Context

Jonathan is a hardware and experience designer based in Toronto, Ontario. After 5 years of working in San Francisco as a core part of frog's industrial design team, Jonathan moved to Canada in early 2020 to pursue a new adventure with e-commerce powerhouse, Shopify. His experience as a design consultant spans across leading brands and start-ups in the tech, retail, automotive, government and healthcare industries. As a part of Shopify’s budding hardware division, Jonathan works at the forefront of commerce innovation, bridging the gap between digital and physical in the retail arena. We speak to Jonathan about the pressures of being first generation, making your parents proud for all of their sacrifices, and the legacy we are building as designers for future generations to come. Thanks for tuning in, be on the lookout for our next podcast! Send us a DM or email at [email protected] to provide us with your thoughts and comments on our dialogue with designers!

For today’s episode, we welcome the leaders behind the Office for Product Design. Nicol Boyd began his training in design at the Glasgow School of Art. After completing his undergraduate degree in 1999 he moved to Italy to work for Alessi, where he developed products for among others Achille Castiglioni, Alessandro Mendini, Alberto Meda and Michael Graves. He returned to the UK to continue his design studies at the Royal College of Art, graduating in 2004. The following years saw him working at IDEO, first as a resident in their San Francisco and Palo Alto offices, and later with the Munich and London offices. He also spent a year at Nokia’s design department in London, before establishing himself as a freelance designer. This period saw a renewed collaboration with Tomas Rosén and ultimately led to the formation of the Office for Product Design in Hong Kong in 2007.

Tomas Rosén originally studied philosophy at Stockholm University before completing a master’s degree in mechanical engineering at Linköping University. Scholarships from the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences and the Marcus Wallenberg Foundation led him to pursue additional postgraduate design studies at the Royal College of Art in London, where he graduated in 2004. Having previously worked on design projects for Volvo and Scania in Sweden, he joined Nokia’s design department in London in 2005 and subsequently went on to co-found the Office for Product Design in Hong Kong with Nicol Boyd in 2007.

Thanks for tuning in, be on the lookout for our next podcast! Send us a DM or email at [email protected] to provide us with your thoughts and comments on our dialogue with designers!

Gavin Ivester is a hybrid product and brand leader with roots in Silicon Valley industrial design and extensive European lifestyle and tech experience. He specializes in driving profitable, responsible growth through the power of design and brand. Gavin recently exited the role of VP Design at Bang & Olufsen after wrapping up an aggressive product portfolio upgrade. Coupled with new strategy, the company has returned to profitable growth.

As Senior VP/General Manager of PUMA’s global Footwear division, he drove growth of over 400% to €2billion, and led PUMA’s watches and eyewear product lines. Gavin designed the first-ever PowerBook at Apple, headed Nike’s Global Footwear Design team, served as Gibson Guitar’s Chief Creative Officer, and led a turnaround of Under Armour’s Footwear Division. As an entrepreneur and consultant, Gavin has advised on brand and growth strategy for Grammy-nominated music artists and companies in healthcare, banking, beverages, digital media and sports fashion. Thanks for tuning in, be on the lookout for our next podcast! Send us a DM or email at [email protected] to provide us with your thoughts and comments on our dialogue with designers!

Named “one of the most creative people in business” by Fast Company, and “one of the most influential designers working today” by Graphic Design USA, Debbie Millman is also an author, educator, curator and host of the podcast Design Matters.

As the founder and host of Design Matters, one of the world’s first and longest running podcasts, Millman has interviewed nearly 500 artists, designers and cultural commentators over the past 14 years. Design Matters won a 2011 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, in 2015 Apple designated it one of the best overall podcasts on iTunes, and in 2018 the show was honored by the Webby (WEB-BI) Awards. In addition, Design Matters has been listed on over 100 “Best Podcasts” lists, including one of the best podcasts in the world by Business Insider. The show is about how some of the world’s most creative people design the arc of their lives, and Debbie has interviewed guests including Tim Ferriss, Malcolm Gladwell, Marina Abramovic, Steven Pinker, Shepard Fairey, Laurie Anderson, Barbara Kruger, Amanda Palmer, Alain de Botton, Brene Brown, Hamilton Director Thomas Kail, and many, many more. Thanks for tuning in, be on the lookout for our next podcast! Send us a DM or email at [email protected] to provide us with your thoughts and comments on our dialogue with designers!

There are too many barriers to accessing the education and experience required to become a footwear designer in the sports industry. Rather than waiting on higher education to solve some of those obstacles, we created a solution to this problem by building a new pathway for creators to pursue a career in footwear design: S.E.E.D. (School for Experiential Education in Design).

S.E.E.D. is a 2 year program at the adidas Brooklyn Creator Farm in partnership with Pensole Academy that acts as an alternative to a university education for Footwear Design. The program is an Open-Source education model meaning that we tap industry experts inside and outside of the adidas brand to teach, guide, and mentor students while they work on developing Leadership and Design skills through working on real products that will go to market.

For today’s episode, we welcome the leaders behind adidas S.E.E.D. — Liz Connelly and Cheresse Thornhill-Goldson. A bit about Liz, her career has been focused on identifying high potential talent from non-traditional pipelines and designing programs, processes, and experiences to help that talent reach their full potential. She began her career innovating recruitment and talent development strategies in small business within both the sports and food industries. She joined adidas in 2016 as a part of the Talent Acquisition organization. In 2019 Liz co-founded adidas S.E.E.D. (School for Experiential Education in Design) and moved to Brooklyn to launch the program. Liz now consults on various talent related projects and continues to lead all talent and brand initiatives for SEED in her most recent role as the Senior Manager of Education and Growth for adidas. A bit about Cheresse, she has been in the footwear industry over 13 years. Her career began in Beaverton, OR at Nike where she was a footwear designer for 10 years before moving back to her hometown of Miami, FL to teach design at both the high school and college levels. In January 2020, Cheresse made the move to Brooklyn, NY to lead the adidas S.E.E.D. Program as the Design Director. Cheresse is part of the team that’s transforming the footwear industry and cultivating the next generation of diverse design talent.

Thanks for tuning in, be on the lookout for our next podcast! Send us a DM or email at [email protected] to provide us with your thoughts and comments on our dialogue with designers!

Samantha is a multidisciplinary visual artist and designer from Humboldt Park, Chicago. She has a BA in Fine Arts from Columbia College Chicago with a minor in Arts Business. Since 2019 she has worked independently as an installation artist, fabricator, graphic designer, and illustrator, with a focus on set-design installations for music concerts, events, and video production. She currently works as a Color Designer for Nike on the women’s footwear team at the global design level. In tandem with her design work, she co-hosts Sistematic Podcast with her twin sister - the show about politics and pop culture with an emphasis on the stories of women at the intersection of race, gender, class, and ability. Samantha is also a professional stunt woman and member of SAG-AFTRA- as well as part-time community organizer whose work revolves around issues including gentrification, criminal justice reform, immigration, and self-determination for Puerto Rico. Thanks for tuning in, be on the lookout for our next podcast! Send us a DM or email at [email protected] to provide us with your thoughts and comments on our dialogue with designers!

Fran Wang is a graduate of Dartmouth College and has been at frog for the last 4 years. Prior, she worked at New Deal Design and Skycatch, a UAV startup. As the Associate Director of Mechanical Engineering at frog, she has had the unique opportunity to work on interdisciplinary teams designing holistic experiences, in addition to working on technical projects focused on engineering. Her work at frog includes the Magritte AR gallery at the SFMOMA and the Yona Care project. During our dialogue with Fran, we dive into her path to working in the Bay Area, and life as an engineer in one of the most competitive design markets in the world. Thanks for tuning in, be on the lookout for our next podcast! Send us a DM or email at [email protected] to provide us with your thoughts and comments on our dialogue with designers!

Andi Osana is an industrial designer and aspiring toy designer from the Philippines. She graduated with a B.S. in Industrial Design from De La Salle-College of St. Benilde, being most inspired by dinosaurs, comic books, and popular culture. She values a childlike playfulness and curiosity in her work, and this is reflected the most in her ideation and storytelling process. Her penchant for learning and seeking new experiences has influenced her body of works, which bring to the forefront human connection and interaction. Most recently, she was a part of Offsite’s Summer 2021 Cohort 2, where she discovered a community of like-minded individuals that share a passion for their endeavors. In her spare time, she enjoys drawing and making comics, playing video games, and building models and jigsaw puzzles. Thanks for tuning in, be on the lookout for our next podcast! Send us a DM or email at [email protected] to provide us with your thoughts and comments on our dialogue with designers!

James Melia, founder and director of award-winning Blond design studio. Since 2015, Melia’s London based, strategic industrial design firm Blond has been the go-to brain trust that innovative global brands like Sony, LG, Revolut and Rapha keep in their rolodex for when they need a product to disrupt their market. From water bottles to home tech, future-forward companies keep Melia in their inner circle because they need a product that will be a game changer in their customer’s life. The differentiator between Melia and other design outfits lies in his starting point for a project. He’s a naturally keen observer of human behaviour and has always taken notice of things that most would not. “I was an industrial designer before I knew I was one”, Melia says. When he was a child he remembers going to Amsterdam and marveling at the highly resolved methods of household garbage disposal. “I was fascinated to see how the Dutch households didn’t have typical rubbish bins, they put their waste outside in collective containers within the ground, and then trucks with cranes took them away. It’s these types of simple and innovative solutions that were of interest to me from as early as I can remember.” Thanks for tuning in, be on the lookout for our next podcast! Send us a DM or email at [email protected] to provide us with your thoughts and comments on our dialogue with designers!

With roots in Mexico and the United States, an idea to combine these two identities was born from the need to express ourselves and our points of view through functional objects that we share everyday life with. Los Objects is a brand dedicated to the exploration of ideas through physical products. They are a team of two individuals with different backgrounds, but one of the things they have in common is their background as Industrial Designers. At Los Objects, they approach every product using the design process: they become curious about a topic, research it, brainstorm and sketch ideas, prototype, iterate, test, and make the final object that you get to experience. Their priority is to be curious, to experiment, and to create moments that make our everyday life a little more beautiful. Los Objects was founded by Angela Sevilla, Footwear Material & Color Designer at Nike, and Dustin Le, UX Designer at Collective+. Thanks for tuning in, be on the lookout for our next podcast! Send us a DM or email at [email protected] to provide us with your thoughts and comments on our dialogue with designers!