Our next guests are the brothers, Hoang & Anh who founded Creative Session, a design blog dedicated to ideas between the two. Currently, they head design at Playground building brands and products. Playground is a venture firm that partners with entrepreneurs working at the intersection of atoms, bits, and AI to build the companies of tomorrow. The brothers believe building great products begin with developing lasting brand visions, these values are the foundation for strong companies and...

Our next guest is Anna Lee, is a technical co-founder of Lioness, the women-led sexual health startup that built the world's first and only smart vibrator that improves understanding of sexual pleasure and body through biofeedback data, recently featured at CES 2020, a finalist at Last Gadget Standing, Engadget Best of CES 2020, Refinery29 Best of CES SexTech.  Anna was previously a mechanical engineer at Amazon, launching the Amazon Dash Button’s original concept and the Kindle Voyage Page...

Our next guest is Jo Barnard, the founder and creative director of multi award-winning design and innovation consultancy Morrama. Having set up Morrama in 2015, just one year after graduating, she has worked with startups across the globe bringing a range of products to market from tech to luggage to cosmetics. A champion of female empowerment within design and of the role of sustainability to create a better design industry, Jo has established an incredible understanding of all things...

Our next guest is Amanda Huynh, a Canadian product and food designer working at the intersections of community-building, social innovation, and sustainable design. Amanda’s design career has allowed her to work across a variety of sectors in Vancouver, Bali, Shanghai, and London. Amanda earned a BDes in Industrial Design from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and worked as a professional designer for several years before pursuing a MSc in Food Design from Scuola Politecnica di Design in...

Our next guest is Ara Acle, a Bay Area native currently based in Oakland, CA. After graduating from San Jose State University, Ara spent some time at many of the top San Francisco design consultancies including Mike & Maaike, One & Co, and New Deal Design. He also spent 4 years at Frog where he designed for clients in sectors ranging from consumer electronics, AR experiences, medical products, and environment installations. Ara is currently a Senior Industrial Designer at Casper where...

Our next guest is Robert Brunner, who founded San Francisco-based design studio Ammunition in 2007 to communicate ideas through products, brands, and their surrounding experiences. His work as an industrial designer has spawned numerous brand-defining designs over the past three decades. Prior to founding Ammunition, Robert was a partner at Pentagram and led strategic brand consulting and industrial design programs for Fortune 500 companies. Previously, he was the Director of Industrial...

Our next guest is Timothy Seward, the Lead Industrial Designer at Bird. He has been one of the key influencers in advancing the process of Industrial Design by blending multiple disciplines from ID to Motion over the past decade working with top design firms like Y-Studios, Lunar, Huge, and Whipsaw. He helped kick start the look and feel of SONOS in becoming a household name, along with creating stunning products and visuals for major brands such as Nike, Scion, Hitachi, Chrome Bags, Samsung,...

Our next guest is Professor Stephen Melamed, an industrial designer and design educator at the University of Illinois at Chicago; he’s Clinical Professor & Founding Chair of the Industrial Design program at UIC. With over four decades of design experience in consulting, manufacturing, corporate, and not-for-profit sectors., and consulting, Stephen engages with and interweaves multiple disciplines to create a culture of innovation. An apprentice to the Bauhaus designer, artist and author...

Our next guest is William Stuart, the Design Director of Industrial Design at Fuseproject for the last 7 years, which spans disciplines across product, packaging and accessory programs for clients in multiple categories. Clients he has worked with include Western Digital, iRobot, Coway, Vodafone, Forme Life, British Gas, August Smart Home to name a few. He has led the design teams on various projects through strategy and concept design to mass production, and has a deep knowledge in...

Our next guest is Natalia McLean, the Head of Design at leading Ecuadorian architectural development firm, Uribe Schwarzkopf. Based in the vibrant city of Quito, Natalia brings an encyclopedic knowledge of interior design to luxury residential projects throughout the city. Uribe Schwarzkopf is distinguished by its collaborations with major international architecture and design companies, including Bernardo Fort-Brescia’s Arquitectónica (Peru-Miami), Tatiana Bilbao (Mexico), YOO (London),...

Our next guest is Rinn Hirotsu, a big nerd who likes to have big fun! She’s a Creative Product Designer with experience in toys and games, currently working at Hasbro. Rinn is an enthusiastic collaborator with a Bachelor's degree focused on Transportation, Industrial, and Product Design from the DAAP program at the University of Cincinnati. During our conversation we talked about how toy design is something we dream up when we are kids - and an actual career path! We also discussed what it’s...

Our next guest is Yanci Wu, a product designer who wanders at the intersection of art and science, stories and realities. She’s an observer, thinker, and maker. Yanci uses strategic thinking to bring clarity to situations and design thinking to bring solutions to life. She thrives at solving business and human problems that are complex in nature. As an advocate for emotional design, she applies what she understands about human cognition to making products and services that are valuable to...

Our next guest is Spencer Nugent, this interview takes us back to last year, June of 2020 to be exact, one of the first conversations prior to building Offsite. Spencer is the founder of idsketching.com and sketch-a-day.com. His experience includes working at General Motors in Warren, Michigan, San Francisco based design firm Astro Studios, heading up his own design consultancy and Studio Tminus where he worked with several clients primarily in the consumer electronics and apparel industries....

Our next guest is Mona Sharma, an Industrial Designer based out of the UK. She’s a designer interested in creating products that are honest, simple and enjoyable. Mona seeks opportunities to experiment with manufacturing techniques, whilst tapping into user perceptions - always with the ambition of pushing boundaries wherever she can. Tune into our conversation with Mona, as we explore different topics in design such as women in design, transitioning from school to industry, and...

Our next guest is David Miller, a recent graduate from the Industrial Design program at the University of Cincinnati, DAAP. David has moved 26 times since starting college, and worked for some of the best Industrial Design studios in the world along the way, but these days you can find him quarantined in his hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana. As a designer, a teammate, and a human, it’s his mission to show up each and every day with curiosity and a positive attitude. David values both breadth...

We interview the team behind Design Truth - our friends across the pond! Design Truth is a small organization based in London, their objective is to keep Industrial Design connected through their podcasts and live webinars. Design Truth is organized by Brad Harper, who’s an industrial design recruiter that has worked with some of the biggest brands and agencies on the planet, and his counterpart is Drew Kendrick, a Senior Industrial Designer with 15 years of experience with work that has made...

As we continue our interviews with Offsite students, we are excited to interview the next batch of Offsite alumni. Our first cohort was a careful selection of 52 skilled students representing over 10 different countries on every continent, except for Antarctica. This is by no mistake. There are not many design institutions in the world where upon waking up in the U.S. you are chatting with another student in Singapore who is finishing their day. Design often finds itself siloed by borders,...

As we continue our interviews with Offsite students, we are excited to interview the next batch of Offsite alumni. The students include Morgan Wolfe, Maria Mu, Joshua Hoffeld, and Chris Ference - all student designers who tuned in from different parts of the world to be part of this design experience. Given the nature of the pandemic, classes took place online. The central hub of our school is our Slack, which features all of our discussion boards and auxiliary content. Courses take place...

Our next guests are a group of design students who attended Offsite’s first cohort. The students include German Monetti, Henry Ripley, Taylor Mau, and Olive Kennington - all student designers who tuned in from different parts of the world to be part of this design experience. For this episode, the students talk about taking a risk and signing up for this program as a way to elevate their skills, they discuss how their skills evolved, how they made friends, and build an amazing community...

The conversation continues! We are interviewing Betsy Barnhart, the Program Director of Industrial Design at the University of Kansas. Betsy is focused on providing a connection between academic institutions and private practice to tackle large-scale, complex design problems. Prior to joining KU, Betsy was an Assistant Professor at Iowa State University where she led multi-disciplinary sponsored studios with a focus on market disruption and innovation. During our conversation with Betsy, we...

Our next guest is Matt Marchand, currently developing outdoor gear as an Industrial Designer with Dick's Sporting Goods in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is passionate about an innovative incorporation of physics and philosophy into products. There is a lot to do, and he is thankful to be a part of the process. He loves to sketch and is always looking forward to a future of collaborations and learning. Thank you @matt.marchand for sharing your story and inspiring so many! Thanks for tuning in,...

Our next guest is Hannah Fink, a San Francisco-based designer with a background in metal and woodworking. Her process is rooted in exploring form through physical model making and prototyping. A recent graduate of Pratt Institute’s MID program, she draws her inspiration from her former scuba diving and marine research career and hobbies like surfing, welding and weightlifting. Fink has her B.A. from Vassar College and her Masters of Industrial Design from Pratt Institute. Thank you...

Our next guest is Danielle Chen, a Senior UX Designer at EY Design Studio where she creates user-centered, intuitive and delightful experiences across different industries including insurance, finance, and government services, etc. She considers play as an essential part of learning and creating deeper connections in our work and life, and is invigorated by expanding people's ways of thinking by exposing them to new and unique perspectives through the lens of play. She actively speaks about...

Our next guest is Bengt Brummer, a Senior Industrial Designer at Google. He was born in Germany and spent his childhood in both Sweden and Germany in a bilingual family. After training and working as a chef in various countries in Europe and the US and earning a BFA in the Culinary Arts from Örebro University in Sweden, he attended Parsons School of Design in NYC. In 2011, he graduated with an MFA in Industrial Design from Konstfack. Bengt likes projects that cross disciplines - consumer...

Our next guests are Jeremiah Robison, Founder and CEO at CIONIC and Daniel Zarem, a Senior Industrial Designer at Fuseproject - who both worked on the VOX Ventilator. Fuseproject, in partnership with CIONIC, a medical device and technology start-up, and several independent mechanical engineering (ME) consultants, banded together to respond to the open innovation challenge. More than 200 teams from 43 different countries submitted their concepts, and our submission was selected as one of seven...