June 14, 2025 • 49 mins
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In this episode, I sit down with Robert Brunner — the design mind behind Beats by Dre, former Apple design director, and founder of Ammunition — to unpack what it really takes to build enduring, emotional, and market-shifting products. We explore the tension between risk and restraint, the power of story in industrial design, and what separates mediocre products from cultural icons.
Robert shares hard-won wisdom from 40+ years in the field, working with legends like Jimmy Iovine, Paula Scher, and the teams behind Apple and Beats — and how he now helps startups design with both craft and business outcomes in mind.
Timestamps:
(00:00) – The Fascination of Objects and Their Stories
(05:49) – Navigating Client Relationships in Design
(11:26) – The Evolution of Design Partnerships
(23:20) – The Rise of Beats by Dre: Origins and Inspirations
(30:17) – The Evolution of Design and Craftsmanship
(41:37) – The Challenge of Perfection in Design
(45:30) – Design Perspectives and Personal Favorites
Check out today's guest, Robert Brunner:
Robert's Website: https://www.ammunitiongroup.com/
Robert's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertbrunner
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
One of the reasons I got inthis profession was I found it fascinating
the relationship that peoplehave with things, you know, and objects
and the attachment of, youmentioned stories and emotions.
And they use it to define whothey are developing a product, like
a lot of things is this sortof 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration
thing.
Right.
What happens in development isas time goes on, the amount of money
(00:23):
you spend and the cost ofmistakes goes way, way up.
Hi, I'm Robert Brunner.
I'm an industrial designer.
And you are listening to Future.
On today's episode, I'mtalking to Robert Bruner.
He has a long list ofaccomplishments, so he's worked at
everywhere that you want to beand I dream of being at.
And he was named by FastCompany as.
(00:45):
I mean, this is a really luffy title.
Robert, Most creative peoplein business.
How does one even live up to that?
Yeah, that's a tough one.
But, you know, I try.
I try.
Okay.
You're a rare breed becauseyou've been.
You have your own firm.
It's called Ammunition.
You've worked as director ofindustrial design at Apple.
You've also done work withBeats by Dre.
(01:08):
There's a long list of thingsyou've done as also being a former
partner at Pentagram in theirSan Francisco office.
And I just saw on LinkedInthat you had thanked, I guess, Paula
share as one of your, I guess,influences or people who've sparked
you.
Yeah, yeah, I worked for Paula.
I worked with Paula Rather for10 years.
(01:29):
And, you know, she's amazingand she's a good friend, but I was
always inspired by hercreativity, but her tenacity and
outspokenness, you know, it'skind of always this, you know, she's.
She's one of those people thatcan be in your face and you.
You actually enjoy it becauseshe's so passionate, you know.
So, yeah, I love working withPaul and still.
(01:51):
Still talk to her frequentlyand count her as one of my.
One of my major influences.
That was an interestingdescription of Paula.
How would you describeyourself from a different lens?
I'm a maker.
I've always been.
When you look back through thelens of where you are today into
childhood, I see that's all Iever did, was make stuff.
(02:12):
And I grew up in a family thatmade stuff.
My father was a reallycreative engineer.
My mother was a craftsperson,artist, entrepreneur.
So I'm a maker.
I believe very strongly inwhat we do and the value that it
has, and I'm very passionateabout that.
(02:34):
That Said I am a very kind,empathetic person.
So I tend to work in a way ofbuilding partnerships.
Except when you have to be an asshole.
You can be an asshole, but Iusually try and reserve that for
when it's totally necessary.
Well, out of curiosity, whendo you find it to be necessary to
(02:56):
be tough?
You know, it honestly it'swhen people need it.
Right?
Hey, you know, I, you know, wetry, we try and do always do our
best work and get the bestresult out there.
And then sometimes there'sthere and there's all kinds of things
that, that can keep that from happening.
Some of them are justnaturally part of the development
(03:18):
of things.
Some of our people just areclosed minded, not listening, not
understanding or just being,you know, difficult.
So, and then when I get tothose cases where it's sort of you
as a person are getting in theway of delivering something really
good unnecessarily, I'm goingto let you know.
Right, that's, that's the wayI look at it.
(03:38):
Do you find that in thepursuit of doing the best work possible
that the barriers to doingthat come from the client side or
is it coming from your, yourdesign team?
Oh, definitely from, from theclient side.
I mean, my team, I have anamazing team actually.
I mean I, we often say, youknow, about our, our studio, we're
in the talent business, right,and, and literally every one of the
(04:01):
designers that works for me inindustrial design started in our
office as an intern and wediscovered this thing, right, that
we are actually really good atidentifying and growing talent.
And so that just became how webuild our studio.
So the main things I,challenges I have with them is sometimes
helping them see the forestfor the trees or sometimes even pointing
(04:25):
out stuff.
No, it's that tree, it wasright in front of you, you don't
see it, et cetera.
No.
A lot of the resistance wehave comes from the client side and
then it's kind of the natureof the business I'm in.
It's a very complex,expensive, long process to develop
and deliver a product into theworld takes a lot of money, takes
(04:47):
a lot of people, takes a lotof natural resources, takes a lot
of time, you know, all these things.
And so there's this almostautomatic thing that's built into
the process of risk mitigation.
Right.
People are just trying to makeit as predictable and understandable
as process.
But many times that translatesinto we just want to do what we did
(05:09):
last time, we want to do whateverybody else does.
You know, we, we don't want tospend that extra money, you know,
all these things, you know,that kind of take the eye off the
prize and more it say, okay,this is a particular process that
we need to follow.
So.
So a lot of that resistancecomes there and sometimes you just
have to really push through it.
Right.
I think as long as you havetrust, you know, it's something I'm
(05:29):
very big on, is building trustwith the people who work with you
can do that.
Right.
You can push people throughthose that fear and get them to do
great work.
But a lot of times it takes.
Sometimes that's what I feellike my job is managing and controlling
people.
Yeah.
Okay.
(05:49):
I'd love to just go down thatrabbit hole with you on the two sides,
the client side, and managingand nurturing creative people.
Because both are verydifficult, especially for people
who are inexperienced withthis or don't have a great mentor
role model to base it off of.
Okay.
This is a common, I think,bane to most creative people's lives
that clients always seem tointerfere with doing high quality
(06:10):
work.
I have to imagine and, andplease correct me where I'm wrong
here.
A person of your stature withyour experience than the pedigree.
I would assume that clientscome to you at this point to say,
we want you to do youchallenge our thinking and push boundaries
and break stuff because wewant your brilliance.
Is that not the case?
It is.
I mean, it is.
People come to me, come to ourstudio because, because of the level
(06:33):
of what we do and thereputation that we have.
And, you know, it's just, it'sjust one of those things.
And developing a product, likea lot of things is this sort of 10
inspiration, 90 perspirationthing, right?
And then you just gotta rollup your sleeves and get into it.
And that's, that's when peoplestart to waver and start, you know,
we don't want to take thetime, don't want to spend the money.
(06:56):
We've never done anything likethat before.
Our current supply basedoesn't support that.
You know, all these thingsthat, you know, make it, make it
difficult and, you know,that's where you're just like, look,
remind them this is why youcame to us.
Right?
And I can't do it alone.
I need you, you know, to beable to step up and help push this
(07:17):
thing through, you know, andmany times that's the difference
between a good product and agreat product, right?
Is sort of being able toreally push through those things
and, and, and, and, and removesome of Those barriers, which, you
know, is scary to people.
Right.
And that, that's really a lotof times when it comes down to is
this fear thing.
Right.
It's just, you know, there's,there's a lot, a lot of that in product
(07:37):
development because, and, andone of the benefits I have is I work
in a large corporation drivingtheir design program.
So I know that, you know,people are putting their jobs in
the line there.
It's not just, you know, if itfails, I'll, you know, I'll be on
to my next job, next client.
This is their, their livelihood.
So.
Right.
(07:58):
I really understand that.
But it's also, at the sametime, you know, I think there's a
thing in society that'sdeveloped that it's sort of the,
the idea that not failing is waiting.
Right.
Yeah.
And, and you know, and that'swhat breeds mediocrity.
The sort of idea of just not,not fucking it up is a victory.
So it's something we try andpush through.
(08:21):
I wanted to ask you thisquestion about clients.
Okay.
And when you're saying clientssometimes are fearful and they might
start with that inspiration,but then there's a lot of work to
get us from A to Z and getthis thing out the door.
There's this balance betweendoing what is great and maybe what
is a project for you.
And you said it's their livelihood.
So you're sometimes gamblingon their livelihood and you're respectful
(08:44):
of that and empathetic totheir, to their thing where if you
guess wrong, they're kind of screwed.
Where it's a project for you.
How do you find that balance?
You mean the sort of balanceof pushing people yet?
Yeah, yeah, it's, you know,look, it's.
I, as much as I might soundlike, you know, we're just going
to shove it down someone'sthroat, it can happen.
That's not the reality.
(09:06):
I really view our job justdoing much more than just delivering
a beautiful, well crafted object.
Really.
We're really, really in thebusiness of helping people transform
their business through thethings that they make and deliver
and how they deliver it.
So, you know, it's reallyimportant to us to really understand
(09:28):
that and be responsible aboutit and do it and do a, you know,
a great piece of design workas well.
It's, it's something thatoccurred in our, in our company that
actually really fueled that,is that when I started Ammunition,
I had this epiphany that, youknow, as designers, we really work
cheaply.
Right.
We sort of, you know, if I Geta good project and I get paid reasonably
(09:50):
and I can pay myself and paymy team, and I get a good portfolio
piece.
I'm happy, right?
Then I see this thing that weessentially created, this intellectual
property we created go out inthe world and make hundreds of millions
of dollars, right?
And, you know, and then at thesame time, I'm looking at some of
my, my buddies who aresoftware engineers, write some code
(10:10):
and think about retiring, right?
So we decided to change thatand start working in different ways.
So we did doing work onrevenue sharing, but then also a
lot of the startups, we wouldinvest in them and become equity
partners in our companies.
(10:32):
And that had a reallyinteresting dynamic.
I mean, obviously there's apotential for, you know, financial
upside.
But what it really ended updoing was from.
From both sides, from theclient side, we no longer were like
the vendor, right?
We became part of theirbusiness and we had, we had skin
in the game as well.
And so we were respected andlistened to.
(10:53):
And then from our side, we,you know, we always, you know, took
it seriously.
But even more so, you startthinking, what.
What is it I can do to makethis proposition successful beyond,
you know, the particular thingin front of me?
What can I do?
And so it started to buildthis real sort of partnership mentality
about how we worked.
And, and so through, like,there was this huge startup boom
(11:19):
in technology, hardware,hardware development around 2012
to maybe 2016.
It was fueled by the Internetof things, right?
And just everything wasthrough the door.
And so we did a ton of thiswork and a ton of these really.
We had like, I think, like 40companies in our portfolio.
And, and we just, it just sortof became a way of working, right?
(11:41):
Even this.
What, what became interestingis even with more traditional relationships
where people were paying usour fee, we still behaved that way,
which confused the hell out ofthem, right?
Like, why is this industrialdesigner telling you to do these
things?
You know, why, you know, but,you know, ultimately it was because
we started to really care atsuch a much higher degree about the
(12:03):
success of the things that wedo beyond the sort of creative success
and, and that, that, you know,ended up really showing in our work.
The, the number of productsthat we designed, it actually shipped
went way up.
The, the impact that they hadin the market went up, you know,
all these things because wesort of really began to embody the
(12:25):
sort of the values andbeliefs, you know, of the businesses
we were working with.
And that's so, so that's along, long answer to your question
is sort of this balance.
Right.
Is sort of.
And we just take it veryseriously, you know, that we're,
we're here to help people besuccessful, not just to design something.
I'm just thinking about, like,how you might structure your, your
firm now in terms of like, doyou have a, like a balanced approach
(12:47):
to the kinds of projects youtake on where some are commissions,
some are investments andequity place and some are rev shares?
Yeah, I mean, it's, there'snothing formulaic about it.
I mean, it tends to be, youknow, still the, you know, probably
60% or more traditionalrelationships and the rest to have
another component.
And, and sometimes the equityis relatively small.
(13:10):
It's, you know, it's just so,you know, and sometimes we, you know,
we have a model where we'll,you know, take a percentage of our
fee and have that turned intoequity in some way, you know, and
take, take some of our marginand do that.
And then the royalty stuff is,is always interesting.
It's.
We do, we do less of that.
(13:31):
It's a little challengingbecause, you know, you can.
When you're working on a pureroyalty, you can get all the way
through the development andthe thing doesn't go to market.
Right.
And so, you know, it's, it's.
It's pretty risky so that wehave certain things that we work
the way we work around that.
But we, but we, you know, hadsome huge success though, that were
(13:52):
just, you know, just, justsort of went through the roof.
So.
So we will do that.
But that's probably the, thelowest percentage I see.
When you're meeting a.
A potential new client,regardless of the deal that's structured,
do you have certain ruleswhere you say that's a red flag?
If we don't get that cleared,I'm not moving forward with them.
And it'd be great to hear fromyou because you have like 40 plus
(14:15):
years of experience.
And when we were still in theservice space, we would have to make
rules for our salespeoplebecause otherwise every job looked
like a great opportunity andwe were overwhelmed with the kinds
of things that wereopportunities that turned out to
be totally, totally lame.
Yeah, it's, you know, it'sreally, it's pretty simple.
It's almost always about the people.
Okay, right.
And who they are and whatthey're about, what they believe
(14:38):
in, what's their purpose andalso what they've done.
Right.
You know, if they've been ableto do it.
That's the primary thing wetend to look at.
I said that once.
I Think that, you know, moneyand a good idea are not extraordinary
assets.
Right.
Because people get out, getraise money and do that.
And there's a lot of goodideas out there.
(14:59):
It's really comes down to, youknow, do.
Does this individual and theirteam have the ability to execute
on this and do a, do a reallygood job, really.
And because that's, you know,we've had a lot of things we've worked
on that were really greatideas, but the, in the end, the team
on the other side justcouldn't do it.
(15:20):
Right.
And so you.
And, yeah, we got paid andeverything, but it's actually a huge
loss when you put two yearsinto something and there's a whole
opportunity cost of doingthat, but also just an emotional
cost.
Your team has just killedthemselves to make this thing happen.
And then, you know, the, thecompany working with just never had
(15:42):
the ability to actually beable to deliver it and make it successful.
So.
And, and, you know, throughthat, that, you know, all that experience
you mentioned, I think we'repretty good at, you know, figuring
out in the first couplemeetings whether, whether this group
is really going to be able todo it or not.
Is there anything you can tellus that you spot and it's kind of
tangible because there are alot of young people who are listening
(16:03):
to this who are like, that'sgreat, Robert.
You know, what they are.
But how do we know?
Well, I mean, there'scertainly, you know, I mean, honestly,
sometimes there's.
If there's an asshole factorthere, it's.
And it shows up early.
That's a big red flag.
Right?
You see, that is.
So, you know, it.
(16:25):
I think it's.
And it's, it's really tough to explain.
There's this combination ofexperience and confidence and intellect
combined with some humility.
Right.
That, that, that always is.
(16:45):
Is the combination that works, right?
Yes.
Sometimes arrogance can getyou a long way, but it almost always
blows up on people.
Right?
Yeah.
So we, we, we tend to look atthat and like, and it's just, again,
does anybody in this team haveexperience in actually delivering
a physical product?
(17:06):
That doesn't mean you can't,but if you don't.
But certainly it's going to bepainful and you're going to go through
a lot because it's, you know, it's.
So we had a really greatstartup that had amazing technology
and we invested a lot in it.
Ultimately, the leadershipteam hadn't.
They'd come from differentindustries and never really gone
(17:29):
through the process ofcreating and delivering A high volume
consumer electronics product.
And just as what happens indevelopment is as time goes on, the
amount of money you spend andthe cost of mistakes goes way, way
up.
(17:49):
Right.
And it'll cause people to freeze.
It's just like, you know, howam I going to pull the plug on, you
know, $3 million of tooling,you know, and you know, $2 million
to ramp up the product and soforth, you know, and I don't know
if it's going to be successfuland just like, and you know, it's,
that's, that fear thing comesup and then.
(18:10):
But if you've done it beforeand you've been through it, you know,
it's, and you have anexperienced team, it's much easier
to do that.
So yeah, it's been interestingfor me.
I mean, right.
I mean I've had a few clientsrecently where I'm sitting across
the table from six people thatare all 24 years and younger, right.
And developing a new piece ofAI hardware which is totally cool.
(18:34):
I mean really, really dig theenergy and so forth.
One of my red flags in thatsituation is if they start, if they're
discounting what I say, justbecause I've done it so much.
Right.
Which happens.
Oh no, man, we don't believethat shit.
We're going to know we'regoing to break all those rules.
You know, we're gonna, we'regonna, we're gonna do it our way
(18:54):
and that's gonna, you know,and you know, that's commendable.
But you just look at it so,you know, it's, they're not rules,
you know, it's, there's,there's some physics here.
Right, right.
It's just so, yeah, that,that's, that's always one of the
red flags we look for is like,okay, do you really know what you're
doing and, and, or, or atleast are you willing to learn?
Right?
(19:15):
Yeah.
That's pretty hilariousbecause there was a time in advertising
where there were so many youngpeople as creative directors and
art directors on the agencyside when, and we're on the production
side where if they use toomany buzzwords, we're out.
It's like it was just droppingjargon and buzzwords and just sounding
too self important and none ofthem know what, anything about what
(19:37):
they're doing at all.
So then we're like, yeah, thisis going to be a horrible process.
I'm not really that interestedin working with them.
Yeah.
And I guess the humility partis maybe we've all been there as
young people and thought, I'mgoing to change the world, I'm going
to break everything.
And then you get a little biton the other side of experience and
age and then you start torealize how foolish that all sounds.
Well, no, I think that initself is good and commendable, but
(20:01):
if you're going to putblinders on and not take in the information
that's available to you to besuccessful at that, then, then that,
then that's a big problem.
Right.
You know, it was having anenergy that's about, look, you know,
we're going to do thisdifferently and we're going to create
something amazing and this ishow we're going to do it.
But then when you say, well,okay, that's cool, we're with you,
(20:23):
let's make sure we do thesepieces, you get it right.
Nah, we don't need to do that.
You know, you know, we got, wehave software, we'll work around
that.
You know, I try very hard notto sound like, you know, the seasoned
veteran that's been there athousand times, you know.
Right.
I'm kind of reluctant to bringthis up, but you mentioned clients
(20:44):
who are a holes, and I knowthere was a stint that you spent
at Apple as director ofindustrial design and Steve Jobs
was not known as the nice guy.
He wanted what he wanted andhe was a bit of a tyrant.
I think if the stories aretrue, he's a little bit of an a hole.
What did you learn at yourtime at Apple?
Well, first of all, I didn'twork with Steve.
Okay.
I often, you know, one of myrunning jokes is I was between Jobs
(21:08):
when I was there, but I, but Idid work with my fair share of challenging,
opinionated people andcontinue to, you know, one of the
key things I think aboutworking with individuals like that
is, is do you respect them?
Right.
You know, because Steve, youwould respect.
(21:29):
Right.
There's no question about it.
Yeah, he's treating me like shit.
It was actually was that waywhen I was working with Jimmy Iovine.
Beats, you know, Jimmybrilliant, you know, unbelievable
businessman, producer, just,you know, really in many ways created
the, the popular music business.
(21:50):
Jimmy was a pain in the ass.
You know, he.
And he, you know, I would getthese calls at all hours, you know,
robert, what the fuck are you doing?
Or, you know, just yelling atme and.
But I finally realized,actually I read this interview with
him in Rolling Stone.
He was talking about how heworked with his musical artists and
how he drove them, and he wastreating me the exact same way.
(22:12):
And he just saw me as an artist.
An artist he was going to getthe best out of.
And so, you know, so I.
And I.
And as painful and difficultit was and sometimes confusing as
hell, I stuck with it becauseI really respected him and believed
in him.
Right.
And he was.
You know, most of the time, hewas right.
And he.
(22:33):
But, you know, at the sametime, he was loyal and.
And he would admit when youwere right and he wasn't.
But, you know, that.
That usually took.
Took a lot to get to that point.
So.
But, yeah, I think it's.
It's a question of whether you.
You respect those people, andwhen you don't and.
And they're.
They're in your face, you.
(22:54):
It becomes very difficult.
Right?
You.
You either have to pushthrough them or go around them or
figure out, you know, what youcan do, because a lot of times, you
know, your.
Your success, this.
This.
This a hole may be theimpediment to your own success.
So you have to figure it out.
Well, we're on the.
The topic of, like, iconicbrands and what was able to be accomplished
(23:18):
by Beats by Dre.
And I've heard the.
The long untold story abouthow it was Will I Am's idea, and
he shared it with somebody andshared it, and then it became this
thing, I thought, with.
I think he shared it with Dr.
Dre.
Do you know about thebackstory and the origin of all this
stuff?
You know, I.
I've actually not heard that one.
Okay.
(23:38):
I know from what I was, youknow, I was pretty much there on
not day zero, but day one.
Right.
Okay.
And the story that Jimmytells, which is a good one, that
Dre was originally approachedby Adidas to develop some sneakers.
(24:00):
Right.
And Jimmy had just gonethrough the process with Steve Jobs
of doing the U2 iPod, youknow, which.
I don't know if you remember that.
I do.
Yeah.
Which turned out to be really successful.
Yeah.
And he really enjoyed that.
And he had sort of got this,you know, this thing about, you know,
marrying artistry with technology.
And.
(24:20):
And so his story was when Drecame to him and said, you know, should
I be doing this thing with Adidas?
Jimmy said, fuck sneakers.
Let's do speakers.
That's a good line.
So I.
But I.
You know, while.
I know that that story hasbeen, you know, crafted in a way
to sound really cool, but I.
But I know from the.
From Jimmy's experience ofworking with Steve at Apple and.
(24:42):
And, you know, theirfoundational belief, you know, they're
you know, one of the thingsthat talk about greatness, you know,
I'm delivering greatness.
What happens is the leadershave a non negotiable purpose.
Right.
That's above financials.
Right.
And.
And for Jimmy and Dre.
For Dre, it was, you know,this idea.
I remember the first meeting,he said, people are not hearing my
(25:04):
music, you know, and what hemeant was.
And he said, they go out andlisten to it and these, these shitty
white earbuds, right?
Ironically, that white earbudcompany bought them.
But they.
But, you know, his thing was,look, you know, I spend an enormous
amount of time crafting a sound.
I know how it's supposed to sound.
(25:24):
It's not supposed to soundlike that.
So I want to.
I want to fix that.
And then, you know, Jimmy, hisbelief was, look, the music, the
even belief was in this.
The power of music and thepower of connection and the power.
The emotional qualities of it,you know, and so, you know, delivering
that in a way that, you know,his audience can experience.
(25:46):
So.
So those were the, you know,and when you listen to people, you
can tell what's, you know,what's been an embellished story
and what's real.
And those, those were realthings for them.
And so that, you know, so Itend to believe that, you know, this.
I don't know if, you know,will I am at that idea at the same
time or talk to him about, orbrainstormed about it.
You know, those things always,as time goes on, kind of take out,
(26:08):
develop a life of their own.
But I, you know, I believe theinception story really started with
Jimmy and Dre and seeing this opportunity.
You know, there's no highperformance audio brand for a young
market.
It just didn't exist.
So let's go do that.
I've heard Michael Margolissay this in his.
In our conversation.
He wrote the book story 10x.
He said something like aproduct or service.
(26:30):
That story is a commodity.
And from the outside, andplease correct me everywhere that
I'm wrong on this, is thatBeats was a product that needed a
good story, and Dre was that person.
He had such a personal brandthat he could attach it to something
like that with Jimmy Iovineand make something that was by a
lot of the criticism.
Okay, like, headphones look great.
(26:53):
Very iconic, but I think wasmade by Monster, another audio brand.
Monster was the partner originally.
Yes.
Yeah.
And Monster, very people knowabout, but Beats, they know a lot
about.
Yeah, yeah, no, that'sabsolutely true.
That's 100% true.
That you know, the storyattached to the product was the accelerant.
(27:15):
Right.
It just really pushed it andpushed it into the cultural conversation
right away.
And, yeah, that's just, youknow, I mean, I think, you know,
we did our part.
We really understood, youknow, the.
The whole idea of headphonesare hard inside, they're difficult.
And so they end up beingreally driven functionally through
(27:35):
all the things that make them successful.
Acoustics and reliability andadjustability and all that.
And so they end up with these being.
Having these mechanisms onyour head.
You know, where we saw, well,hey, this is.
This is actually wearable technology.
You know, how do we make itdesirable for people to wear?
They feel good about how theylook with it.
And.
And, yeah, iconic, right?
(27:56):
You can, you can.
You could.
From 25ft away, you can seethat product and what it is.
You know, so.
But without that, thatcultural conversation that Jimmy
and Dre were creating and theability to associate it with all
their friends and so forth, Imean, one of my favorite stories,
you've probably heard me saythis on other things, but I.
(28:19):
It's.
It's great that when we werelaunching the first product, we were
meeting at the ConsumerElectronics show in Las Vegas, and
I asked Jimmy, Jimmy, what'sthe marketing plan here?
What do we do with this to getthis thing out in the world?
And Robert, our marketingstrategy is a lot of people owe me
(28:40):
a lot of favors.
And it's true.
It's just like everybody heknew would wear the headphone, would
be seen with the headphone, bephotographed with the headphone.
Right?
And it just sort of builtthis, this, this momentum and association,
which, you know, the whole,you know, celebrity marketing thing
has been done, but I thinkit's been done differently.
And, and honestly, I wasthere, the individuals who were involved
(29:02):
in the brand, it wasn't just apay for play thing.
You know, they reallyrespected Jimmy and they loved the
product.
And yes, some were involvedfinancially, a lot of work weren't.
And.
And so, you know, it was justbecame this sort of, again, this
and that.
That is a transformative thing.
Right?
When you put those headphoneson and you feel this connection to
(29:22):
Dre or Will I am, or Lady Gagaor whoever, Right?
That is a transformative thingfor people.
It's just extremely powerful.
Yeah, I think it was one ofthose cases where the right influencers
really move the culture.
And once you saw your heroes,these artists that you respect and
love and live by, and they'reseen with these things that just,
(29:43):
you know, you're One.
One tiny little step closer tothem by having the product.
I went to our center and I, I was.
I found a lot of kinship withthe people in the industrial design
program.
They worked the hardest andhad incredible craftsmanship, like
drafting skills, and I couldsee that.
And a fairly typical thing todo is to always criticize the generation
coming after you as not ascapable and not as good.
(30:06):
I thought this must be goingon forever because it's always like,
it was better in my day.
And now, having said that, doyou think that over the last couple
of decades that craft has beenlost a little bit in.
In the way that we learn, inthe way that we practice?
Yes.
It's also different.
Yeah.
You know, there's certain.
And when I look at the way wedo things versus the way.
When I started, I worked on adrafting machine and with an HP calculator.
(30:30):
Right.
And.
And math was a big part of my job.
I mean, I had to know how togeometrically describe things.
And all that has been fullyautomated now.
And the beauty is you can takeall that time and put it somewhere
else.
So our process involves reallyadvanced CAD tools, advanced visualization
(30:55):
tools, 3D printing.
We're now doing more AI toolsand higher degree of automation.
But there's still this threadthat runs through about, you know,
iterating and playing with andtweaking and doing all these things
that you do just to, you know,to get it in its best possible shape.
That's.
That those are things that alot of people don't agree with me,
(31:17):
I don't think can be automated.
You know, it's.
It's a very human pursuit.
And so that.
That still exists.
Now, the one thing I do and.
And I think our studiosreflects this, that, you know, I.
My.
My formative years in mycareer, I worked a lot with my hands.
I mean, made stuff.
I went out in the shop myself,cut out the material, shaped it,
(31:40):
painted it, did everything right.
And there was, I think, animportant part of that, that sort
of visceral aspect of workingwith the thing you're making and
constructing and so forth,that sometimes gets lost because
we're working in.
Working on screen in 3D, we'redoing prints and so forth, but that.
That same sort of, you know,really understanding what a, you
(32:02):
know, two and a halfmillimeter radius looks like and
how I make it and so forth,you know, and the tangencies and
all the things, you know, you do.
So I do.
You know, that's why we have ashop and that's why we Continue impressing
people that go out and makethat right, let's go out and build
that.
Because I think it's, it's.
While it may not be asnecessary as it used to be, you know,
(32:23):
from a technical point ofview, it's certainly from, I think
a process and learning pointof view really a really valuable
thing and shouldn't be let go of.
It seems like all thedesigners I really respect and look
up to make a strong pointabout getting your hands in it, prototyping
and testing.
Because one thing that wedon't get on the screen is a sense
of scale, even in simple print terms.
(32:44):
So I'm going to do a beautifullayout and the first thing I'll say
is, have you printed that out yet?
Because can you even read that?
Because on screen you couldzoom in and zoom in, it's not a problem.
And when they print it out,it's like, yeah, I might be getting
old, but you know, I don'tthink normal person can read this.
Given that it's four point type.
It doesn't make sense.
And when you see how fabricmoves or the way it feels against
your skin, there's somethingto be said about just being able
(33:06):
to hold something.
The physicality part of it.
Yeah.
The amount of learning thathappens in that is incredible.
And again, it can't, it can'tbe duplicated.
Of actually getting thisactual representation at scale of
what you're doing, sitting infront of it, testing it, showing
it to other people, lettingthem see if they can do it right,
all those things right.
You can't do that.
And yeah, it's always amazingto me how still something looks good
(33:31):
on screen, rotating the model.
It's beautiful.
We run the prints and you getit and it's proportionately wrong.
You can't see it on the screenuntil you get it and hold it or put
it on someone's head.
In the remaining minutes thatwe have together, I want to kind
of tee you up for this question.
Years ago, I read this articlein Wired magazine and it affected
(33:53):
me in a lot of different ways.
It was titled something theGood Enough Revolution, where there
was a time and age when wewanted the very best of everything.
But if it's good enough andit's cheaper and easier to use, has
higher utility, it's good enough.
The example they talked aboutin the article was drones replacing
fighter jets.
A, if a drone goes down, noone dies.
B, they can have a, like anairplane in the air 24,7 to be able
(34:16):
to deploy at any point butthat seems to be going right up against
this idea of making greatthings and why doing something really
well, why great design can getpeople to love your company or tell
a story.
Where do you net out on that?
Well, you know, it's.
We talk about this for an hour probably.
(34:36):
You know, there's, there's alot, a lot in there you're talking
about.
I mean, one thing that I thinkis really important about things,
products, objects, physicalthings, it goes to a lot of things
is there.
I mean, it's one of thereasons I got in this profession
was I found it fascinating therelationship that people have with
(34:57):
things, right?
Beyond objects and theattachment of you mentioned stories
and emotions.
And they use it to define whothey are.
Right.
In many ways.
And so it's a reallyinteresting relationship and that,
you know, and I think part ofwhat's behind that is, especially
(35:18):
today is that, you know,people ultimately want to connect
with other people.
Right?
Ultimately there's a lot whenyou step back and look at so many
things and go on society hasto do with connecting and yet we're
getting further and furtheraway from people, right, in terms
of the way we communicate andso forth.
So, you know, for me, when youget a product and it, and it feels
(35:40):
a certain way and it does ajob really well and you know, I start
thinking about the person whospent the time to figure this out.
Literally for me, right,there's, there's a connection that
occurs, you know, with someoneelse, unknown individual out there
that spent the time to, to getthe experience you're having, right?
And so I think that's, that'sa really important thing that for
(36:03):
me is going to keep this sortof automation in check about what
we do, because I don't thinkthat's something that can be.
But yeah, the, the, the thingabout, you know, talking about mediocrity
and, you know, this, this, youknow, this sort of good enough and
fear of failure is that, youknow, honestly, the mediocrity can
(36:24):
cost you more than any failureever could.
It's, it's.
People don't realize this sortof, I'm just going to be safe.
I was talking about easier,you know, and, you know, and greatness
doesn't come easy.
You know, it isn't packaged orpolished or perfect.
It asks for sweat and effortand then sometimes pain, you know,
it asks you to stand in thefire, right, when you could, you
(36:46):
know, be in the shade of mediocrity.
So it's, you know, and, andit's not about Perfection.
And it's not about grindinguntil you break it.
It's about breaking free fromthis trap of good enough.
And, and that's, that's thething that I, I, I really get disconcerted
about when it's, you have thissort of pervasive idea that you know
(37:09):
it's good enough, you knowit's, it's pretty good.
So let's, let's be happy withthat and move forward when that's,
that's always going to be abarrier to doing more.
Right.
So I think that when talk alot about AI and they said we use
it quite a bit in sort ofautomation the tasks.
And for example, we used tospend, we actually got really good
(37:34):
at building contextual imagesof sort of using combining 3D CAD
and Photoshop and some othertools and dropping something into
reality in the photograph thatlooked like reality and you couldn't
tell.
And it was a big part of ourprocess and we built up a really
great skill at that.
(37:54):
All gone.
Right.
So don't need it anymore.
But like I said, that freesyou up to do something else.
So that's grabbing and usingthese tools.
But you can see it in terms oflike some of the, when we were using,
using Mid Journey and reallyusing prompts to develop concepts
(38:14):
and they're never right, youknow, they're, but they're, they're
good sort of provocative things.
But, you know, you can seethat tool's going to get better and
better and it'll be much moreresponsive to the prompts you put
in and be able to produce things.
But, you know, I don't believethey'll ever hit that level of connectivity
and greatness that anindividual sweating and grinding
(38:36):
to get it just right will.
Right.
And so that's something.
And not everybody agrees withme on that, but I have a hard time
believing that we're going tobe able to just design products via
the prompts now.
That said, I do believe ourrole is moving a little more towards
producer, editor, directorthan more of that than it used to
(39:00):
be, which I'm totally coolwith because I think that's pretty
much what I do right now anyway.
And so, but I still think, Iguess, that the human, human part
of the equation is not goingto evaporate.
As you're working on a project.
How do you know you reach thatpoint where it feels like it's time
to stop?
This is, this is great.
You know, that is one of thebiggest skills experience gives you
(39:25):
because, yeah, I mean, it'shard to stop designing.
Right.
It's hard to start, you know,when you sort of get this point and
you think, I could just be alittle better.
And that was, I mentionedearlier, this notion of seeing, you
know, how.
Helping my team see the right tree.
Right.
Not just the forest, but.
No, this is the right treebecause you can be right in front
of people.
But yeah, it is.
(39:46):
It's an important thing.
It's like there's a certainpoint where, you know, if you keep
investing in something, youstart to move away from that purity
of an idea you had.
Right.
And you keep tweaking andtweaking and tweaking and tweaking.
So it is important to knowwhen to stop.
And again.
But I think that comes from,actually, that comes from the school
(40:07):
of screwing stuff up becauseyou went too far.
You still realize, all right,it's time to stop and let's move
forward.
And, and there's another thingthat I think is a problem in what
we do is that not everybodywill agree with me of this.
But I, you know, sometimesit's important to get something out
into the world, even if it'snot exactly the, you know, quite
(40:30):
what you wanted.
Right, right.
Because.
Because sometimes that, thattaking that time to do it will.
You lose the opportunity.
But probably more importantly,you learn so much when you put a
product out there.
And, and, and I've seen again,again, the research that version
1.2 of something always doesexponentially better than version
(40:52):
1.
Right.
Because, you know, you're ableto really learn and learn, you know,
what, what, what, what isworking out in the world.
And, and you'll always besurprised by that.
You think you got it allfigured out and you put something
out and, and, and you, andthere's so much that you either missed
or misunderstood or there'ssomething that new that's happened
that's changed that.
It's such a tricky positionfor creative people to be in whatever
(41:14):
your discipline is, becausethere's this thing where we want
to make something perfect.
Maybe that's not possible, butwe try to, and then we never release
anything.
So we don't have theopportunity to learn from that first
iteration and be able yet.
We also don't want to releasesomething prematurely because it
can create a lot of waste inthe world.
Wasted paper, wastedmaterials, and wind up in the landfill.
(41:37):
That feels really irresponsible.
So there's just this verynarrow window that you got to just
hit and it's not easy to do.
Otherwise everyone would be great.
I remember when I was a lotyounger, and I was working for somebody.
I was just working onsomething like, I don't know what
the finish line looks like, soI have to show someone.
And they're like, yeah, youdid it, or you actually overworked
(41:58):
it.
And that's another problem too.
You just, you overworked it.
Now it feels very contrived orjust unnecessary at some point.
And it's, it's not an easy thing.
This creative path that we all choose.
Do you have anything that youcan share to someone who might be
in their early to mid-20s,who's just, like, out in the world,
and how do they savethemselves from some of this pain?
(42:19):
Robert?
Well, you're going to gothrough it and learn.
I mean, that's the first thingis like, you know, really everything
is a learning experience.
So if it, if it doesn't goexactly you want, where you want
it, don't beat yourself upabout it.
Learn and move on.
Right.
Because you don't want to getinto this sort of paralysis, you
(42:40):
know, because I, I don't wantto take any risk because I didn't
do it.
Right.
And then, you know, I, I, Iwould say, you know, as far as sort
of getting a design to a pointand deciding when it's good enough
is, is have, have a group ofpeople that you really respect to
help you with that, you know,because it always, and I have the
(43:00):
same problem.
My nose gets too close to it, right.
And you just, you can't see it.
So, you know, and I, I reallyrespect my team.
You know, one of my, early inmy career, someone told me this thing
which stuck with me is you'reonly as strong as the backs of the
people who carry you, right.
And hire people that arebetter than you hire.
And I think it sometimessurprises my team, you know, with
(43:22):
some modern staff designer,you know, been doing it for four
years.
And like, I mean, what do youthink of this?
You think this is a good idea?
And they're like, what?
But, you know, I think, youknow, getting impact, input from
the people you respect is, isreally helpful.
And, and then also the thingthat goes with that, though, is you
don't have to always taketheir input either.
Right.
You can judge whether, okay,that's valid or not.
(43:44):
Yeah.
But I think exposing an ideato people that you trust and respect
is really important.
And then just, just go withit, Go with your gut instinct is,
is, you know, is always areally important part of the process.
Wonderful.
Before I let you go, I justhave a couple of Quick questions
for you.
Kind of rapid firestyle, ifyou don't mind.
(44:06):
All right, let's do it.
As an industrial designer andperson who champions craft, what
are some objects that you justreally love because of how they're
made or the process of the story?
I always hate questions likethis because, you know, I just go
blank.
Yeah, well, I can help you.
Like, are there certain kindsof clothing brands that you love?
(44:26):
Or, you know, my.
My clothing brands are.
Tend to be rag and bone in theory.
You know, I just love it.
You know, clean, you know,sophisticated, but not pretentious.
You know, kind of feel of it.
I.
You know, that.
That's kind of.
Kind of me.
I.
You know, objects like, I.
(44:46):
There's.
There's a.
There's a number of them thatI just continue to look at and I'm
amazed by.
So one of them is, which I.
I've owned this thing for, Iwould say at least 35 years, is a
TZO lamp by Richard Sapper, Right.
Which is a.
Is a design classic.
Right.
So there's no.
No doubt Iran, you know, butit's one of those things.
(45:08):
Every time I look at it, I'mjust fascinated by the mechanism
and how it moves and how it'ssculptural and, you know, the.
The way that it's.
It's so.
It's.
It's almost alive.
Right.
So there's things like that.
I.
I've always been a Porsche 911maniac, so those machines, you know,
that I've had and I have onenow, I just.
(45:30):
And it's beyond the, you know,that there's, of course, the sort
of visceral excitement ofdriving the vehicle and the connection
to the road, but it's justsuch a great machine and it's.
And I just am always enjoyingthat, you know, and the fact that
I can.
I can hear the engine, I cansmell the engine right.
When I'm in the car.
Right.
(45:50):
Stuff like that.
Can I.
Can I just pause you there andask you about automobiles real quick?
Are you a fan of Aston Martin's?
Not the recent ones.
And in the past, like, whenyou go back to the DB7 was just like
an amazing, amazing vehicle.
Craftsmanship is incredible.
I think they've kind of lost alittle bit on aesthetics, because
I talked.
To Jason Freed about this.
He says, whether you love himor not, the thing you respect is
(46:13):
there's nothing that's decorative.
Everything that you see, if itlooks like wood is made from wood,
if it looks like metal, madefrom metal.
And he appreciates that a lot.
Yeah.
Well, if you look at that,that the cars that they did especially
like, you know, 15 years ago,the impact that those vehicles had
on the automotive industry.
You see it, those forms everywhere.
(46:35):
Yeah, they're just really,really, really, really amazing.
Okay, here's what we're gonna do.
I'm gonna ask you like six orseven categories.
You just say anything.
It doesn't matter.
Okay.
We'll get, we'll get to keepthis short.
I'm nervous on time here.
Okay.
Favorite chair?
The chair.
Go ahead.
See, is this the industrialdesigner who draws a blank when asked
(46:58):
about industrial design?
Well, no, many.
Well, I mean, I have my Ameslounge chair, which is again, in
the classic.
But there's the low pad chairthat I love as well.
A shelving system.
Oh, behind me.
I don't know if this easy shelving.
It's actually a factory shelving.
It's all made out of anodized aluminum.
(47:19):
It's beautiful.
I put that in like a number ofoffices and homes too.
Wonderful.
Your favorite drawing instrument?
Oh, you know, my, my.
A uni pin fine line 0.5.
I buy them by the dozens.
This is a.
You're talking about uni ball.
Yeah, no, it's, it's the fine lines.
The fine tip.
(47:39):
One.
The fine tip.
A musical device.
Could be a stereo system, itcould be speakers, it could be headphones,
whatever.
You know, it's, it's, it's abit self serving, but my, my current
iteration of the Beats pill.
Okay.
Just love it.
Just take it everywhere.
A timepiece.
Oh, I have a, A ratto watch.
(48:03):
You know, this ceramic watchthat I don't wear that much, but
it's just so beautiful.
And that finish is perfect.
Here's the last one.
An eyeglass company.
Oh, Matsunaga.
Well, because I wear them andI bought like four frames from them.
It's great.
Oh, wonderful, Robert.
It was, it was amazing to talkto you and kind of get your perspective
on design.
(48:24):
I know we could have gone downthe rabbit hole of AI, but that seems
to be the topic du jour.
And that's all fine.
And you know, if people, ifpeople want to find out more about
what you're doing, youradventures and what you're up to.
Where should we send them?
Probably the best place is.
So my Instagram is Robert Ebrenner.
(48:45):
Robert D.
Brenner.
And then, and then Ammunitionis at.
Ammunition Group is typicallywhere you'll see the most current
stuff popping up.
And, and you can always DM methrough it.
If you want to get a hold of me.
Well, thanks very much fordoing this with me.
Oh, it's fantastic, Chris.
I loved it, Sam.
One of the reasons I got inthis profession was I found it fascinating
the relationship that peoplehave with things, you know, and objects
and the attachment of, youmentioned stories and emotions.
And they use it to define whothey are developing a product, like
a lot of things is this sortof 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration
thing.
Right.
What happens in development isas time goes on, the amount of money
(00:23):
you spend and the cost ofmistakes goes way, way up.
Hi, I'm Robert Brunner.
I'm an industrial designer.
And you are listening to Future.
On today's episode, I'mtalking to Robert Bruner.
He has a long list ofaccomplishments, so he's worked at
everywhere that you want to beand I dream of being at.
And he was named by FastCompany as.
(00:45):
I mean, this is a really luffy title.
Robert, Most creative peoplein business.
How does one even live up to that?
Yeah, that's a tough one.
But, you know, I try.
I try.
Okay.
You're a rare breed becauseyou've been.
You have your own firm.
It's called Ammunition.
You've worked as director ofindustrial design at Apple.
You've also done work withBeats by Dre.
(01:08):
There's a long list of thingsyou've done as also being a former
partner at Pentagram in theirSan Francisco office.
And I just saw on LinkedInthat you had thanked, I guess, Paula
share as one of your, I guess,influences or people who've sparked
you.
Yeah, yeah, I worked for Paula.
I worked with Paula Rather for10 years.
(01:29):
And, you know, she's amazingand she's a good friend, but I was
always inspired by hercreativity, but her tenacity and
outspokenness, you know, it'skind of always this, you know, she's.
She's one of those people thatcan be in your face and you.
You actually enjoy it becauseshe's so passionate, you know.
So, yeah, I love working withPaul and still.
(01:51):
Still talk to her frequentlyand count her as one of my.
One of my major influences.
That was an interestingdescription of Paula.
How would you describeyourself from a different lens?
I'm a maker.
I've always been.
When you look back through thelens of where you are today into
childhood, I see that's all Iever did, was make stuff.
(02:12):
And I grew up in a family thatmade stuff.
My father was a reallycreative engineer.
My mother was a craftsperson,artist, entrepreneur.
So I'm a maker.
I believe very strongly inwhat we do and the value that it
has, and I'm very passionateabout that.
(02:34):
That Said I am a very kind,empathetic person.
So I tend to work in a way ofbuilding partnerships.
Except when you have to be an asshole.
You can be an asshole, but Iusually try and reserve that for
when it's totally necessary.
Well, out of curiosity, whendo you find it to be necessary to
(02:56):
be tough?
You know, it honestly it'swhen people need it.
Right?
Hey, you know, I, you know, wetry, we try and do always do our
best work and get the bestresult out there.
And then sometimes there'sthere and there's all kinds of things
that, that can keep that from happening.
Some of them are justnaturally part of the development
(03:18):
of things.
Some of our people just areclosed minded, not listening, not
understanding or just being,you know, difficult.
So, and then when I get tothose cases where it's sort of you
as a person are getting in theway of delivering something really
good unnecessarily, I'm goingto let you know.
Right, that's, that's the wayI look at it.
(03:38):
Do you find that in thepursuit of doing the best work possible
that the barriers to doingthat come from the client side or
is it coming from your, yourdesign team?
Oh, definitely from, from theclient side.
I mean, my team, I have anamazing team actually.
I mean I, we often say, youknow, about our, our studio, we're
in the talent business, right,and, and literally every one of the
(04:01):
designers that works for me inindustrial design started in our
office as an intern and wediscovered this thing, right, that
we are actually really good atidentifying and growing talent.
And so that just became how webuild our studio.
So the main things I,challenges I have with them is sometimes
helping them see the forestfor the trees or sometimes even pointing
(04:25):
out stuff.
No, it's that tree, it wasright in front of you, you don't
see it, et cetera.
No.
A lot of the resistance wehave comes from the client side and
then it's kind of the natureof the business I'm in.
It's a very complex,expensive, long process to develop
and deliver a product into theworld takes a lot of money, takes
(04:47):
a lot of people, takes a lotof natural resources, takes a lot
of time, you know, all these things.
And so there's this almostautomatic thing that's built into
the process of risk mitigation.
Right.
People are just trying to makeit as predictable and understandable
as process.
But many times that translatesinto we just want to do what we did
(05:09):
last time, we want to do whateverybody else does.
You know, we, we don't want tospend that extra money, you know,
all these things, you know,that kind of take the eye off the
prize and more it say, okay,this is a particular process that
we need to follow.
So.
So a lot of that resistancecomes there and sometimes you just
have to really push through it.
Right.
I think as long as you havetrust, you know, it's something I'm
(05:29):
very big on, is building trustwith the people who work with you
can do that.
Right.
You can push people throughthose that fear and get them to do
great work.
But a lot of times it takes.
Sometimes that's what I feellike my job is managing and controlling
people.
Yeah.
Okay.
(05:49):
I'd love to just go down thatrabbit hole with you on the two sides,
the client side, and managingand nurturing creative people.
Because both are verydifficult, especially for people
who are inexperienced withthis or don't have a great mentor
role model to base it off of.
Okay.
This is a common, I think,bane to most creative people's lives
that clients always seem tointerfere with doing high quality
(06:10):
work.
I have to imagine and, andplease correct me where I'm wrong
here.
A person of your stature withyour experience than the pedigree.
I would assume that clientscome to you at this point to say,
we want you to do youchallenge our thinking and push boundaries
and break stuff because wewant your brilliance.
Is that not the case?
It is.
I mean, it is.
People come to me, come to ourstudio because, because of the level
(06:33):
of what we do and thereputation that we have.
And, you know, it's just, it'sjust one of those things.
And developing a product, likea lot of things is this sort of 10
inspiration, 90 perspirationthing, right?
And then you just gotta rollup your sleeves and get into it.
And that's, that's when peoplestart to waver and start, you know,
we don't want to take thetime, don't want to spend the money.
(06:56):
We've never done anything likethat before.
Our current supply basedoesn't support that.
You know, all these thingsthat, you know, make it, make it
difficult and, you know,that's where you're just like, look,
remind them this is why youcame to us.
Right?
And I can't do it alone.
I need you, you know, to beable to step up and help push this
(07:17):
thing through, you know, andmany times that's the difference
between a good product and agreat product, right?
Is sort of being able toreally push through those things
and, and, and, and, and removesome of Those barriers, which, you
know, is scary to people.
Right.
And that, that's really a lotof times when it comes down to is
this fear thing.
Right.
It's just, you know, there's,there's a lot, a lot of that in product
(07:37):
development because, and, andone of the benefits I have is I work
in a large corporation drivingtheir design program.
So I know that, you know,people are putting their jobs in
the line there.
It's not just, you know, if itfails, I'll, you know, I'll be on
to my next job, next client.
This is their, their livelihood.
So.
Right.
(07:58):
I really understand that.
But it's also, at the sametime, you know, I think there's a
thing in society that'sdeveloped that it's sort of the,
the idea that not failing is waiting.
Right.
Yeah.
And, and you know, and that'swhat breeds mediocrity.
The sort of idea of just not,not fucking it up is a victory.
So it's something we try andpush through.
(08:21):
I wanted to ask you thisquestion about clients.
Okay.
And when you're saying clientssometimes are fearful and they might
start with that inspiration,but then there's a lot of work to
get us from A to Z and getthis thing out the door.
There's this balance betweendoing what is great and maybe what
is a project for you.
And you said it's their livelihood.
So you're sometimes gamblingon their livelihood and you're respectful
(08:44):
of that and empathetic totheir, to their thing where if you
guess wrong, they're kind of screwed.
Where it's a project for you.
How do you find that balance?
You mean the sort of balanceof pushing people yet?
Yeah, yeah, it's, you know,look, it's.
I, as much as I might soundlike, you know, we're just going
to shove it down someone'sthroat, it can happen.
That's not the reality.
(09:06):
I really view our job justdoing much more than just delivering
a beautiful, well crafted object.
Really.
We're really, really in thebusiness of helping people transform
their business through thethings that they make and deliver
and how they deliver it.
So, you know, it's reallyimportant to us to really understand
(09:28):
that and be responsible aboutit and do it and do a, you know,
a great piece of design workas well.
It's, it's something thatoccurred in our, in our company that
actually really fueled that,is that when I started Ammunition,
I had this epiphany that, youknow, as designers, we really work
cheaply.
Right.
We sort of, you know, if I Geta good project and I get paid reasonably
(09:50):
and I can pay myself and paymy team, and I get a good portfolio
piece.
I'm happy, right?
Then I see this thing that weessentially created, this intellectual
property we created go out inthe world and make hundreds of millions
of dollars, right?
And, you know, and then at thesame time, I'm looking at some of
my, my buddies who aresoftware engineers, write some code
(10:10):
and think about retiring, right?
So we decided to change thatand start working in different ways.
So we did doing work onrevenue sharing, but then also a
lot of the startups, we wouldinvest in them and become equity
partners in our companies.
(10:32):
And that had a reallyinteresting dynamic.
I mean, obviously there's apotential for, you know, financial
upside.
But what it really ended updoing was from.
From both sides, from theclient side, we no longer were like
the vendor, right?
We became part of theirbusiness and we had, we had skin
in the game as well.
And so we were respected andlistened to.
(10:53):
And then from our side, we,you know, we always, you know, took
it seriously.
But even more so, you startthinking, what.
What is it I can do to makethis proposition successful beyond,
you know, the particular thingin front of me?
What can I do?
And so it started to buildthis real sort of partnership mentality
about how we worked.
And, and so through, like,there was this huge startup boom
(11:19):
in technology, hardware,hardware development around 2012
to maybe 2016.
It was fueled by the Internetof things, right?
And just everything wasthrough the door.
And so we did a ton of thiswork and a ton of these really.
We had like, I think, like 40companies in our portfolio.
And, and we just, it just sortof became a way of working, right?
(11:41):
Even this.
What, what became interestingis even with more traditional relationships
where people were paying usour fee, we still behaved that way,
which confused the hell out ofthem, right?
Like, why is this industrialdesigner telling you to do these
things?
You know, why, you know, but,you know, ultimately it was because
we started to really care atsuch a much higher degree about the
(12:03):
success of the things that wedo beyond the sort of creative success
and, and that, that, you know,ended up really showing in our work.
The, the number of productsthat we designed, it actually shipped
went way up.
The, the impact that they hadin the market went up, you know,
all these things because wesort of really began to embody the
(12:25):
sort of the values andbeliefs, you know, of the businesses
we were working with.
And that's so, so that's along, long answer to your question
is sort of this balance.
Right.
Is sort of.
And we just take it veryseriously, you know, that we're,
we're here to help people besuccessful, not just to design something.
I'm just thinking about, like,how you might structure your, your
firm now in terms of like, doyou have a, like a balanced approach
(12:47):
to the kinds of projects youtake on where some are commissions,
some are investments andequity place and some are rev shares?
Yeah, I mean, it's, there'snothing formulaic about it.
I mean, it tends to be, youknow, still the, you know, probably
60% or more traditionalrelationships and the rest to have
another component.
And, and sometimes the equityis relatively small.
(13:10):
It's, you know, it's just so,you know, and sometimes we, you know,
we have a model where we'll,you know, take a percentage of our
fee and have that turned intoequity in some way, you know, and
take, take some of our marginand do that.
And then the royalty stuff is,is always interesting.
It's.
We do, we do less of that.
(13:31):
It's a little challengingbecause, you know, you can.
When you're working on a pureroyalty, you can get all the way
through the development andthe thing doesn't go to market.
Right.
And so, you know, it's, it's.
It's pretty risky so that wehave certain things that we work
the way we work around that.
But we, but we, you know, hadsome huge success though, that were
(13:52):
just, you know, just, justsort of went through the roof.
So.
So we will do that.
But that's probably the, thelowest percentage I see.
When you're meeting a.
A potential new client,regardless of the deal that's structured,
do you have certain ruleswhere you say that's a red flag?
If we don't get that cleared,I'm not moving forward with them.
And it'd be great to hear fromyou because you have like 40 plus
(14:15):
years of experience.
And when we were still in theservice space, we would have to make
rules for our salespeoplebecause otherwise every job looked
like a great opportunity andwe were overwhelmed with the kinds
of things that wereopportunities that turned out to
be totally, totally lame.
Yeah, it's, you know, it'sreally, it's pretty simple.
It's almost always about the people.
Okay, right.
And who they are and whatthey're about, what they believe
(14:38):
in, what's their purpose andalso what they've done.
Right.
You know, if they've been ableto do it.
That's the primary thing wetend to look at.
I said that once.
I Think that, you know, moneyand a good idea are not extraordinary
assets.
Right.
Because people get out, getraise money and do that.
And there's a lot of goodideas out there.
(14:59):
It's really comes down to, youknow, do.
Does this individual and theirteam have the ability to execute
on this and do a, do a reallygood job, really.
And because that's, you know,we've had a lot of things we've worked
on that were really greatideas, but the, in the end, the team
on the other side justcouldn't do it.
(15:20):
Right.
And so you.
And, yeah, we got paid andeverything, but it's actually a huge
loss when you put two yearsinto something and there's a whole
opportunity cost of doingthat, but also just an emotional
cost.
Your team has just killedthemselves to make this thing happen.
And then, you know, the, thecompany working with just never had
(15:42):
the ability to actually beable to deliver it and make it successful.
So.
And, and, you know, throughthat, that, you know, all that experience
you mentioned, I think we'repretty good at, you know, figuring
out in the first couplemeetings whether, whether this group
is really going to be able todo it or not.
Is there anything you can tellus that you spot and it's kind of
tangible because there are alot of young people who are listening
(16:03):
to this who are like, that'sgreat, Robert.
You know, what they are.
But how do we know?
Well, I mean, there'scertainly, you know, I mean, honestly,
sometimes there's.
If there's an asshole factorthere, it's.
And it shows up early.
That's a big red flag.
Right?
You see, that is.
So, you know, it.
(16:25):
I think it's.
And it's, it's really tough to explain.
There's this combination ofexperience and confidence and intellect
combined with some humility.
Right.
That, that, that always is.
(16:45):
Is the combination that works, right?
Yes.
Sometimes arrogance can getyou a long way, but it almost always
blows up on people.
Right?
Yeah.
So we, we, we tend to look atthat and like, and it's just, again,
does anybody in this team haveexperience in actually delivering
a physical product?
(17:06):
That doesn't mean you can't,but if you don't.
But certainly it's going to bepainful and you're going to go through
a lot because it's, you know, it's.
So we had a really greatstartup that had amazing technology
and we invested a lot in it.
Ultimately, the leadershipteam hadn't.
They'd come from differentindustries and never really gone
(17:29):
through the process ofcreating and delivering A high volume
consumer electronics product.
And just as what happens indevelopment is as time goes on, the
amount of money you spend andthe cost of mistakes goes way, way
up.
(17:49):
Right.
And it'll cause people to freeze.
It's just like, you know, howam I going to pull the plug on, you
know, $3 million of tooling,you know, and you know, $2 million
to ramp up the product and soforth, you know, and I don't know
if it's going to be successfuland just like, and you know, it's,
that's, that fear thing comesup and then.
(18:10):
But if you've done it beforeand you've been through it, you know,
it's, and you have anexperienced team, it's much easier
to do that.
So yeah, it's been interestingfor me.
I mean, right.
I mean I've had a few clientsrecently where I'm sitting across
the table from six people thatare all 24 years and younger, right.
And developing a new piece ofAI hardware which is totally cool.
(18:34):
I mean really, really dig theenergy and so forth.
One of my red flags in thatsituation is if they start, if they're
discounting what I say, justbecause I've done it so much.
Right.
Which happens.
Oh no, man, we don't believethat shit.
We're going to know we'regoing to break all those rules.
You know, we're gonna, we'regonna, we're gonna do it our way
(18:54):
and that's gonna, you know,and you know, that's commendable.
But you just look at it so,you know, it's, they're not rules,
you know, it's, there's,there's some physics here.
Right, right.
It's just so, yeah, that,that's, that's always one of the
red flags we look for is like,okay, do you really know what you're
doing and, and, or, or atleast are you willing to learn?
Right?
(19:15):
Yeah.
That's pretty hilariousbecause there was a time in advertising
where there were so many youngpeople as creative directors and
art directors on the agencyside when, and we're on the production
side where if they use toomany buzzwords, we're out.
It's like it was just droppingjargon and buzzwords and just sounding
too self important and none ofthem know what, anything about what
(19:37):
they're doing at all.
So then we're like, yeah, thisis going to be a horrible process.
I'm not really that interestedin working with them.
Yeah.
And I guess the humility partis maybe we've all been there as
young people and thought, I'mgoing to change the world, I'm going
to break everything.
And then you get a little biton the other side of experience and
age and then you start torealize how foolish that all sounds.
Well, no, I think that initself is good and commendable, but
(20:01):
if you're going to putblinders on and not take in the information
that's available to you to besuccessful at that, then, then that,
then that's a big problem.
Right.
You know, it was having anenergy that's about, look, you know,
we're going to do thisdifferently and we're going to create
something amazing and this ishow we're going to do it.
But then when you say, well,okay, that's cool, we're with you,
(20:23):
let's make sure we do thesepieces, you get it right.
Nah, we don't need to do that.
You know, you know, we got, wehave software, we'll work around
that.
You know, I try very hard notto sound like, you know, the seasoned
veteran that's been there athousand times, you know.
Right.
I'm kind of reluctant to bringthis up, but you mentioned clients
(20:44):
who are a holes, and I knowthere was a stint that you spent
at Apple as director ofindustrial design and Steve Jobs
was not known as the nice guy.
He wanted what he wanted andhe was a bit of a tyrant.
I think if the stories aretrue, he's a little bit of an a hole.
What did you learn at yourtime at Apple?
Well, first of all, I didn'twork with Steve.
Okay.
I often, you know, one of myrunning jokes is I was between Jobs
(21:08):
when I was there, but I, but Idid work with my fair share of challenging,
opinionated people andcontinue to, you know, one of the
key things I think aboutworking with individuals like that
is, is do you respect them?
Right.
You know, because Steve, youwould respect.
(21:29):
Right.
There's no question about it.
Yeah, he's treating me like shit.
It was actually was that waywhen I was working with Jimmy Iovine.
Beats, you know, Jimmybrilliant, you know, unbelievable
businessman, producer, just,you know, really in many ways created
the, the popular music business.
(21:50):
Jimmy was a pain in the ass.
You know, he.
And he, you know, I would getthese calls at all hours, you know,
robert, what the fuck are you doing?
Or, you know, just yelling atme and.
But I finally realized,actually I read this interview with
him in Rolling Stone.
He was talking about how heworked with his musical artists and
how he drove them, and he wastreating me the exact same way.
(22:12):
And he just saw me as an artist.
An artist he was going to getthe best out of.
And so, you know, so I.
And I.
And as painful and difficultit was and sometimes confusing as
hell, I stuck with it becauseI really respected him and believed
in him.
Right.
And he was.
You know, most of the time, hewas right.
And he.
(22:33):
But, you know, at the sametime, he was loyal and.
And he would admit when youwere right and he wasn't.
But, you know, that.
That usually took.
Took a lot to get to that point.
So.
But, yeah, I think it's.
It's a question of whether you.
You respect those people, andwhen you don't and.
And they're.
They're in your face, you.
(22:54):
It becomes very difficult.
Right?
You.
You either have to pushthrough them or go around them or
figure out, you know, what youcan do, because a lot of times, you
know, your.
Your success, this.
This.
This a hole may be theimpediment to your own success.
So you have to figure it out.
Well, we're on the.
The topic of, like, iconicbrands and what was able to be accomplished
(23:18):
by Beats by Dre.
And I've heard the.
The long untold story abouthow it was Will I Am's idea, and
he shared it with somebody andshared it, and then it became this
thing, I thought, with.
I think he shared it with Dr.
Dre.
Do you know about thebackstory and the origin of all this
stuff?
You know, I.
I've actually not heard that one.
Okay.
(23:38):
I know from what I was, youknow, I was pretty much there on
not day zero, but day one.
Right.
Okay.
And the story that Jimmytells, which is a good one, that
Dre was originally approachedby Adidas to develop some sneakers.
(24:00):
Right.
And Jimmy had just gonethrough the process with Steve Jobs
of doing the U2 iPod, youknow, which.
I don't know if you remember that.
I do.
Yeah.
Which turned out to be really successful.
Yeah.
And he really enjoyed that.
And he had sort of got this,you know, this thing about, you know,
marrying artistry with technology.
And.
(24:20):
And so his story was when Drecame to him and said, you know, should
I be doing this thing with Adidas?
Jimmy said, fuck sneakers.
Let's do speakers.
That's a good line.
So I.
But I.
You know, while.
I know that that story hasbeen, you know, crafted in a way
to sound really cool, but I.
But I know from the.
From Jimmy's experience ofworking with Steve at Apple and.
(24:42):
And, you know, theirfoundational belief, you know, they're
you know, one of the thingsthat talk about greatness, you know,
I'm delivering greatness.
What happens is the leadershave a non negotiable purpose.
Right.
That's above financials.
Right.
And.
And for Jimmy and Dre.
For Dre, it was, you know,this idea.
I remember the first meeting,he said, people are not hearing my
(25:04):
music, you know, and what hemeant was.
And he said, they go out andlisten to it and these, these shitty
white earbuds, right?
Ironically, that white earbudcompany bought them.
But they.
But, you know, his thing was,look, you know, I spend an enormous
amount of time crafting a sound.
I know how it's supposed to sound.
(25:24):
It's not supposed to soundlike that.
So I want to.
I want to fix that.
And then, you know, Jimmy, hisbelief was, look, the music, the
even belief was in this.
The power of music and thepower of connection and the power.
The emotional qualities of it,you know, and so, you know, delivering
that in a way that, you know,his audience can experience.
(25:46):
So.
So those were the, you know,and when you listen to people, you
can tell what's, you know,what's been an embellished story
and what's real.
And those, those were realthings for them.
And so that, you know, so Itend to believe that, you know, this.
I don't know if, you know,will I am at that idea at the same
time or talk to him about, orbrainstormed about it.
You know, those things always,as time goes on, kind of take out,
(26:08):
develop a life of their own.
But I, you know, I believe theinception story really started with
Jimmy and Dre and seeing this opportunity.
You know, there's no highperformance audio brand for a young
market.
It just didn't exist.
So let's go do that.
I've heard Michael Margolissay this in his.
In our conversation.
He wrote the book story 10x.
He said something like aproduct or service.
(26:30):
That story is a commodity.
And from the outside, andplease correct me everywhere that
I'm wrong on this, is thatBeats was a product that needed a
good story, and Dre was that person.
He had such a personal brandthat he could attach it to something
like that with Jimmy Iovineand make something that was by a
lot of the criticism.
Okay, like, headphones look great.
(26:53):
Very iconic, but I think wasmade by Monster, another audio brand.
Monster was the partner originally.
Yes.
Yeah.
And Monster, very people knowabout, but Beats, they know a lot
about.
Yeah, yeah, no, that'sabsolutely true.
That's 100% true.
That you know, the storyattached to the product was the accelerant.
(27:15):
Right.
It just really pushed it andpushed it into the cultural conversation
right away.
And, yeah, that's just, youknow, I mean, I think, you know,
we did our part.
We really understood, youknow, the.
The whole idea of headphonesare hard inside, they're difficult.
And so they end up beingreally driven functionally through
(27:35):
all the things that make them successful.
Acoustics and reliability andadjustability and all that.
And so they end up with these being.
Having these mechanisms onyour head.
You know, where we saw, well,hey, this is.
This is actually wearable technology.
You know, how do we make itdesirable for people to wear?
They feel good about how theylook with it.
And.
And, yeah, iconic, right?
(27:56):
You can, you can.
You could.
From 25ft away, you can seethat product and what it is.
You know, so.
But without that, thatcultural conversation that Jimmy
and Dre were creating and theability to associate it with all
their friends and so forth, Imean, one of my favorite stories,
you've probably heard me saythis on other things, but I.
(28:19):
It's.
It's great that when we werelaunching the first product, we were
meeting at the ConsumerElectronics show in Las Vegas, and
I asked Jimmy, Jimmy, what'sthe marketing plan here?
What do we do with this to getthis thing out in the world?
And Robert, our marketingstrategy is a lot of people owe me
(28:40):
a lot of favors.
And it's true.
It's just like everybody heknew would wear the headphone, would
be seen with the headphone, bephotographed with the headphone.
Right?
And it just sort of builtthis, this, this momentum and association,
which, you know, the whole,you know, celebrity marketing thing
has been done, but I thinkit's been done differently.
And, and honestly, I wasthere, the individuals who were involved
(29:02):
in the brand, it wasn't just apay for play thing.
You know, they reallyrespected Jimmy and they loved the
product.
And yes, some were involvedfinancially, a lot of work weren't.
And.
And so, you know, it was justbecame this sort of, again, this
and that.
That is a transformative thing.
Right?
When you put those headphoneson and you feel this connection to
(29:22):
Dre or Will I am, or Lady Gagaor whoever, Right?
That is a transformative thingfor people.
It's just extremely powerful.
Yeah, I think it was one ofthose cases where the right influencers
really move the culture.
And once you saw your heroes,these artists that you respect and
love and live by, and they'reseen with these things that just,
(29:43):
you know, you're One.
One tiny little step closer tothem by having the product.
I went to our center and I, I was.
I found a lot of kinship withthe people in the industrial design
program.
They worked the hardest andhad incredible craftsmanship, like
drafting skills, and I couldsee that.
And a fairly typical thing todo is to always criticize the generation
coming after you as not ascapable and not as good.
(30:06):
I thought this must be goingon forever because it's always like,
it was better in my day.
And now, having said that, doyou think that over the last couple
of decades that craft has beenlost a little bit in.
In the way that we learn, inthe way that we practice?
Yes.
It's also different.
Yeah.
You know, there's certain.
And when I look at the way wedo things versus the way.
When I started, I worked on adrafting machine and with an HP calculator.
(30:30):
Right.
And.
And math was a big part of my job.
I mean, I had to know how togeometrically describe things.
And all that has been fullyautomated now.
And the beauty is you can takeall that time and put it somewhere
else.
So our process involves reallyadvanced CAD tools, advanced visualization
(30:55):
tools, 3D printing.
We're now doing more AI toolsand higher degree of automation.
But there's still this threadthat runs through about, you know,
iterating and playing with andtweaking and doing all these things
that you do just to, you know,to get it in its best possible shape.
That's.
That those are things that alot of people don't agree with me,
(31:17):
I don't think can be automated.
You know, it's.
It's a very human pursuit.
And so that.
That still exists.
Now, the one thing I do and.
And I think our studiosreflects this, that, you know, I.
My.
My formative years in mycareer, I worked a lot with my hands.
I mean, made stuff.
I went out in the shop myself,cut out the material, shaped it,
(31:40):
painted it, did everything right.
And there was, I think, animportant part of that, that sort
of visceral aspect of workingwith the thing you're making and
constructing and so forth,that sometimes gets lost because
we're working in.
Working on screen in 3D, we'redoing prints and so forth, but that.
That same sort of, you know,really understanding what a, you
(32:02):
know, two and a halfmillimeter radius looks like and
how I make it and so forth,you know, and the tangencies and
all the things, you know, you do.
So I do.
You know, that's why we have ashop and that's why we Continue impressing
people that go out and makethat right, let's go out and build
that.
Because I think it's, it's.
While it may not be asnecessary as it used to be, you know,
(32:23):
from a technical point ofview, it's certainly from, I think
a process and learning pointof view really a really valuable
thing and shouldn't be let go of.
It seems like all thedesigners I really respect and look
up to make a strong pointabout getting your hands in it, prototyping
and testing.
Because one thing that wedon't get on the screen is a sense
of scale, even in simple print terms.
(32:44):
So I'm going to do a beautifullayout and the first thing I'll say
is, have you printed that out yet?
Because can you even read that?
Because on screen you couldzoom in and zoom in, it's not a problem.
And when they print it out,it's like, yeah, I might be getting
old, but you know, I don'tthink normal person can read this.
Given that it's four point type.
It doesn't make sense.
And when you see how fabricmoves or the way it feels against
your skin, there's somethingto be said about just being able
(33:06):
to hold something.
The physicality part of it.
Yeah.
The amount of learning thathappens in that is incredible.
And again, it can't, it can'tbe duplicated.
Of actually getting thisactual representation at scale of
what you're doing, sitting infront of it, testing it, showing
it to other people, lettingthem see if they can do it right,
all those things right.
You can't do that.
And yeah, it's always amazingto me how still something looks good
(33:31):
on screen, rotating the model.
It's beautiful.
We run the prints and you getit and it's proportionately wrong.
You can't see it on the screenuntil you get it and hold it or put
it on someone's head.
In the remaining minutes thatwe have together, I want to kind
of tee you up for this question.
Years ago, I read this articlein Wired magazine and it affected
(33:53):
me in a lot of different ways.
It was titled something theGood Enough Revolution, where there
was a time and age when wewanted the very best of everything.
But if it's good enough andit's cheaper and easier to use, has
higher utility, it's good enough.
The example they talked aboutin the article was drones replacing
fighter jets.
A, if a drone goes down, noone dies.
B, they can have a, like anairplane in the air 24,7 to be able
(34:16):
to deploy at any point butthat seems to be going right up against
this idea of making greatthings and why doing something really
well, why great design can getpeople to love your company or tell
a story.
Where do you net out on that?
Well, you know, it's.
We talk about this for an hour probably.
(34:36):
You know, there's, there's alot, a lot in there you're talking
about.
I mean, one thing that I thinkis really important about things,
products, objects, physicalthings, it goes to a lot of things
is there.
I mean, it's one of thereasons I got in this profession
was I found it fascinating therelationship that people have with
(34:57):
things, right?
Beyond objects and theattachment of you mentioned stories
and emotions.
And they use it to define whothey are.
Right.
In many ways.
And so it's a reallyinteresting relationship and that,
you know, and I think part ofwhat's behind that is, especially
(35:18):
today is that, you know,people ultimately want to connect
with other people.
Right?
Ultimately there's a lot whenyou step back and look at so many
things and go on society hasto do with connecting and yet we're
getting further and furtheraway from people, right, in terms
of the way we communicate andso forth.
So, you know, for me, when youget a product and it, and it feels
(35:40):
a certain way and it does ajob really well and you know, I start
thinking about the person whospent the time to figure this out.
Literally for me, right,there's, there's a connection that
occurs, you know, with someoneelse, unknown individual out there
that spent the time to, to getthe experience you're having, right?
And so I think that's, that'sa really important thing that for
(36:03):
me is going to keep this sortof automation in check about what
we do, because I don't thinkthat's something that can be.
But yeah, the, the, the thingabout, you know, talking about mediocrity
and, you know, this, this, youknow, this sort of good enough and
fear of failure is that, youknow, honestly, the mediocrity can
(36:24):
cost you more than any failureever could.
It's, it's.
People don't realize this sortof, I'm just going to be safe.
I was talking about easier,you know, and, you know, and greatness
doesn't come easy.
You know, it isn't packaged orpolished or perfect.
It asks for sweat and effortand then sometimes pain, you know,
it asks you to stand in thefire, right, when you could, you
(36:46):
know, be in the shade of mediocrity.
So it's, you know, and, andit's not about Perfection.
And it's not about grindinguntil you break it.
It's about breaking free fromthis trap of good enough.
And, and that's, that's thething that I, I, I really get disconcerted
about when it's, you have thissort of pervasive idea that you know
(37:09):
it's good enough, you knowit's, it's pretty good.
So let's, let's be happy withthat and move forward when that's,
that's always going to be abarrier to doing more.
Right.
So I think that when talk alot about AI and they said we use
it quite a bit in sort ofautomation the tasks.
And for example, we used tospend, we actually got really good
(37:34):
at building contextual imagesof sort of using combining 3D CAD
and Photoshop and some othertools and dropping something into
reality in the photograph thatlooked like reality and you couldn't
tell.
And it was a big part of ourprocess and we built up a really
great skill at that.
(37:54):
All gone.
Right.
So don't need it anymore.
But like I said, that freesyou up to do something else.
So that's grabbing and usingthese tools.
But you can see it in terms oflike some of the, when we were using,
using Mid Journey and reallyusing prompts to develop concepts
(38:14):
and they're never right, youknow, they're, but they're, they're
good sort of provocative things.
But, you know, you can seethat tool's going to get better and
better and it'll be much moreresponsive to the prompts you put
in and be able to produce things.
But, you know, I don't believethey'll ever hit that level of connectivity
and greatness that anindividual sweating and grinding
(38:36):
to get it just right will.
Right.
And so that's something.
And not everybody agrees withme on that, but I have a hard time
believing that we're going tobe able to just design products via
the prompts now.
That said, I do believe ourrole is moving a little more towards
producer, editor, directorthan more of that than it used to
(39:00):
be, which I'm totally coolwith because I think that's pretty
much what I do right now anyway.
And so, but I still think, Iguess, that the human, human part
of the equation is not goingto evaporate.
As you're working on a project.
How do you know you reach thatpoint where it feels like it's time
to stop?
This is, this is great.
You know, that is one of thebiggest skills experience gives you
(39:25):
because, yeah, I mean, it'shard to stop designing.
Right.
It's hard to start, you know,when you sort of get this point and
you think, I could just be alittle better.
And that was, I mentionedearlier, this notion of seeing, you
know, how.
Helping my team see the right tree.
Right.
Not just the forest, but.
No, this is the right treebecause you can be right in front
of people.
But yeah, it is.
(39:46):
It's an important thing.
It's like there's a certainpoint where, you know, if you keep
investing in something, youstart to move away from that purity
of an idea you had.
Right.
And you keep tweaking andtweaking and tweaking and tweaking.
So it is important to knowwhen to stop.
And again.
But I think that comes from,actually, that comes from the school
(40:07):
of screwing stuff up becauseyou went too far.
You still realize, all right,it's time to stop and let's move
forward.
And, and there's another thingthat I think is a problem in what
we do is that not everybodywill agree with me of this.
But I, you know, sometimesit's important to get something out
into the world, even if it'snot exactly the, you know, quite
(40:30):
what you wanted.
Right, right.
Because.
Because sometimes that, thattaking that time to do it will.
You lose the opportunity.
But probably more importantly,you learn so much when you put a
product out there.
And, and, and I've seen again,again, the research that version
1.2 of something always doesexponentially better than version
(40:52):
1.
Right.
Because, you know, you're ableto really learn and learn, you know,
what, what, what, what isworking out in the world.
And, and you'll always besurprised by that.
You think you got it allfigured out and you put something
out and, and, and you, andthere's so much that you either missed
or misunderstood or there'ssomething that new that's happened
that's changed that.
It's such a tricky positionfor creative people to be in whatever
(41:14):
your discipline is, becausethere's this thing where we want
to make something perfect.
Maybe that's not possible, butwe try to, and then we never release
anything.
So we don't have theopportunity to learn from that first
iteration and be able yet.
We also don't want to releasesomething prematurely because it
can create a lot of waste inthe world.
Wasted paper, wastedmaterials, and wind up in the landfill.
(41:37):
That feels really irresponsible.
So there's just this verynarrow window that you got to just
hit and it's not easy to do.
Otherwise everyone would be great.
I remember when I was a lotyounger, and I was working for somebody.
I was just working onsomething like, I don't know what
the finish line looks like, soI have to show someone.
And they're like, yeah, youdid it, or you actually overworked
(41:58):
it.
And that's another problem too.
You just, you overworked it.
Now it feels very contrived orjust unnecessary at some point.
And it's, it's not an easy thing.
This creative path that we all choose.
Do you have anything that youcan share to someone who might be
in their early to mid-20s,who's just, like, out in the world,
and how do they savethemselves from some of this pain?
(42:19):
Robert?
Well, you're going to gothrough it and learn.
I mean, that's the first thingis like, you know, really everything
is a learning experience.
So if it, if it doesn't goexactly you want, where you want
it, don't beat yourself upabout it.
Learn and move on.
Right.
Because you don't want to getinto this sort of paralysis, you
(42:40):
know, because I, I don't wantto take any risk because I didn't
do it.
Right.
And then, you know, I, I, Iwould say, you know, as far as sort
of getting a design to a pointand deciding when it's good enough
is, is have, have a group ofpeople that you really respect to
help you with that, you know,because it always, and I have the
(43:00):
same problem.
My nose gets too close to it, right.
And you just, you can't see it.
So, you know, and I, I reallyrespect my team.
You know, one of my, early inmy career, someone told me this thing
which stuck with me is you'reonly as strong as the backs of the
people who carry you, right.
And hire people that arebetter than you hire.
And I think it sometimessurprises my team, you know, with
(43:22):
some modern staff designer,you know, been doing it for four
years.
And like, I mean, what do youthink of this?
You think this is a good idea?
And they're like, what?
But, you know, I think, youknow, getting impact, input from
the people you respect is, isreally helpful.
And, and then also the thingthat goes with that, though, is you
don't have to always taketheir input either.
Right.
You can judge whether, okay,that's valid or not.
(43:44):
Yeah.
But I think exposing an ideato people that you trust and respect
is really important.
And then just, just go withit, Go with your gut instinct is,
is, you know, is always areally important part of the process.
Wonderful.
Before I let you go, I justhave a couple of Quick questions
for you.
Kind of rapid firestyle, ifyou don't mind.
(44:06):
All right, let's do it.
As an industrial designer andperson who champions craft, what
are some objects that you justreally love because of how they're
made or the process of the story?
I always hate questions likethis because, you know, I just go
blank.
Yeah, well, I can help you.
Like, are there certain kindsof clothing brands that you love?
(44:26):
Or, you know, my.
My clothing brands are.
Tend to be rag and bone in theory.
You know, I just love it.
You know, clean, you know,sophisticated, but not pretentious.
You know, kind of feel of it.
I.
You know, that.
That's kind of.
Kind of me.
I.
You know, objects like, I.
(44:46):
There's.
There's a.
There's a number of them thatI just continue to look at and I'm
amazed by.
So one of them is, which I.
I've owned this thing for, Iwould say at least 35 years, is a
TZO lamp by Richard Sapper, Right.
Which is a.
Is a design classic.
Right.
So there's no.
No doubt Iran, you know, butit's one of those things.
(45:08):
Every time I look at it, I'mjust fascinated by the mechanism
and how it moves and how it'ssculptural and, you know, the.
The way that it's.
It's so.
It's.
It's almost alive.
Right.
So there's things like that.
I.
I've always been a Porsche 911maniac, so those machines, you know,
that I've had and I have onenow, I just.
(45:30):
And it's beyond the, you know,that there's, of course, the sort
of visceral excitement ofdriving the vehicle and the connection
to the road, but it's justsuch a great machine and it's.
And I just am always enjoyingthat, you know, and the fact that
I can.
I can hear the engine, I cansmell the engine right.
When I'm in the car.
Right.
(45:50):
Stuff like that.
Can I.
Can I just pause you there andask you about automobiles real quick?
Are you a fan of Aston Martin's?
Not the recent ones.
And in the past, like, whenyou go back to the DB7 was just like
an amazing, amazing vehicle.
Craftsmanship is incredible.
I think they've kind of lost alittle bit on aesthetics, because
I talked.
To Jason Freed about this.
He says, whether you love himor not, the thing you respect is
(46:13):
there's nothing that's decorative.
Everything that you see, if itlooks like wood is made from wood,
if it looks like metal, madefrom metal.
And he appreciates that a lot.
Yeah.
Well, if you look at that,that the cars that they did especially
like, you know, 15 years ago,the impact that those vehicles had
on the automotive industry.
You see it, those forms everywhere.
(46:35):
Yeah, they're just really,really, really, really amazing.
Okay, here's what we're gonna do.
I'm gonna ask you like six orseven categories.
You just say anything.
It doesn't matter.
Okay.
We'll get, we'll get to keepthis short.
I'm nervous on time here.
Okay.
Favorite chair?
The chair.
Go ahead.
See, is this the industrialdesigner who draws a blank when asked
(46:58):
about industrial design?
Well, no, many.
Well, I mean, I have my Ameslounge chair, which is again, in
the classic.
But there's the low pad chairthat I love as well.
A shelving system.
Oh, behind me.
I don't know if this easy shelving.
It's actually a factory shelving.
It's all made out of anodized aluminum.
(47:19):
It's beautiful.
I put that in like a number ofoffices and homes too.
Wonderful.
Your favorite drawing instrument?
Oh, you know, my, my.
A uni pin fine line 0.5.
I buy them by the dozens.
This is a.
You're talking about uni ball.
Yeah, no, it's, it's the fine lines.
The fine tip.
(47:39):
One.
The fine tip.
A musical device.
Could be a stereo system, itcould be speakers, it could be headphones,
whatever.
You know, it's, it's, it's abit self serving, but my, my current
iteration of the Beats pill.
Okay.
Just love it.
Just take it everywhere.
A timepiece.
Oh, I have a, A ratto watch.
(48:03):
You know, this ceramic watchthat I don't wear that much, but
it's just so beautiful.
And that finish is perfect.
Here's the last one.
An eyeglass company.
Oh, Matsunaga.
Well, because I wear them andI bought like four frames from them.
It's great.
Oh, wonderful, Robert.
It was, it was amazing to talkto you and kind of get your perspective
on design.
(48:24):
I know we could have gone downthe rabbit hole of AI, but that seems
to be the topic du jour.
And that's all fine.
And you know, if people, ifpeople want to find out more about
what you're doing, youradventures and what you're up to.
Where should we send them?
Probably the best place is.
So my Instagram is Robert Ebrenner.
(48:45):
Robert D.
Brenner.
And then, and then Ammunitionis at.
Ammunition Group is typicallywhere you'll see the most current
stuff popping up.
And, and you can always DM methrough it.
If you want to get a hold of me.
Well, thanks very much fordoing this with me.
Oh, it's fantastic, Chris.
I loved it, Sam.
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