Sometimes you can find peace of mind by transferring yourself to different situations. They're just reminders to stay... calm.
Our principal role as designers is to accelerate new ideas and the adoption of new ideas.
Advertising is the price companies pay for being unoriginal.
I truly believe that we're about to enter a second golden age of design. The first one was in the '50s and '60s, when designers like Raymond Loewy, Charles Eames, George Nelson and Dieter Rams were shepherds of the brands they were working with. They had influence over the products and how companies communicated and promoted themselves.
Everything has yet to be invented. I never say 'green' - I say 'greener.' It's greener simply because this is a continuum of change, improvement and discovery.
I am always looking for ways to move technology away from being over-featured. Moving to Silicon Valley in the mid-1990s meant I grew up as a designer in an environment where technology is a tool and not a means to an end. I believe that design should be driven by ideas, not style.
I know it's a cliche, but I see myself as a citizen of the world. I was brought up in Switzerland by German and Turkish parents but I've very much grown up in San Francisco. I have a European sense of aesthetic, but I'm also deeply steeped in the notion of change and entrepreneurship that is associated with Silicon Valley.
An ideal day for me is a combination of a fun-exciting creative moment with work partners, some laughs and games with my kids, a good surf session, and great conversation with friends around a meal.
Juicero is the first company to make cold-pressed juice something that people can make themselves at home. The challenges to design and engineer a press that can deliver 8,000 pounds of force are tremendous.
Having one foot in design and the other in sustainable and social projects, I hear this question quite often: 'Why does the world need another chair?' My answer is that the world needs another chair/bicycle/car or any new product for that matter, like the world needs another book.
Design certainly has a cosmetic, aesthetic aim. It always aims at making things beautiful. But relevance is just as important. I often say, 'If it isn't ethical, it can't be beautiful. But if it isn't beautiful, it probably shouldn't be at all.'
The Swiss can be very difficult.
I am passionate about what design can do - how far it can support the new ideas and the new ways of living of this 21st Century. Good design accelerates this exciting future where manufacturing is local, materials and processes are cradle to cradle, business models are both socially and financially driven.
I imagine a future with no waste; material innovations have already become exponentially more vast, and I do think the future needs to be cradle to cradle. If designed properly, one product could be used for many years before needing to be recycled, or its components reused.
If you don't love something, it's not functional, in my opinion.
The best design work is really done when you spend more time with people, when you have the opportunity to be of the same mindset and the same incentives as the founder of the business.
I wanted to be a writer as a teen... so storytelling was my first love. In my late teens, design became an obsession as I realized that I could express myself through the medium. Much later, when I founded Fuseproject in 1999, our slogan became 'design brings stories to life.'
My mantra is: 'Good design accelerates the adoption of new ideas.'
Design accelerates the adoption of new ideas. And many of these ideas are important for designers to show that there is a way. When you see things through that lens, you realize it applies to any industry and any form of design.
Consumers want products that tell stories, have magic, and inspire.
