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Dan Harden: Form follows emotion—industrial design lessons from George Nelson to Steve Jobs
01:08:36
We spoke with Dan Harden about what he learned from George Nelson, Henry Dreyfuss, Steve Jobs, and influential companies like Frog design in the early days, and also about how he started his own design consultancy, Whipsaw, which has gone on to win over 300 awards over 700 patents.
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- [00:01]
Dan Harden
Creating goodness is hard to do. I think a lot of designers have forgotten that what people really want are products that touch their lives in meaningful ways. That provides some form of excellence that solves a problem, maybe even makes them laugh or feel more connected with one another, where it's not the object that you're designing, but it's the experience that you are presenting to an end user that brings people together.
- [00:28]
Eli Woolery
If you were mapping out the most amazing career in industrial design, you might dream of working with George Nelson, Henry Dreyfuss, Steve Jobs, and influential companies like Frog Design. In the early days, it seems impossible that one person could have such a career, but Dan Harden has done all of this and more.
- [00:45]
Aaron Walter
We spoke with Dan about what he learned from these iconic people and companies, and also about how he started his own design consultancy called Whipsaw, which has gone on to win over 300 awards and 700 patents. Dan also shared what George Nelson was up to when he disappeared into his private bathroom at the end of each workday it is not what you think.
- [01:08]
Eli Woolery
This is DesignBetter, where we explore creativity at the intersection of design and technology. I'm Eli Woolery.
- [01:14]
Aaron Walter
And I'm Aaron Walter. At DesignBetter, our primary mission is to produce work that helps people like you refine your craft, improve your collaboration skills, and get inspired by the creative process of others. If you enjoy what we do here, the best way to support us is to become a Premium subscriber@designbetterpodcast.com subscribe. We'll return to the conversation after this quick break.
- [01:52]
Unknown
The number one reasons designers leave a job is they feel they're just not growing. Great educational resources are essential to retain and nurture talent. That's why we've created Design Better for teams to inspire you and your colleagues growth in craft, creativity and the art of collaboration. With a teams account, you and your whole team will get access to weekly ad free episodes. That's four episodes a month that inspire and Inform, released every Tuesday. You'll get invitations to our monthly AMA events where your team can ask questions directly to our former guests and industry experts. Plus, you'll all get recordings to every past AMA we've ever done. You'll get access to the Design Better library of books covering foundational concepts like Principles of Product Design and Design Thinking methodologies. And you'll receive our monthly newsletter, the Brief that compiles the salient insights, quotes, readings and creative processes processes that we've uncovered on the show in our conversations with experts. And you'll get early and discounted access to our workshops, like our popular AI and design thinking workshop. Your team will learn typography from Jonathan Heffler and Ellen Lupton, design history from Paola Antonelli and Paula Schur. They'll learn creative collaboration from Ed Catmull and John Cleese. They'll learn design leadership from Kate Aronowitz. They'll learn about prototyping from David Sedaris and Tony Fadell. Design systems from Eileen Fisher and Brad Frost. They'll learn about AI and creativity from John Maeda and interface design from Matt D. Smith. If that sounds interesting, to learn more, just visit DBTR Co Teams. That's DBTR Co Teams to get your team the educational enrichment they deserve.
- [03:39]
Aaron Walter
And now back to the show.
- [03:46]
Eli Woolery
Dan Harden, welcome to the Design Better podcast.
- [03:49]
Dan Harden
Honey. It's great to be on here.
- [03:51]
Eli Woolery
We're very excited. I'm especially excited because we happen to be pretty good friends and I'll set the stage a little bit and also hopefully not embarrass us too much with some stories, but we first met over Zoom through a mutual friend, Bill Burnett, and we brought you into class over Zoom for a guest lecture for our students, which I really enjoyed. And then a number of years later, we met down here locally where we both happen to have homes in Carmel. And a mutual friend of ours sort of got us together, fellow named Paul Wild, who designs aircraft interiors. And very nerdily, we started this kind of regular get together which he calls the Jedi Council. But I really enjoy our little group of designers down here and talking about work and design and other fun stuff.
- [04:38]
Dan Harden
It's a true Council and we talk about profound things in between drinks, so it's not embarrassing at all. I think everybody needs a Jedi Council.
- [04:48]
Eli Woolery
Absolutely. Absolutely.
- [04:49]
Dan Harden
Nice.
- [04:49]
Aaron Walter
The profundity grows as the drinks. That's right.
- [04:53]
Eli Woolery
Yeah, exactly.
- [04:55]
Dan Harden
Now we don't go so far as to dress up. That would be too much.
- [04:59]
Eli Woolery
True. Paul might be the only one that could accomplish that, just given he has some Jedi wardrobe. Well, let's start off with. So folks who aren't familiar with you, we'd love to kind of explore the arc of your career. And you started your career out in some interesting places, interning at HP and at George Nelson. So let's start back there. Dan Harden as a young designer and his first internships. Tell us about those.
- [05:24]
Dan Harden
Oh, man, those early internships were formable in so many different ways to who I became. Even as a teenager, I was sketching, drawing, painting. I had this feeling that I wanted to be a designer, but I didn't really know what a designer was. You know, who does when you're a teenager, know what they really want. But it was obvious that I needed to go to design school. And I chose a design school, Cincinnati, where they had these co op programs, which I really found to be the best part of that school. Because here I was able to finally point my feelings and my talents towards something that was like, had a purpose. So my first internship was at Richardson Smith. That was like a really cool design firm back in, oh my gosh, 70s and 80s, they were kind of hot. And here I was among a group of probably 25 or 30 people. They were very focused and just really going way in on a limb, just really pushing. It just seemed to me like, well, that's of course what design should be doing. It felt very natural to me even at that young age where I didn't really know anything about design. And remarkably, when I look back at that experience, it's like, wow, they had it right way back then. It's kind of how we run the company here still. But so many firms and corporations don't do that. So it was a great way to establish a set of design values when I was very young. So that kind of like set the mold for me back then. It was very team oriented, but lots of talent in that organization. Went back to school, then went back to another internship, worked at George Nelson, you know, the grandmaster of furniture design. He was an interesting character, hard to talk to. You know, I was just a kid in the office. So the beautiful thing there is I found a way to connect with George Nelson. He wasn't part of, like, the daily projects. He wasn't the kind of boss that would come around and sit down with you and work with designers the way that I do here. He was hard to reach, so. But I noticed he would disappear every day around 4:00. Like, I've gotta. I gotta find out what this guy is all about. So I followed him. We were on the 18th floor on Park Avenue, on this really cool old building, and he was going into this giant restroom, this pink granite restroom to access his cigarettes and his coffee machine that his wife, who was the office manager, would never let him touch. He had them hidden in the bathroom. He literally pulled a coffee maker out from behind the toilet from this, you know, the 18th floor restroom. So I followed him in there and he was. He was an interesting character. So my first view, which I have still stuck in my bind, was him standing at the window that overlooks Gramercy Park. And he's sipping a coffee and smoking a cigarette. I see his knobby profile. And he was kind of a grumbly old guy, so he. He liked to complain about a lot of things. And so I kind of, you know, gently start a conversation with him. And we ended up being really good friends because I went to the restroom with him, which is really weird, I know, at 4:00 in the afternoon because I knew his schedule. And we would just talk about design philosophy at the window overlooking Gramercy Park. And he would talk to me about how he started the Herman Miller design group and working with Charles Eames and what design really meant to him. And I remember being at that age, you know, you don't see the evils of the world quite yet. So I was so optimistic about design. Design could do no wrong. But George kind of like shook me into a new reality. He's like, are you kidding? Look at, look at this stuff. Look out the window. Most of what you're looking at is crap. That's his word. And he was complaining about clients that didn't understand what excellence meant. He still had a joy of design within him, but I think a life of design. By now he was pretty old. But anyway, I learned some great lessons that I. I still sometimes reflect on because he was so thoughtful and so down to earth and full of wisdom. And at that age, you know, when I was 20, it was such a great influence and he warned me about big corporations. So when he warned me about big corporations, I was like, well, I have to try that too. So my third internship at three of three was in hp, which was a great experience, but it was very big and corporate and bureaucratic. And I recognized then that I really don't want to be a corporate designer. So I decided right then and there, before I even graduated from college, I want to be a design consultant. That was very influential, too.
- [10:11]
Aaron Walter
Having that, you know, it's interesting having this formative experience with somebody like George Nelson. You know, you're 20, he's 80. He's had this amazing career. If you look at the body of his work, though, there's a cohesion and certainly philosophy that is foundational to everything he did. I'm curious what you took from him, either literally hearing him talk about it, or as a young man looking at that work. What were those philosophical things that you carry with you today?
- [10:45]
Dan Harden
I think the strongest thing he gave me was two things. One is always think about the end user. What's going on? What are they feeling? What are their issues? What are they thinking. And the other is the importance of designing products with relevance and meaning. And if you as a designer don't feel like the thing that you're working on even deserves to exist, then don't do it. He had strong principles. I think if I was to meet him now, I would. Well, one is I would thank him for that advice. And the other is I have such a deeper appreciation now. Having worked for my God, 40 years as a designer, I've come around to get to a pretty similar way of thinking. And I think there is a string of conscience through the work that I do and my team does. We try to do work that does have a purpose, that does touch people in a way that has a lot of empathy and just goodness. Just creating goodness is hard to do. I think a lot of designers have forgotten that because we are charged with so many things from our client, your patron who says, you know, we really need to sell more product, we need to increase our brand awareness. They sometimes forget that what people really want are products to touch their lives in meaningful ways. That provides some form of excellence that solves a problem and maybe even makes them laugh or feel more connected with one another. Where it's not the object that you're designing, but it's the experience that you are presenting to an end user that brings people together. A lot of what you see in George Nelson's work, there's a lot of that he had a sense of humor, especially when he was a younger designer. If you see some, you know, his coconut chair, you know, it's like ridiculous, right? Yeah.
- [12:30]
Aaron Walter
And his clocks and yeah, there's a great deal of whimsy and humor to his design language. Just want to point out one thing though, dan. So many 20 year olds at an internship like that would have been happy to just have like, hey, I'm here, I'm working in this environment. And then there's another level, which is to have the chutzpah to go track down the person who can impart all of that wisdom. That's what leads to success. I think for a lot of people that many of us don't recognize, that's so very true.
- [13:03]
Dan Harden
Especially for designers, I think it's important to just get out there. You have to just try things and you can't be afraid. There are so many designers that I worked with in my career, they're born introverts. I think we're all, you know, there's no such thing as just a binary. You're an introvert or an extrovert. I don't believe that. But, boy, I'll tell you, I remember being this curious kid that dreamed a lot, that was drawing a lot. It was my dad who would always say, hey, Dan, you know, don't forget, like, one walk up to the. I was like, 4 years old. Walk up. I'm going to introduce you to one of my colleagues. I'm going to walk up to shake his hand. Squeeze it as hard as you can. My dad was just so full of life like that, and I learned that from him. So it's like, wow, I'm working with George Nelson. Even though he wasn't that friendly, I felt like I have to get to the core of this man. And what's ironic is there's so many people that work there. Other people even, like his vice president. I don't know if he even was able to reach that personal level because, you know, designers get kind of too proud of themselves or their work or something, and so they don't feel like they can ask the simple question of like, hey, George, what makes you tick? What should I be worrying about as a designer? Where's the future of design going? You know, all these real, I think, important questions, especially to me at that age. Yeah. And I was just a sponge man. I wanted to learn it all. I'm still that way. It's just like, we get a new client in the office that we know nothing about their product, and I'll be like the first guy at the table just saying, well, how does this work? What's going on here? You have to get out your mental crowbar and just be bold enough to just really ask hard questions. And it's okay to act stupid or ask dumb questions that you get the smartest answer from the dumbest questions.
- [14:43]
Eli Woolery
Dan, let's keep walking through your career here a little bit because it's a really interesting kind of like, stepwise journey through design history for folks maybe out there who are, like, interested in design history or haven't learned their design history. So from George Nelson, you went to Henry Dreyfus, which is another very historic name in the design world, and then on to Frog Design with Hartmut Desslinger, who is another very kind of seminal figure in design and has worked with Apple and other companies. So maybe just walk us a little bit through that journey and some of the things you learned there.
- [15:18]
Dan Harden
Yeah, actually, during school and all those internships, I just talked about the kind of design that I was most interested in was almost all from Europe. I loved Italian design. You know, I was looking at work from Mario Bellini and Ettore Sot says the work they were doing for Olivetti, I was looking at Dieter Rams, of course, in Germany. So all of my internships offered me a full time job. And everybody was so surprised when I turned them all down, especially HP because they were paying so much money back then and they had great. Right. Who would turn down a job from hp. But I was just too curious. Again, staying very true to my values of having the desire to constantly learn and grow. I had that ambition at a young age. So I actually put my portfolio in a backpack and went to Europe and lived there for a year and met a lot of my design heroes. And I worked at a small firm called Dolphin Design, doing design for Mercedes Benz and BMW. They were like a little tiny firm. But I knew that that firm was not my future. I wasn't happy in this little tiny company. But at the time I took a bus down to Altensteig to meet these crazy guys in the Black Forest named Esslinger Design. This was before it changed to Frog Design. So I had an informational interview and Hartman and I just really got along. I was like, this guy's cool, he's interesting, he's unusual, he's different. And the Germans didn't really know what to do with it. The other German designers did, you know. Well, he was an out flyer. You don't want to go down there. They told me, you don't want to get on a bus and go down there. But I was like, that made it more intriguing to me. Anyway, at that time he said, well, I just met this guy named Steve Jobs and we're eventually going to set up an office in California. You might want us to do some work for his company, Apple. Do you know them? I'm like, well, of course I do. Yeah, you know, I'm the United from the United States. And he said, well, let's stay in touch. So I came back to the United States feeling like I missed the United States. If you live in Germany for a year, you kind of get as a designer, especially as a kind of a hyper creative type. They're very organized and very structured in their methodology. And I didn't feel like that was quite me. So I went back to the United States and landed a job at Dreyfus. My first day back in New York City, I wanted to go back to New York because I had this experience with George Nelson. So I love New York. And I would occasionally write Hartman a note to stay in touch with him. But I was Working for about five years at Dreyfus, that was a great experience. I mean, here's a company, they had Polaroid, AT&T, John Deere, American Airlines, Hyster, American Safety Razor, all these different professional corporations. For a consultancy to have these clients on their roster, I felt like this is my opportunity to learn the business side of design. Not only do good design work there, but to really understand how to write a great proposal, how to sell myself and sell design. That's a whole bunch of podcasts right there. Wonderful experiences there. I designed a lot of products for AT&T and Polaroid. And I worked on the very first digital camera when I was working there for Polaroid. Interesting enough, it wasn't a Japanese company, it was Polaroid who did that. And I kept in the back of my mind, it just was like a little bell that would go off every couple of weeks. There was that firm in Germany that I really liked. And all of a sudden it was about. Well, in the mid-80s, the whole snow White line of Apple products was announced and on the placed on the back page of ID magazine. It was a magazine that was in the United States a while ago. It's what we all looked at. And at first you wouldn't look at the front cover. You look at the back cover, ID magazine first, because that's where the ad was for Frog Design. And I'm like, wait a minute. These guys, they're fantastic. I know them. I met them when I was working in Germany. So I eventually called up Hartman, I said, hey, I want to come out and talk again. So he's like, man, where you been? We need you. So that was 1989. So I came out to Frog and man, that was like. If you've ever been in the elevator at Empire State Building, it's a high speed elevator, man. You jump on it, you're up there. So like day one, here I am. I moved across from New York to California. Day one of Frog Design, Hartman comes over to my desk. I'll never forget this, dad, welcome. Here are your clients that I want you to work with. You're going to be working with per Luigi Zappacosta. He's a founder of this company called Logitech. And here's his email, here's his number. We're going to have you run Sun Microsystems. So here's Andy Bechtelsheim's number. So you're going to be designing all these computers. And we want you on next. The next computer account. That's Steve Jobs, right? So here's Steve's number. So we need you to meet him every Friday. Logitech were meeting every Tuesday, and Sun. We met every couple of weeks. So it was just like, boom. Here I was on a trajectory that I felt this was really the company where I fit the most in that firm. There was this slogan, form fellows Emotion. I don't think anybody at the time really knew what exactly that meant, but what it was to me was kind of a green light to experiment, to try some different things that appealed maybe more to our emotions than our practical mental side. And the work showed. You'd look at some of the Frog work if you looked at, like, early Frog Vega televisions or the Trebell shower head or the Froller Skates, they were called. It had a joy that I so related to. And I knew as a designer, that's what I like to do, that's what I'm good at. So I just jumped right in. And I had a blast building that team. He gave me a lot of freedom. He named me the creative director after about, oh, gosh, it wasn't long, a few months. I mean, two years after that, maybe a year after that, he named me the vice president. I was like, wait a minute. I'm only 30 years old. Are you sure you want to name the vp? But, you know, I was. I was really just so passionate. I still am. And it was a great time. I ended up being there for 10 years. I still think it was the golden years, the 90s, for frog. We just really were able to get a lot together. It was a really good team. I think the fact that Hartman and I and Patricia, his wife, you know, we all got along really well, and we were able to reform a vision for the company. So it kind of became like the new Frog design, and we got a lot smarter. We refined the business. We were able to give it some structure. I remember all that training that I had at Dreyfus on the business side of design. I was also able to influence Frog in that way, I think in a positive way. We got more organized. We weren't pissing off all the clients all the time. You know, I witnessed crazy things working with Hartman, just, you know, where he would fire the client for saying something against design. It was, like, almost over principled. But I loved him for that because it was like, wow, he really believes in what we're doing and that kind of conviction and his guts. I remember just thinking, man, I was raised in the Midwest, taught to be nice to people, taught to be balanced and, you know, Think about resolution all the time. And he was very emotional German guy, which is already like, doesn't quite fit, right. And he would just say the craziest stuff to clients. And yet he was able to, I think, uncover the truth in doing so. It kind of rocked some of those clients and it forced them to think about their own predicament as a company that's being forced into a new kind of change that design was ushering in. And it was effective. It was somehow effective.
- [23:32]
Eli Woolery
I want to just rewind for a second to the next computer. I first encountered one. I was an undergrad studying design at Stanford. It was in a computer lab. Here's this cube sitting on the desk and a monitor attached to it. And this was mid-90s. And I think that early, you know, at least one version of it still had a black and white, like high definition black and white monitor. Like, huh, this is interesting. I'm not sure how this is going to work, but I played around with it and I could see the care put into the design of this object. Also, kind of famously, it has a magnesium case that I think Lawrence Livermore Labs did a controlled burn to see if they could light it on fire. I don't know if you remember it happening, but maybe tell us a little bit about the story of working on the next computer with Steve Jobs, because I'm sure there were some interesting interactions there.
- [24:20]
Dan Harden
What's so funny about him is. Well, my first meeting, I went into this big conference room, very first time that I met him at Next, even though he had seen him speak when I was working at hp, I saw him speak at the Stanford Design Conference. So I went in this big meeting room and there were maybe 15 or 20 people in there and Steve Jobs was going around the table. He wanted to talk to the engineering team, the marketing team. It was kind of like a roundup, like, what's happening? Like a staff meeting. And he was really tough. He was berating people, kind of yelling and, yeah, kind of cussing as well. And I'm thinking, oh my God, what is this all about? This is, you know, really bizarre for anyone to say they weren't intimidated by Steve Jobs. They're not telling the truth because he was tough. Now I always had kind of a solidity within me when it came to, like, okay, I know my craft, so I'm not going to let this guy intimidate me. I am just going to do my thing and do it the very best I know how. So the next meeting I come in and the first thing he. He does. He looks across the room and he says, I'm standing there with Hartman. Actually. He looks to us, he says, who designed that AT&T answering machine? It's a project that I recently completed. And of course my heart starts beating because I'm thinking, oh, my. Well, he complains about everything. So I thought, this is my turn. So I said, I did. And he looked at me. He tilts his head and looks over his glasses and there's a long pause. I'm talking like 1000, 2000, 3004. Just like, oh, my God, what's he going to say? He's really conjuring up something. And then he just says, it's great. And from that moment on, I was kind of in his good graces. So that was kind of like my rite of passage, I guess. Like, you know, he had to make sure that I knew what I was doing before he would be willing to sit down with me and, like, work on something. And from that moment on, we worked on various products. Keyboards, the computer itself, printers, displays, monitors, great big CRTS. He liked three dimensional models. So we would, every Friday at 3 o'clock we would go over to the next computer building. It was over in Redwood Shores in the Silicon Valley. And we'd usually show drawings, whether they are sketches or draftings, and almost always models. Now, at the time, Frog had a great big model shop with six model makers, and we were machining polyurethane foam models and painting them. So we were doing this so fast that we were able to produce 3D models to show to Steve Jobs on a weekly basis. It was kind of crazy. We were machining models the way as fast as you could 3D print them today. Now, he was always critical. He would often turn a design around to the back to see, like, were you smart enough to think about how the motherboard and the connectors are presenting themselves on the back plane? Or how are you handling transitions from one radius on type on one plane and how it transitions to, like, the Z axis? He was very astute about design, but he was not himself a designer. Although he thought like a designer. He thought in 3D. He always brought it back to, will people appreciate this? Does it have intrinsic beauty? Where is this goodness in the design? He understood proportion. Sometimes you had to explain what you were doing on the design side for him to say, oh, okay, now I see. But he was just so darn smart. His personal interactions were sometimes awkward and they lacked kind of the niceties that most people have, like, hey, hello, how you doing? What's happening? How's your week so far? No, none of that small talk. But Steve, it was like, okay, what do you got? So it always kept me on my edge. Like, does he like me? Does he not like me? And then sometimes he would get personal. Like he gave me a one of the first off Pixar posters, the Toy Story poster. There's a limited production Toy Story poster. When I saw him later, this was when I was working with Oracle. I met Steve at Larry Ellison's house and he gave me this one off poster. So it was like, wow, you're being nice. You know, he like called me when my first son was born. It's like, wow, you know, he does know how to be nice. I wish I could say I had developed like a friendship with him. It was more like an acquaintance. And I was one of the people that did work for him and I think he had that relationship with most people. He was very careful about getting too close.
- [29:20]
Aaron Walter
That next project is particularly interesting because Jobs was very focused on the design of that and at the same time it became very expensive to produce those. He didn't care and he didn't care. And I'm curious, like asking you the same question here of like, what did you learn from this experience? So clearly, like he's got a great sense of detail and clarity and hyper focus, like a laser focus on this desired outcome. And we're going to transition to talking about Whipsaw and the work that you and your team are doing, which is incredible. Is there anything you take forward in the way that you run your business from interacting and working with folks like Steve Jobs?
- [30:04]
Dan Harden
Absolutely. He had such high ideals about what hardware products and software products can be. He was always striving for the apotheosis, the very best you can do. And he didn't care if something was too expensive. He would leave that to the other people. He would argue with around that table to bring the cost down somehow. But he would not compromise when it came to design or crafting the elements that ultimately he felt would create the highest demand. And those were great details that felt good in the hand, that felt good on the retina, that felt good when you touched them and caressed their products. I mean, he was really in many ways, you know, a technology artist. And the way he viewed technology and the way he saw his vision for technology was so refined. And I love the fact that he saw art and technology. I so related to that just in my heart because, you know, starting out as an artist and I'm, I Still paint every week. So, you know, like, as a source of, like, who I am as a designer mostly comes from this artistic side. Of course, you know, with industrial design especially, you've got practical needs and manufacturability and engineering. These things are also bring a great sense of joy to me. And I love the balance between the two. But Steve got that, especially when it came to technology and bringing technical solutions to people where it brought value in their lives. He talked a lot about the user, and with other companies I've worked with, they would often talk about how magic their technology is. And oftentimes it is. I deal with this, like every day with different clients. And part of our job is to elevate one's perspective about how important it is to appeal. Appeal to a different side of our humanity. One that does allow you to feel more connected. It's not just about the tech. And even though Steve was doing amazing things with the technology, sometimes he would allow the design to preempt it. I was like, you've got this great technology, you're trying to do these amazing things with the software, and yet you want us to do X with the industrial design. I would just sometimes shake my hand. I'm like, well, I'll be darn. This is truly visionary. And I knew it. I was working with him at the time when, I mean, he was already famous, but he wasn't mythically famous yet. You know, that was when he came back to Apple, you know, rose from the ashes and did these extraordinary things like the ipod, the iPhone, the iPad, et cetera, et cetera. You know, it really started to change the world. I was able to see his genius and, yes, be influenced by it. I can't say that he was like my mentor because he wasn't a designer. Somebody more like Dean Richardson at Richardson Smith and Hartmut Esslinger and George Nelson, I felt like, were more my mentors. But Steve Jobs was an influencer to me. He was an influencer before we used the word influencer.
- [33:29]
Aaron Walter
We'll return to the conversation after this quick break.
- [33:36]
Unknown
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- [34:15]
Aaron Walter
Studio integration, which is very cool.
- [34:17]
Unknown
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- [36:18]
Aaron Walter
And now back to the show.
- [36:25]
Eli Woolery
Dan. Let's transition over to starting Whipsaw. So you've had this great career so far. You're learning from these seminal figures, and then something makes you decide to go out and strike out on your own. What was that moment where you said, I gotta do my own thing?
- [36:41]
Dan Harden
No. Boy, I just kind of felt like I had reached a point where I had already kind of climbed a lot of mountains. And I was like, there's only one real big mountain left to climb and that's my own. And I'd always had this feeling at the back of My mind, like I really wanted my own company. I liked the idea of being more in control. I don't do well with bosses. And I also felt like as Frog grew and started to adopt what we were calling new media back then in the 90s, which is software, there was just a shift in thinking in that company where I felt like I wasn't fitting with the future of Frog as well. So it's kind of like 1999 and I was like, I just really felt like it was time. And you know, you get to a certain point in your life where if you're going to do it, you better do it right. So I was 39 years old and it was just like, yeah, I still have tons of energy and you never know when your energy is going to run out. A lot older than that now and I still have gobs of energy. So I don't get it, but I love it. So, you know, it was time. You know, I jumped out and called a few people that I knew, one of whom was Cisco Systems, and they're like, well, we were going to give this project to you at Frog, but whatever you're going to do is where we're going to take the project. So if you're going to start your own company, well, the project is yours. And it was an incredible project. And then I got a call from Creative Labs and a division of General Dynamics to work on some computer type products. So I was like off and running. Like after 10 days, I had signed proposals, plenty of work, was designing in my dining room, and I soon needed more help, brought in some more people that I knew and started to grow the company one step at a time. By the way, if I look back at that ladder, if you will, you know, that career ladder that you referred to, I didn't have any grand plan. People say, well, how did you get into all these great design firms and make all those like perfect steps to get to where you are? To me it was just like making careful moves forward and making decisions about who you're going to work with and why and making sure that the values that you feel even when you're really young, just maybe deep down inside would be acceptable in the place that you're about to work and relished in the place you're going to work. Are they like minded people or are they people that you can really learn from? And that was almost good enough. I never said, well, I'm going to go to this place because they're going to pay me more. That's a Huge mistake in design. Get good by finding the right kind of people that can inspire you, allow you to just reach your next level. And I'm not talking about titles, I'm talking about understandings. And so starting Whipsaw, yeah, that was like, I thought at that point, it's like, okay, I'm ready. I wanted to do it right. So, I mean, even the first year, we didn't even first nine months, we didn't even have a website because we wanted to create our work. You know, it would have been very easy for me to put all these different projects I worked on all that Logitech, Next, Acer, you know, all that stuff I worked on at Dreyfus and Frog, and even my intern. I could have just loaded up a website and said, this is Whipsaw. I didn't want to do that. Other firms did do that. So we started and, you know, I just built it one brick at a time. You know, of course, when you're building a business, there's all kinds of things you are faced with. There's all kinds of issues and things you run into with clients. And throughout your trouble in building a business, you just have to keep reminding yourself why you're doing it and stay focused on not only why you're doing it, but like, stay focused on the what. What are you doing? The work itself is what always drove me forward. We would always attract really interesting work and we would put the work first. The quality of the design work was first. And I found that just that is what brought us future work. It would always rain. We never had a down quarter in 25 years. No, there was one down quarter. It was the summer of 2003. That's the only time we had to lay somebody off. But I have so many stories about like how to build a company, especially a design firm, because it's a creative agency. They're almost like a different set of laws with a creative agency versus if you're building just a normal or a more typical service or manufacturing. I think the biggest difference is the type of people that make a creative agency hum. You have to work with, well, more emotional types usually, you know, like artists hiring other artists. Good luck. So there are always challenges with people finding the right talent, having the right processes in place where you can be streamlined, you can be efficient, you can be effective. Making sure that you follow through on the promise of positive change for your clients, making sure you have the right support systems outside of the company, whether that's law firms or accountants or PR agencies that can Help you build your business, all of these different things. I look at my business as a giant design project. Every design project has layers and layers of complexity. And your job as a designer is often to sometimes integrate, sometimes disintegrate, so that you can categorize and solve one piece at a time and also see the overall effects of the comprehensive set of problems and manipulate your factors to get a desired result. That's a design process, and that is a growing a business process as well.
- [42:42]
Aaron Walter
Let's talk a little bit more about that design process, maybe through the lens of a specific project. The ravencord piano project, I think, is particularly interesting because it brings, like, a fresh vision on something that really has been unchanged for a couple hundred years. Piano.
- [43:03]
Dan Harden
You got it. 200 years, yeah.
- [43:06]
Aaron Walter
So early 1800s, the piano was called the pianoforte. Then it's just called the piano, and it kind of stayed the same. There's like, an upright version, and then there's the baby grand slash grand version. And ravencord looks like a piano, and yet it doesn't look like a piano. What was the design process like? Who's involved in that, and how do you go about designing that?
- [43:33]
Dan Harden
Yeah, well, Ravencourt is not typical. We'll talk about that. But then I should probably give you a more typical project, like maybe tonal or something like that, or Oalla, where it was maybe more common. Okay, so this is very unusual. So it started on a flight back from Korea. I was listening to classical music, which I don't listen to very often on my headphones. I was sitting there on that long plane ride, and I get anxious on long plane rides across the ocean, so I will either sketch or listen to music. So I was leaning back, listening to classical, and I was visualizing each and every instrument, an orchestra, as it played. As I heard it, I was visualizing violins and looking at the instrument while I was listening. And I jump over to the harp as I heard that, the timpani drums, each one of them were a beautiful representation of the sound that they were making. Until here comes a piano solo, and I'm seeing a black rectangle on four ugly legs. And I'm looking at the side of the player's face, the profile, and I thought, there has got to be a better way. It seemed to me like the piano needed to be liberated. To me, it felt like the music and the way that it worked because I can't see it is not allowing me to experience the music the way I would want. Because when you experience music, a lot of times like the guitar behind you, Aaron, you know, it's a beautiful thing, thing. And when you watch somebody playing that, you appreciate the music partly because of the way this looks. That's why we go to concerts and pay $1,000 to go to a concert. It's partly to be there with the artist while they were producing the music on these beautifully designed things. So my first thought was to expose the strings. And so I started sketching madly on that flight and I pretty much laid out the whole thing. By the time I landed, I had section views exploded views, orthographic views, perspectives front and back and dimensions on there. So that by the time I landed, I was pretty excited that I felt like I was onto something. And then next step. This again, this is very unusual. I'm not recommending this to your listeners to work this way. The good thing here is I was just following my intuition. You have to like talk about process. Just open yourself up to your freest state where things come to you. If you put a lot of variables on a surface, just let them sit there and look at them. My surface that time were instruments sitting in an orchestra. I could easily visualize that. But if you're working on any design project, sometimes just be with your problem. Just, you know, like observe all of your variables and your criteria and just be with it and allow yourself to conjure a passion or feeling around it. That's all I did on that flight. That was like an eight hour process to conceive this thing. And then of course, I excitedly went to a Steinway dealer. They thought that I was there to buy a piano. But after me crawling around and taking panels off of a Steinway, the guy said, I don't think you're here to buy a piano, are you? I said, well, I got to admit, okay, I'm onto this new design. I explained what I was doing and then he got excited and he's like, yeah, knock yourself out. Let me take you in the back room because we're repairing some Steinways back there and I'll let you see how we make these things. Of course, I learned so much. Just really fascinated by how they work. And then started to give it more body, came back and started to think about how do I hold 18 tons of tension? All of the strings, from the treble strings to the bass, it's 18 tons on a grand piano that want to collapse. So the string layout where I had vertical treble that are spiraling out to horizontal bass, ended up being a beautiful layout because it presented this form that allowed for 18 tons of tension, that part you could think as the frame. It's compression. The frame was able to hold that much compression, and the strings are in tension, but the frame is in compression. So strings are pulling, trying to squeeze that frame together. It's just the frame wants to squeeze together. So that form that Ravencourt is in happened to be perfect. And not only are the strings presented forward, but the soundboard is right behind the strings. And that soundboard is what conveys that sound forward. And the audience is forward, and the player is facing forward. So now you can experience the emotion in the player, which is what you want when you're listening to music, especially when they're, like, straining in that moment of beauty, you know, so. And I worked with a couple people to now bring this into a more engineered on my team, into a more. More finished form where it, you know, every tuning peg is in there, every wooden structure that's beyond the frame, the main chassis, to make it work. And we brought it to a state where it is now ready. And we're talking to different piano companies now, and there are a lot of piano players that have taken a keen interest in this. Our journey is not finished on this project, but, you know, sometimes you have to do a project like this just for the heck of it.
- [49:18]
Aaron Walter
That's beautiful. I'm glad you did it.
- [49:21]
Dan Harden
Thanks. You know, at this point in my career, I'm just designing whatever I feel like, or if I feel like, you know, the world could use this, that, or the other. Yeah. Like, we're doing a. Another idea like that for a cane. Because I'm walking around looking at these people. They're. They're walking around with an iPhone and an Armani suit, and they've got a Walgreens cane that they paid $19 for. I'm like, come on, this got to be better than that. So we're going to manufacture this on our own. It's very cool. Did I show you that, Eli?
- [49:52]
Eli Woolery
I did see it.
- [49:52]
Dan Harden
Yeah.
- [49:52]
Eli Woolery
I like it.
- [49:53]
Dan Harden
Yeah. We're getting very, very close to production on that. I think you just have to, as a designer, just realize that where's your muse? Where's your source of your own creative expression and just get out of its way. Sometimes you just have to get out of your way. Don't worry about what other people think. Don't worry about will this become successful, or. Let's go do a ton of research to find out if it'll be successful. Sometimes you just have to go for it. That's a Steve jobs thing. He's like, don't worry about research, just do it. It's great. You know, so in some ways I agree with that. You know, you can't on all projects, we do most of our projects, you know, we do a fair amount of research and we vet things. Clients want assuredness, they want security, they want almost like an insurance policy that it's going to work on the market. That's why we get a lot of work, because we're known for designing successful products that go to market. And I think that gives them the feeling that you pay for what you get and what we're here to get is a successful product.
- [50:57]
Eli Woolery
Dan, let's talk about another project which may or may not be typical, but it's something that you recently shared. A quantum computer. And rewinding again to the 90s, where I first kind of encountered this idea of quantum computing, there's this British physicist, David Deutsch, who talked about quantum physicist. And then essentially if these quantum computers are to work, they're going to be operating in multiple dimensions at the same time, which is just sort of this mind blowing idea. Like what? There's multiple dimensions that things are happening simultaneously and know fast forward to today. And Google made this press release just like in December, about their own quantum computer, Willow, and how it essentially is kind of proving this thing that was very hypothetical in the 90s, but if it's able to solve these problems, it's likely doing it in parallel universes in multiple dimensions. And so just this whole technology, I mean, I really don't obviously fully understand it, but it just seems amazing and something that's going to change the course of our own technology and humanity potentially. And so I saw this little press release you did on the computer you worked on and it reminded me a little bit, I'm not sure if you're familiar with, but the Thinking Machine supercomputer, which is part of the MOMA permanent exhibit that Danny Hillis and others worked on. And there's this sort of, in both cases, a kind of beautiful simplicity, but also an emergent complexity to the design that's sort of a little bit intention maybe, but maybe talk about that project. I don't know if this is a typical project, but yeah, how did that come about?
- [52:33]
Dan Harden
I guess you could say it's a typical project with an atypical technology that we're working with. When they approached us and described how their quantum computer worked, I was so blown away, you know, when they were describing the fact that they were using lasers and Using the lasers to manipulate ions that were floating in space to achieve a qubit state. So instead of being binary, there's multiplicities of states, the qubit, which allows a quantum computer to work. And they gave us a general sense of what the componentry is in their vision of what a quantum computer should be. Most of the components seem very foreign to us. You know, we've designed an awful lot of computers in my career. You know, just we talked about next, but man, they're. You know, I've worked on so many different computers. This was different. You know, you have to first dive in and really understand what is this doing, what are the limitations, where are the opportunities? You know, you always want to understand them as much as you can about the end user. What are the best practices out on the market and best practices for us? You know, it was like the IBM quantum computer. You've seen this very esoteric quantum computer. It hangs from a ceiling and it's brass, and you see the wires and copper and glass. It's a very strange, esoteric thing that is just not practical for data centers. IonQ's request was for us to take this relatively esoteric technology and scale it in a manner where they could offer it to data centers in existing environments, which are floors and floors and floors, levels and levels of big boxes that require space and they require a lot of electricity and a lot of cooling. And then they said, go. And we looked at literally probably hundreds of ways to represent what quantum computing is. Because a lot of times when you're designing a product, sometimes you want to, you know, the old adage form follows function or form follows emotion, whatever you think you know. But it's often the case where you want to find some, maybe an inner faculty, something that is driving the reason why a product exists. Right. So you were looking for essence. You're looking for some level of expression that makes your product interesting, maybe visually, maybe functionally, maybe to provide more usability. But you often as a designer, you want to create something of interest that has some meaning. We felt that there was such profundity in quantum computing that we couldn't just give them a big black box, which is what they were kind of initially expecting. We wanted to somehow express the mystery. And you picked up on it, Eli, when you said there's a combination of simplicity and complexity. The simplicity comes in the form factor, which is the more practical side of the design. So that data centers can, like, line these up and be very efficient. But there is nothing simple about quantum computing. It is Extremely complex. It's almost impossible to do. And for decades, physicists said this is impossible. Well, it's not. And here they come, and they are with the addition of the software that's running on it, namely artificial intelligence, which will really allow quantum computers, will really allow AI to move forward and advance. AI and quantum computing coupled. That's the future. So we really took that to heart. And so we looked at, like, what is a qubit, what's actually going on there? And we liked the fact that it could process exponentially. We felt it would be interesting to create a pattern. It was kind of an exponentially divided pattern that has a source, which is the qubit, which is kind of like where everything converges in the center, where you see that bright white line, which is the status bar. And we used extraordinary materials. That's etched glass. The door is thick, so there is depth to the glass. There is a luminous metallic surface about an inch behind that glass. So you see light, you see shadows behind the etches in the glass. The etchings have the depth because we back etch the glass, and then the etch itself creates a shadow on the plane behind it. The door has to be thick and the walls have to be thick, and the machine has to be heavy in order to mitigate some of the vibration. Because you can imagine a laser pointing at molecules and atoms. Well, the tiniest bit of vibration is just simply unacceptable. The simplicity comes in the box form factor. But the details, we really want to dial in not only the glass, but the edge radii, the way that we use an L bracket, aluminum on the sides, the way that it's modularized so you can add other components, whether they're additional power supplies or memory that is not doing the quantum computing. And those are the peripheral units to the right and left of the main processor itself. So, of course, you know, back to process. We sketch wildly and often. At Whipsaw, I encourage sketching because I think it's the closest thing to your brain, and maybe that's just me, but it feels very natural because there's no break between the nerves, between the end of your fingers and your brain. There's no break. So the break occurs, you know, at the pen to the paper. But I encourage that kind of emotional form giving and solution giving and function giving in that kind of externalization manner sketching because I think it allows you to really get close to maybe more of the sublime. And in the case of a quantum computer, we felt like we really needed to get weird. So I hope that Someday they allow us to show some of the sketches and the alternative solutions. Really far out stuff. And then of course, from there we do jump into cad. We made models. In this case, we made a lot of etched models where you're simulating glass by using acrylic. We built several full scale models. Now, this thing is 8ft tall and 3 by 3ft is the main processor from the top view. So, you know, and then of course, you go back and forth with your client. This is a little unusual in that they really didn't talk to any end users at all. This is kind of all kept top secret, internal. There's been a lot of talk around quantum computing. I think they just wanted to keep it all very top secret. So I know that's a general way that that unraveled.
- [59:26]
Aaron Walter
And one of the unique things about Whipsaw and your business, aside from the amazing portfolio of work that you've been working on, is it's a family thing, right? Your son Walker works with you. I'm curious if you could share what that's like to work with your son.
- [59:43]
Dan Harden
Well, I love working with him because he's a cool guy and he's brilliant. He doesn't like when people say it's a family company because apparently that's not on trend, I guess. I don't know.
- [59:54]
Eli Woolery
And you know what, Nepo these days, I think.
- [59:57]
Dan Harden
Yeah, exactly. And we don't run it that way either. I mean, he was working at Apple and we had an opening in the UX department, the digital side of the company. And I said, hey, Walker, if there's ever a time if you think that you might want to come into the company, this might be it. And he said, well, as long as you can pay me at least when I make it at Apple. So he came on and he runs that department pretty much autonomously and I stay out of his way. He is growing that department. He's doing an incredible job. I said, look, if you do this, I don't want it to feel Nepo. He's got to come in and prove himself. I give him no extra privileges. I was like, you're going to have to perform just like everybody else, the same expectation. And, you know, we raised him that way, so he was able to really excel quickly and earn his place here. Everybody has a lot of respect for him and he's carving new roads for us, not only in ux, but in brand. You're about to see another amazing thing for a company called Gridstack that we're about to announce and it's a NAS device, so network attached servers. It's a type of home product, more, more of a consumer based product. And he did all of you know, the website, the ux, the brand, he organized it, he strategized it, he did everything except the industrial design, him and his team.
- [61:23]
Aaron Walter
That's cool.
- [61:24]
Dan Harden
Yeah, I think it's great. It's such a. I mean it's a privilege for me. I so wholeheartedly trust him. When you can find people in your business you can simply trust. That's a gift.
- [61:34]
Aaron Walter
It's invaluable. What are you reading? Watching, listening to that is exciting and inspiring to you right now?
- [61:42]
Dan Harden
Right now I'm reading Code Breakers.
- [61:44]
Aaron Walter
Jennifer Doudna. That's a great book.
- [61:46]
Dan Harden
Yeah. And there's something about that that I got really excited about because of the work that we did on PacBio, which is a gene sequencing machine. It's now considered to be kind of the gold standard of machines that does gene discovery. You've also worked on CRISPR technologies. So there's a whole side to our business that we do life science and medical work that I find intriguing. Probably because I'm not that knowledgeable in it. You, I think you have to be. You know, either study biology and get your PhD before you really get it, but I'm just fascinated by discovery in general. So I like to read things like that. I like to read things about like, I like mega projects. Yeah. Like the dam that is considered being built in the Himalayan mountains right now. That's a multi level, a different kind of dam where they're running the water through the mountain to create more velocity and it hits the turbines at a higher rate. Just weird stuff like that. I like astronomy. I like reading about individuals, historical individuals. Leonardo da Vinci, I read that book recently. Just an extraordinary character. I find history to be quite fascinating. I wish I had paid more attention in high school and college to history. It's so same.
- [63:08]
Aaron Walter
I say that all the time.
- [63:09]
Dan Harden
I know, right? It's important to realize that there are so many different ways to be inspired. Most people think, oh, were you inspired by going to that museum or reading this book or listening to this particular point of view? Yes, of course. But you also have to realize there are a lot of things that you can be inspired by just by walking around this planet. Go somewhere interesting, you're going to learn so much. For a designer. That's my food. That's where I get my inspiration. Just watching people making something, you know, like on the streets of China, I watched this guy build a bicycle. It was a tricycle built specifically for one guy who came up to him and said, my job is to. Now I don't speak Chinese. But he was basically, I was watching this happen. My job is to care. I have to carry rolls of paper, and I need you to build me a bicycle right now, a tricycle or some vehicle where I can do my job better. And I watched him weld this tricycle in about an hour. I just watched the whole thing. He was designing on the spot, engineering on the spot. The guy loaded up this big, several boxes of his. They looked like paper towels, of which it stacked about 12ft high. The guy got on the tricycle and pedaled off just like that. Bam. Talk about, like, do it yourself. It was just a beautiful thing. I found that very inspirational. And it was just kind of a lesson on, you know, what? If you can think it, you can do it. It kind of relates back to the whole Ravencourt story, right? That people forget that they get over processed. They get over interested in, like, I have to get everything in line before I jump into something. No, sometimes you just jump in as a creative. Just jump in. You're going to find out so much about what to do and what not to do very quickly. I find that inspirational. Or just, you know, sometimes just go for a walk in the woods and you're going to be blown away. If you are visually astute, if you really sit and look at something, you're, you know, biomimicry is such a beautiful thing. I'm very inspired by that. Even, you know, you'll see evidence of that in a lot of work that I've done. You know, the scroll. A chair is an example of just studying the principles of wood and how much wood can take to bend and finding the limit of it. So that instead of wood being seen as like boards of lumber, what can I do that is so fluid, so organic, using this material that is relatively linear, what can I do? Now that's just kind of a start out of that kind of inspiration. How can I bring grace to wood? We look at wood and we typically say, well, I like its grain. It's beautiful. But you're mostly responding to a surface, not the form. Unless it's some bespoke thing, you know, some old guy that carves a beautiful cane. So I want to do something that was like mass producible, that had a grace to it. Just being inspired by something like that. You can be inspired by material, by an experience, by a behavior, by something you see in nature pretty much anything. I mean, I look at here, I'm like, I've got a cappuccino. The form that the foam has made on the inside of my cup is quite beautiful, actually. I don't know, could that be a texture in plastic? People forget, designers forget, because so much is given to us as a formula. Go to this website, go to Pinterest. You look at that, they forget that all this inspiration is naturally all around you all the time. It's like oxygen. It's there, it's there. Just breathe it in.
- [66:48]
Eli Woolery
On that note, thank you so much. Obviously, you're a dear friend, but it's just great to have you here on the show and I learned a lot about your story that I didn't know before.
- [66:55]
Dan Harden
Thank you guys. This has been fun.
- [67:02]
Aaron Walter
This episode was produced by Eli Woolery and me, Aaron Walter, with engineering and production support from Brian Paik of Pacific Audio. If you found this episode useful, we hope that you'll leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to finer shows. Or simply drop a link to the show in your team's Slack channel. DesignBetterPodcast.com your really help others discover the show. Until next time.