
don't, you know, I can tell you sustainability is a challenge
still, even for companies. So you're providing a solution
that that, let's say, helps them from a sustainability
perspective, but they're not interested in taking the path
and, and ultimately it's their choice.
So you don't have that much control.
And so you're there to do what you think's right.
And at the end of the day, you're, you're going along for
the ride with that client. And so either you pick the right
client or you make some changes. So you you're in a position of
service. And whereas Better Lab came
about as my initiation or sort of my venture platform.
So we've been seeking out what I see are really large issues that
aren't being addressed in the world.
And I've spent a lot of time over the last 20 years, as you
heard from my origin, I'm very interested in the science, space
and science and technology. And I had over the years met
many scientists that are working on wonderful, wonderful ideas.
And a lot of their motivation is to create patents and, and kind
of stop there. And they don't understand how to
move these patents into the world and nor are they motivated
to. And the businesses funding it
don't see the opportunity. They don't understand the value
necessarily attached to it. So Better Lab was born from
that, where I believe that a lot of the world's problems actually
are solved and they're just in patent form.
Others, they're stuck in litigation or they're in patent
motor or a whole variety of things.
So I've taken on a handful of projects which we could even
talk about where we are attacking really global problems
at scale, be it eye health, wound care, hand sanitization,
very like large, large sustainability and human health,
human condition issues. And we bring them to the world
ourselves instead of waiting for someone to come to us.
So as a follow up for that, maybe for some of our listeners
who aren't still familiar with IP law and patents and stuff
like that, you're saying like some things get stuck in the
patents or patent Moat was a term that you mentioned offhand.
Could you say a little bit more about that?
Yeah. So here's an example.
I we've long, long story, I'll kind of, kind of short is I was
working with a former NASA scientist and he has a patent
around mitigating like when when COVID, for example, is really
the subject, right? He had, you can manage this part
of COVID with light. So any kind of pathogen, any
bacterial, it can be controlled with light.
And so a germicide of light. And we've all heard of UVC by
now. And then this is a very specific
spectrum of UVC. Anyhow, this gentleman had his
patent sitting in a drawer for 25 years and there's some nuance
to it because patent would have expired, but it's been
maintained in any event. So we've got together because I
saw an opportunity around putting it into a hand wash
product because the issue we have is the hand washes consume
about 2% of the global carbon footprint, which is
unbelievable. So we can replace that.
I can really get into the story of it and I'll spare you, but to
get into a little bit is we can replace all that waste of liquid
of, excuse me, of water or of plastic bottles, transportation,
all the stuff associated with, with liquid hand wash or gel
sanitizer and with light. So it became this really hugely
disruptive technology. At the same time, we were
approached by several companies to straight buy this patent
because it's a really good idea. And at the end of the day, the
answer is no, because we know they're buying it to basically
sit on it or to kill it or to use it as a way to defend their
other technologies, but not to actually use it for the greater
good. And so a lot of companies
leverage patents to protect core patents or they'll they're they
are hung up in litigation or the worst one of all is you have an
excellent patent, great position, and but you're losing
in the world, you're losing in the market because you have a
lesser quality solution that has a better design.
And so folks, folks will lead to it better and they understand it
better. And so that's really what Better
Lab is meant to go, is to help leverage and support these
technologies and get them into the world in a way where they
can really win. Wow, that's, that's incredible.
So you did mention now a little bit of the, the struggles of
having a concept and idea, but also about the execution.
We, I read in the Better Better Lab manifesto, a very powerful
line that I, I'm, I'm going to share with our listeners here.
So it says solutions do not spread on merit alone.
Visionary solutions require visionary execution.
So I wanted to hear a little bit more if you can build on what
you understand is a visionary execution.
So what does it really mean into practice?
A product that is already in the market but the design itself is
has a better design so that even though the the solution itself
is not as good as the the patent one.
Can you explain a little bit of the complexity of having good
design but also good execution and and a proper solution for
it? Yeah, I think that's thanks for
for, for highlighting that line because it's really important.
And in fact, I even, I do quite a bit of writing and you'll see
on my website, I have a kind of a blog called field Notes.
And one of the field notes was it's called on vision.
And I often think about what does it mean to be a visionary
and to have vision for a company and like really how, why is this
important? What does it even mean?
This was Steve Jobs a visionary? I, I think so.
And then then how, how come I'm not or she's not or he's not
like, how do we know? How do you become a visionary?
Like all these sort of questions, right?
And, and sort of writing helps me sort of distill the thinking
and I'm not saying it's the perfect answer, but helps me
think through it. It's sort of like meditating on
the subject. And, and so when I think about
these technologies, for example, I've seen the they're incredibly
interesting and, and they're potentially like world
transforming to some of these technologies.
And but you can't, you know, no offense.
I don't think hire a guy down the street, so to speak, to kind
of just wrap it in a product design and you're all done.
Like, I think there tends to be a level of thinking that needs
to happen in consideration and design tends to be a little bit
further down in the order of priority in terms of doing
things. Design tends to be yeah, like
just make it look good or choose the right colours and, and
engineering will always be in front of design and then the
science in front of engineering. So there's some logic to it.
But I have really advocating for design to be really in the room
with the scientists because I think that's really where a lot
can be very much transformed. And when I think about Vision
and not so much as an answer to question or your comment, but
it's more of I think it's someone that could really see
what's right in front of us. And that's really hard to do,
like really see it. And I think, I don't think
Vision, I think, I think folks tend to think Vision is some
kind of daredevil mentality or some like ability to see
something that no one of us would ever see because they have
such experience or some know how.
And I think a lot of it acts actually, it's the, it's the
kind of being so brave to see something that's so simple and
then the wherewithal to carry it through.
And I think pulling, putting those two together is really
challenging in the environment that we're in.
Folks are always looking for immediate return or they want to
really understand things at a level that you can't necessarily
quantify. Like there's a lot there that
has to really be worked through. So I think a visionary is
someone that is able to connect those dots, communicate those
dots, even if they don't look to be revolutionary at first sight.
Yeah, awesome. And as a provocation to our
listeners, do you have it some type of advice that you can
share with them for them to rethink the way they execute
their ideas? I'm really not thinking only
about the powerful ideas, but how are they actually going to
go to to market to actually create real lasting change.
I, I love this question. So there's another book from
last year that I wrote. It's sort of my playbook and
I've, I guess I'm feel like I'm at, I'm just over 50 and I feel
like I'm trying to transfer knowledge.
But at the end, I'm not as old as I'm sounding, but I, I wrote
Designing Context and it is a framework for creating strategic
differentiation. So it's basically the playbook
for how I believe companies could actually do exactly what
you just said. It's how I've been operating for
25 years. And what it is, is so for
example, if I take you to the park and I say, look, let's look
at this tree here. Do you see this tree?
And I don't think you would tell me about this tree.
I don't think you would say, oh, it's too large.
It has too many leaves. It's not the right color green.
I mean, you could, you could, but I don't think folks think
that way. I think you see the tree and you
just accept it. It's it's in this environment,
it's dealing with this rainfall or not.
It's in this climate. It has its invasive species.
You'd have a whole list of reasons why the tree looks the
way it does. It's not an opinion.
It's absolutely a result of an ecosystem.
It is a result of a context. So my proposition in the book is
all about you. The role of the designer is to
truly design the context and it's not actually to design the
tree. And I think that's the sort of
mistake a lot of folks run into start designing the thing
without knowing all of the other governors were actually affect
the thing. So I think to be successful, I
think in this back to your your initial question, it's really
understanding all of the governors that are there that
ultimately will drive the output.
And when you truly understand them all could be from finance,
could be legal, could be supply chain constraints, human needs,
could be competition, all you live, you put it all together.
It's really looking for that mathematical answer, I guess you
could say that actually gives you, gives you really what is
design and context. So what I'm hearing is that
basically folks don't pay so much attention to the system
where their product or their innovation is being placed,
right? And that's your color, the
highlighting, the importance to look at the context and the
systems that are behind it. Because I don't think anyone
cares what, what Todd thinks, you know, I think it's what it's
best for the world, what's best for the market, what's best for
the situation, the business, all these other things.
And if you can have an answer for that, then that's your
answer. Like, so you're not in the room
of saying, I think blue is better than red because it
doesn't matter. It's one color because it needs
to be or what they needs to be this color.
The tree needs to be green, right?
The leaf. So that that's, that's kind of
the logic as I'm trying to remove emotion and and sort of
ego from all this and actually let it be fact.
Yeah, I love that. Yeah, thanks.
Thanks for the the example of the tree.
I think it's a great metaphor to understand the systems.
Moving to another, another question here.
We've no, we, we've learned that you've worked across multiple
countries in Europe, but also in Japan.
And we also know that sustainability is a clear core
principle of your your practice. What have you learnt from these
different ways these cultures approach business, but also
community and space? Making what?
What part of these values that you've learnt from them that you
carry with you to these new projects that you're creating
from now on? There's so there's so much
there. I mean, I could take Europe as
sort of the snapshot and it's the easiest one for me to share,
I think. So I moved there when I was 24
years old, I think. And I spent a decade in Europe.
I live from Denmark, Italy, France and UK.
And, and it's interesting because as a designer, young
designer, I didn't yet understand or have a identity as
a designer. I don't really know.
And I sort of start adopting where you are and I sort of took
away and I still have it today, which I am thankful for, is in
Denmark, I really saw an honesty in design.
Like material was just natural. There was no painting of wood,
you know, things like we do here.
And they treated things very natural.
Was very much about the daylight and how that it looks like
colors affected by daylight and all this.
And then moved to Milan and it was all about poetry and, and
like that was a story behind everything and which is perfect.
It was not the same in Denmark. In France it was much more about
the elegance of things. Things were trying to be
elegant, which is quite interesting.
I think it's kind of a cultural condition.
And then in the UKI left with individuality.
I was working with Tom Dixon. I got to meet a lot of these
sort of celebrity designers and you saw it's very much about the
personality or the individuality of the design and who is it.
And not just, you know, it's less the story, less about the
honesty, more about the personality.
And then I return to the US and hits me over the head and it's,
it's really about business. And it's not that, that that's a
bad thing, right? And I know I kind of feel like
design always sort of goes, Oh no, when you talk business, but
it's another lever in the, you know, in design.
And I think it's super fun and interesting.
And so when you start to put all these together, I think that's
ultimately the experience I've gained over that period of time.
And I enjoy still picking from it as I still work today.
Yeah, I love this summary of each country.
That's great. Yeah.
Very inspiring. Yeah.
So building on that, you know, you have just so many
experiences. We've talked a little bit about
your work in the health space as well as some of your thoughts on
sustainability and different design cultures.
I wanted to pivot now to talk about ergonomics.
So you were featured in Archaetonic a couple years ago
in a piece about Office. Furniture and ergonomics there
and I'll just quote you back to you for our listeners, but
basically quote you say historically ergonomics was more
about human factors. Can you reach, does it fit and
the interface with the human experience?
But now we realize its impact on long term health.
We see ergonomics as a Wellness tool.
And so this was in context, in the context of your
collaboration with human scale office furniture experts.
So can you tell us a little bit more about you know what, what
you mean by that and some of your work in that ergonomics as
Wellness space? I'm so happy you read that back
because I studied in the early 90s, as I mentioned.
And human factors, if anyone is old enough to remember, was this
Henry Dreyfus book that showed was called The Measure of Man,
which doesn't age very well. And the idea that a human is
this tall, it's this wide. There's to be fair of a female,
a male. And it's very basic, but it's
very basic in terms of human understanding, but very detailed
in terms of the Physiology or in like how long is a femur and
like how, what is the eye level and all these sort of very
critical data points because it didn't exist before.
So made perfect sense. And by the way, this book was Co
created, I guess you could say by Neil's different.
And Neil's different is also one of the origins of human scale,
which we could talk about South and human scale being this
amazing ergonomics company based out of here in, in New York and
who I've been working with now since almost 20 years.
And so I, through my studies, I learned about this human factors
and then I get to practice it from the company that's really
sort of founded it in a way through Neil's.
And now that coupled with our learning from science and
technology over the years, you start to discover that, you
know, sitting, as they say, is the is as bad as smoking and
like sitting still. So we're just static.
There's no blood flow, blood pools in your feet.
And we were doing that day after day for years and years, decades
and decades. So like now the data's in and we
know the bad news it has for people on long term health not,
and not just, I mean, we could get into it, but there's also
obstacle ergonomics, there's acoustic ergonomics.
Like we start to realize, oh wow, there's a lot more fidelity
to this concept of ergonomics than originally considered.
And I think that's what's super exciting.
And I don't think our industry has even realized it yet.
So I think we're about to enter. I think the golden era of of
ergonomics is still in front of us.
Yeah, well, before we we look at maybe the golden era to come,
because you mentioned you've worked with human scale for 20
years now. Like how have you seen this
stuff evolve? I mean, just kind of through my
experience, you know, I remember the the open plan office craze
with things and like, you know, different kinds of, you know,
acoustic treatments or lack thereof, or, you know, now more
attention. Like when I hear ergonomics, I
think about like, you know, office chairs and and things
like that. But yeah.
How have you seen this evolve over the 20 years that you've
worked with Human Scale, and where do you see this going?
Yeah, so I mean, human scale is a great example of this.
And so if you, you know, go, go back in time and all the test
years we've all ever known, if you reach underneath them,
they'll have knobs, levers, dials, all this stuff.
And, and it sounds great because it's not like, cool, I could
adjust the chair to my need and we're good, which isn't really
true. So most chair designers, most
designers period, But most chair designers, you take the, you
take the average human being and you divide it by, you know, half
so that you say, OK, we're going to make sure it's going to fit
half of the population. So measure everyone's width,
femur, length, torso, the weight, male, female, roll it
onto 1 and we give us a new human being, which is the 50
percentile human being. We'll call it like the average
human. And OK, design A chair for them.
And then we give you the ability to adjust it.
So you can now move some things on the chair with these
controls. So it's a couple of problems. 1
is there's no such thing as this person.
They don't exist, which is kind of interesting. 99% invisible to
the really nice podcast around this.
There's no person that matches what we're all designing for.
So which is kind of interesting. Therefore, you have all these
controls to therefore correct a bad design in the 1st place.
So you're allowing folks to then fix things.
The problem there is most people don't know to adjust it #2 they
don't adjust it or they don't adjust it well.
And I sat in Herman Miller chair for many years and I didn't know
how to adjust it, never thought about it.
And I designed chairs and maybe it's just me, which is possible.
And, and I noticed I would end up sitting forward and most
everyone that is not sitting in a chair made for them or
adjusted for them ends up sitting forward.
And therefore they're in now this sort of jockey position and
they're in this unhealthy posture and now they're sitting
this way. And that's how it goes.
Human scale has done it totally differently.
They Neil's different invented this technology, which is now we
call gravity mechanism. It's the future of chairs and
it's been from here since human scale where there is no spring,
there is no lock, there is no lever, there is no dial and what
it is is he's managed to figure out a way to use the human body
weight, the sitter itself to be the mechanism.
So as you sit in the chair, instantly the chair adapts to
you and done. So there's nothing to do and
therefore you, it's not just that it's adapted to you, it
stays adapted to you. So as you move throughout the
day, it's constantly staying adapted to you.
And then if you trade chairs with your colleague, your
partner or someone else, you're sitting by the way, in a
different chair every day. Now in the workplace, if you
haven't noticed, every time you sit in the next chair, it's
instantly adapted to you. So yourself.
So you're sitting these years and decades in a chair, then
adjusted for you as you go to use it.
And that's really, I think where ergonomics is eventually going.
Human skills are there. A lot of companies are starting
to realize, you know, we can't just give, you know, the world,
here's a box of tools. Can you adjust your equipment so
that you could stay healthy? Human scale.
Just make sure that it's transparent to the user.
And I think that's really what's what's incredible.
Yeah, that sounds great. It's like, oh, now I'm gonna
check out one of these chairs that sounds amazing as I'm
trying to like not squeak in this cheap office chair that I
bought online for my Home Office.
But. Once you do it, though, you
can't go back. That's what's interesting.
You realize, oh, I've these chairs are wrong.
It's like all the other chair. And it sounds silly how you
don't realize how important the chair actually is until you've
until you sit in the right one. As a follow up to that, you said
before about you mentioned before talking about like the
larger system that a design exists in.
So channeling that sorry nen quote about the chair and the
table and the table in the room kind of thing like you had
mentioned a little bit of about also like hot desking, right?
This trend where people may not have a permanent office now they
they might go to different places.
And we see certainly these trends with the return to office
stuff of decorating offices more like cafes or living rooms or Co
working spaces and and things like that.
So where do you see that or how do you interpret that as a
designer in your work? Yeah, and that's right.
I think the space has evolved dramatically.
It's more and more hospitality oriented, rightfully so.
I don't think anybody wants to work in an old fashioned cubicle
anymore. I mean, I do think closed plan
is not off the table. I think it it, it makes sense as
well. But I don't think it'll be in
the old style that it was, which was oppressive and and limiting
limits your lines of sight so I can limited light.
It had a lot of downsides. Action Office made a lot of
sense. Technology's changed.
We have laptops now, iPads, iPhones.
So like, it's cool. Things just evolved.
I remember during COVID, I was sort of walking around with my
kids were in the park and I sort of, oh man, what are we going to
do when people are going to go back to work?
How's this going to work? And I was just really thinking
about this like, boy, this is, this is quite a shift, you know,
and, and as a designer, it's my sort of role here to kind of
figure this out, right? And then I realized it doesn't
really matter what I think. I think the market just decides
these things. I think the market just makes it
the demand and they vote with their dollars.
And I think ultimately what things will settle to be or as
they continue to evolve, it'll happen organically.
I think a few courageous, maybe visionary folks will put some
ideas out there to kind of trigger some race response to
see if there's life there. But but I don't think I don't
think the majors or these big companies are going to come out
with like I think action office was so revolutionary actually.
And I don't know how many years away we are.
If it's another 50 before we're going to see a new action
Office. I don't, I think what's missing
from. So if I take a half a step back,
I work with a lot of companies too.
They ask like, so you know, I'm a furniture company.
I should buy a company. What should I buy another
furniture company? But maybe they we make lounge
chairs, they make sofas. Maybe we should, you know, come
together. And I'm always like, you guys
are all thinking about this wrong.
Like if you're going to buy anything, buy a technology
company because like, I think what's happening is a lot of
these companies are so good at cutting, you know, plywood and
bending tubes, but they know nothing about how to put power
or technology into things. So I think what's coming in the
next 25 years, I hopefully sooner is the likes of Google or
the likes of, I don't know, open eye or someone is going to be
creating workplace that we, that you're suddenly the old
furniture companies won't understand how to compete
against. And so I think that's where it's
going to happen. So I feel like I'm jumping
around a little bit, but I do think as the workplace evolves,
I think we're going to find a new animal because how many
different shaped chairs are we going to keep entertaining for
the next, you know, 50 years before we really need actually
need a shift to, to match our contemporary life that we're
dealing with. Totally.
Yeah. I think that's a great point
about like it could be an outsider like a tech company
coming in and revolutionizing the way that we furnish our
offices. Right, right.
And, and like, what is even an office, right?
Like, so it becomes, everything's becoming so
fragmented. And I know there's a, you know,
fear attached to it, which I, I could appreciate, but at the
same time it's sort of amazing. It's like this complete
transformation and my kids will be doing things that none of us
could dream of. You know, who knows where
they'll be working and like, isn't that great?
Like, and so I think I'm not a, I'm kind of a bit anarchist in
that way where I'm like, let let everything kind of fall apart
because we need to see what's on the other side of this.
We can't hold on to the past forever.
Yeah, I love that. Now, Todd, shifting a little bit
the direction, we know that you've worked with many types of
industries and services, so and many of them you care a lot
about. So if you could choose one type
of industry or even like a product or service for you to
redesign from scratch, what do you think it would be and why
would what would you change from it?
Oh, wow, There's probably a lot education, how education is
happening in the United States. I mean, as a whole this, I would
say government education, I would say healthcare.
Like there's like the basics, you know, I feel like the most
complicated things in the world, but I feel like some of these
systems are so complicated to people and to me.
I don't understand it. I feel like they're built not
from the outcomes. I was watching, you know, the
Olympics, of course, just finished and I've read an
article today around how why the Norwegians are so good at this.
Of course they're a win. It was Winter Olympics winter
event of K. There's some correlation there,
but also their mandate kids to participate in sport and, and
but the mandate is very flexible that it's it's actually it's
sort of official and everyone, all parents and kids have to
take kind of course. I know I'm kind of exaggerating
this probably, but was my understanding.
And the course made it clear that the parent and the child
has equal rights and what to pick.
So it's not like the American parent tends to be like, you're
going to do this and the kid hates it and they're forced
through it and all this. But the idea was to foster joy
in sport and, and then they have to, I think, cycle through many
different sports. Like there's a whole structure
they have around it. And the outcome is not to win
gold in the Olympics. The outcome is to live a, a, a
lifestyle that's healthy and outdoors.
And, and I go, thank you. Like they're building it from
the ground up, a way to see a complex system and in a, in a
way that's quite tangible in, in, in like 1/2 a page article,
like you understand the whole thing And I go, why is it so
complicated here? And I mean for lots of answers
to that. But so I'd love to look at can
more complex systems and see, can't these be simpler here and,
and align, align incentives. That actually makes sense for
people, not just for the people to get wealthy.
Yeah, I love that. That's a great example about how
to change the decision making process of kids to actually
build a new and healthier relationship with sports, right.
How they move their bodies and how this becomes part of their
routine as they grow up. I love that.
Yeah, Very, very needed indeed. Todd, I saw that you wrote an an
article called The Evolution of the de Evolution, Evolution of a
business, where you talk about how legacy brands must evolve
with cultural, technological and customer expectations without
losing their own identity. So you bring the argument that
the real evolution is continuous and that heritage must must be
translated into forms that make sense for the specific presence
of the moment that we're leaving it in the context of AI.
So you brought, you know, how you recommend you suggest to
some of your clients to invest in technology, technological
products in the context of AI. How do you see these clients
navigating this shift in a way that keeps them distinctive and
not just becoming another AI generated campaign or idea or
product and so on? Yeah, I think it's a great
question. And the gist of that article and
how it relates to AI. So we meet a lot of companies
that are dealing with their legacy and yeah, there might be
a 50 year old brand. Some cases I had them on over
100 year old company and they're like how do we contemporize but
not sort of lose our heritage, You know, this balance.
This was George Jensen's challenge in Denmark.
Fritz Hansen had the similar challenge, 50 plus year old
business. And so the thing that's
interesting about it is it tends to not be the product.
Sometimes it is, but it tends to not be.
And what you're competing against are companies that you
that they don't even know about you.
So in other words, you're like, you're the consumer has how many
hours in a day, right? And they have X dollars that are
allocated to not not stay with them forever, right?
And they have certain needs in their day and your goal is to
probably park into one of those needs and to fulfil that need.
And you're now competing obviously against other folks
that feel that similar need. But the challenge you have is
that same consumer, let's say uses Airbnb, has a good
interface, it's fast, it's transparent, you know, let's say
all that good stuff. Then they use Shopify or, or
let's take music, they use, let's say Spotify and, and
Spotify works great. It reads their mind for the next
song they want to play like it's so it's so they're starting to
see like a pattern of expectation for contemporary
consuming, we'll call it. And then they go to your
furniture company or your company and you have this legacy
product, but you may be still selling in a legacy way.
And then that's where you lose them.
You're competing against, not necessarily product by product.
You're competing against mostly the experience and how to meet
your your market. And so if you sure that up,
you're already probably more than better suited than most of
your actual competitors. And so that's sort of how I look
at it and how to address it. So it's really in, in my mind
before we get to AII think it's about really understanding,
therefore, what is your market actually?
What are their other aspects of their life that they're shopping
in and and consuming experiencing?
And then how do you stay in front of that and actually meet
them there? So I think that's really
critical. What I mean by the, the
evolution of the business is standing still in a way and you
still have this great legacy solution, but it's sort of dying
because folks don't understand it anymore because of the way
you're getting to them. So that's sort of 1 aspect when
it comes to AII don't have enough knowledge about AI other
than I see it as such an incredibly valuable tool for
like speed, like helping everyone move faster and like
execute test. So in terms of I, I not, have
not seen anyone yet at least I'm not in the physical space use AI
yet to do anything that's really transformed some it's just made
them faster, if that makes sense.
So it hasn't really made any decisions that have changed
course of a business yet that I've seen nothing hasn't
happened or nor has it definitely not has not generated
any type of output of such as a product but not the physical
space not yet I'm aware of. But so I don't see it yet as an
issue. But I do see it in terms of
copywriting. I do see an issue in terms of
image creation, video creation. So it's sort of in the marketing
side of things and there's just an overwhelming amount of noise.
Of course, it's being generated. So I think that's a headwind for
a lot of companies is how do you compete?
And my advice is that it always is personal life as well as
professional is just be as authentic as as you absolutely
can be. And the rest you just have to,
you know, hope for the best, because I think the moment
you're, you know, forcing and trying to, you know, just like
write 500 blog blog articles a day for SEOI think it's just, it
just reads is inauthentic. And I think folks are sensitive
to it and they're they're looking for inauthenticity right
now. That's great.
And yeah, I agree. We can tell when something's
very connected to their identity.
So when the the brand is speaking their own language, I
guess, you know, the product is able to actually connect with
their their consumers in a way that is authentic.
I agree with you. So Todd, we're starting to wrap
up our time together. We like to ask our guests A2
part closing question. So 1 is about advice and the
other one is a recommendation of what is inspiring you.
So I'll just set up the two parter and you can answer in
whichever order you'd like. But do you have any advice that
you would give to students, design students, emerging
designers earlier in their career?
And then the second one is just like, what is something that's
inspiring you right now? Could be a book, a film, an
exhibition, anything that you would like to recommend.
Creative inspiration to recommend to our listeners.
Yeah, there's a lot there advice I have.
I feel like I have so much advice.
I feel bad because it's you feel like advice shouldn't I don't
know my even my, my kids, they're 10 or now 1111 and 10.
They're like, it's OK. We want to find some things out
in the world, Dad, like we don't want all this advice all the
time. So I kind of feel like a little
bad to offer advice when folks like I'm not asking for it.
So but the one thing that, you know, I think is challenging in
design, but I think is such a critically important thing is,
is really experiencing through design.
Design took me around the world. You know, 1,000,000 countries,
1,000,000 experiences, 1,000,000 people and, and I don't know how
easy it is anymore. Everything's happening now
virtually as we are. Things are all digital.
So like you're not flying all over the planet, meeting
everyone, really getting involved.
Some of us still are, but it's not as easy as it was.
Weirdly enough, I feel like the world's gotten kind of bigger
again as opposed to smaller, not in a good way, like not a
closer. So what advice for me would be
get on the plane, go to the factories, go meet the people,
go spend time. And because at the end of the
day, that's like what a rich life you've had and and don't
worry about the design stuff like the, you know, the, the
dinner you had at the restaurant across the street will be what
you remember, even if you're the project didn't work out, you
know, so it's to me, that's the most beautiful part of design is
the journey, right? And then when it comes to
inspiring me, so there's a lot here, I guess most recently,
yeah, there's a lot here. Most recently I was in Japan
November. And it's like, if you've been,
I'm sure you guys have been hopefully.
And there's so much consideration and intention
everywhere I've been now, I don't know, not a million times,
maybe 6 times or so. And but for some reason, it hit
me differently this time. And there's so much intention
and for example, in the theater, it's so thoughtful, I don't know
how to put into words. I left the theaters and the what
I saw with a really like another level of, of understanding of
what like masterworks are. And and I don't see master work
often, like anywhere. Yeah.
And I think to see it as part of a culture available, it's really
what's. Yeah.
It kind of made me kind of again, sort of stand up straight
and go, I need to still pursue my craft further.
Like there's still, we all have to still work harder, you know,
and I and I, so it was a really wonderful, inspiring moment to
say, wow, this is what a gift to experience some things that I
saw there. And I and I think we all need to
really consider the intention and really bring everything we
can to what we do. Awesome.
Thank you so much for sharing that, Todd.
I just piggyback off of that since I lived in Japan for a few
years in my 20s and it was. And like that connects to your
advice thing as well of just getting out there.
Like now I, you know, work from home and live in a small city.
But like I think it was really valuable in my 20s and 30s to
like travel a lot and live in a big city and and do those sort
of things. But yeah, definitely I resonate
a lot with that, just the sense of like care and attention and
attention to detail and craft in Japan.
And I know it's kind of blown up on the the tourist circuit these
days that I suggest people like get out of the like 2 big cities
that everyone goes to or like even go to the like the
far-flung neighborhoods if you're in Tokyo and like, you
know, go off piste if you will. And you'll find a lot.
It's yeah. Beautiful.
Well, thank you so much again, Todd Bridger, for joining us for
this podcast. We'll see you, you the listeners
in another episode. And so please subscribe and rate
US. You can watch us on YouTube or
wherever you get podcasts. See you then.
Bye.