12: Che-Wei Wang & Taylor Levy (CW&T) - Iterating Together with Time

33:59And I find that super gratifying that we can move at that speed and also not compromise as much. I think there's plenty of compromises that we make all the time because I think design is a practice of compromises anyways. But we get to have more control over it. any errors or mistakes we made are only ours it's not like i want to cut everybody out of the process i love working with people who work really well and are at the top of their game like that is incredibly enjoyable for me but i think it's hard to have like a super a team if the more and more people are involved and architecture requires a lot of people to be to build a building so So yeah, that to me is what like prevents me from like pursuing really big projects.

34:48It's just, yeah, it requires lots of people. This next bit is a little ironic to discuss on a podcast, especially given that we've been basically talking about ideas behind your work for a while. But there's this excerpt from another interview you did talking about POW and sort of like non-representational creativity. You had said, I think it's Taylor, seeing our kids grow up I've been consciously observing them aware of those moments when they start to use a piece of technology I remember with our oldest pal when he could physically make marks on paper with a pencil for the first time he was at a point where he could only do marks it wasn't even in his head that you could draw something representational it was this idea of expression distilled down there are the constraints of your body this pencil and this paper and you're filling it in whatever ways you physically can making these very rudimentary choices.

35:37I love that as a moment. I think about it a lot. I've been reading this biography on Robert Irwin called Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees. And he's very interested in this idea of sort of like radical presence. It's not about even what the painting is. It's about this sort of experience you have. There was also a line, I think Sewe had said about like this temptation to start with a framework or an idea versus like the actual thing in the work. in some sense like clearly and maybe it's specific to me but i find one of the things i find so interesting about you guys is that you're combining these two things you're combining the substance and the objects and the almost self-evidence of these things but then there's also a lot of theory and a lot of interesting ideas and even storytelling i think you do a really good job of too maybe maybe the short answer is just you don't have to overthink it but Is that something you're ever juggling with or thinking about?

36:31I mean, I wouldn't say we think about it that much intentionally, but we know what keeps us going every day. And what keeps us going is whether if we're not interested in something. A lot of we do run a business and a lot of running a business is boring. It's work that like we really don't like doing. I specifically don't like doing and I'm kind of a baby about it sometimes. And so part of our practice, it's more of like self-preservation and it's figuring out how I can take those things that are generally pretty boring and making them rewarding and interesting. Sometimes it's just like since I am my own boss, a lot of times like things just don't get done.

37:14And, you know, it's not great for our business, but that's just sort of how it goes because I'm not interested in doing those things. I find that like that, I don't know if this answers your question, but the choices we make around like what we choose to learn about or experience, I think just comes out of being curious. It makes me think of my students like over the course of however many years, just like seeing how some students gravitate to looking for inspiration within their own domain. So it's like if you're an architecture student, you're like constantly looking at other people's architectural designs to look for inspiration in quotes.

38:04And I find that. Partly disturbing, but also just like I don't understand this practice. Like you're going to just end up designing the same things that everybody else is looking at. And, you know, I think we have interests that are quite broad. Like I love reading about science and other, other totally, you know, art and like other disciplines that maybe on first glance have nothing to do with what we're doing. But I think it does influence what we make. And I think it's not by design. And we're just like interested in all these things. And I think when you do that, it changes how you approach the world and how you end up designing things.

38:46And so, yeah, I encourage my students to do that. Sometimes it's hard. But, yeah, I think it's just the way we like to live. And then we happen to be in this world where we design products. Yeah. I also think the capacity for curiosity is a measure that I like to, you know, I kind of check in with myself sometimes because it's sort of it's an indication that like things aren't going well in my head or just generally with me if I don't have the capacity to be interested in things outside of my everyday tasks of whatever it is I have to get done. And for me, that's a huge red flag that it just means you need to take a step back and solve that immediately because, yeah, you can't fake it.

39:36And it's such an important part of who we are and how, like, I actually feel good about myself. If I'm not in a state where I'm able to feel curious, then I'm just not feeling good and something is amiss. How do you get out of that rut? Or are there patterns to getting out of the rut would be a better question. I mean, I feel like I'm going through it a little bit. It happens in like small bits, small cycles. I think part of it is just like reorganizing and making sure that you like spend a day, just like suck it up and spend a day to do all the things that need to get done. but yeah taking time for yourself like leaving your office spending time by yourself spending time by myself is something that really helps me going on long walks something that really helps me yeah walks are very underrated walks are so good i've been talking and thinking about walks a lot recently it's like the evergreen solution to almost everything yeah yeah i want to talk a little bit about tools and process we live in this like iphone world which in some sense is great like it's the ultimate object like it it really can do so many things and it collapsed so many previous objects that we had tools different things but it's also like we all have the same one and it doesn't necessarily have as much even life as it used to and you guys make all kinds of weird little specific things both that you sell and in some cases that you don't sell that are incredibly specific.

41:07What makes a great tool broadly and why are you interested in specific tools? What makes a great tool? Yeah, there's that saying of a good tool is the one that's there when you need it. I think I fully agree with that. Broadly, like our workshop is set up that way. It's like it's small, but it's built in a way where basically everything is accessible within a few steps so that you can, yeah, we can like, as soon as you need the tool, it's there. It's there when you want it, when you need it. I think also a great tool is one that just makes you feel happier than you did before you were using it.

41:45I don't know if a lot, I think a lot of people don't think about that when, when it comes to making tools. Oh, really? I mean, most of the world is full of mediocre objects. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. If I had to guess that's something that's, maybe it's not always conscious, but that's something that's clearly running through the tools that you guys make. Yeah. Even just thinking about my iPhone, like that definitely doesn't make me happier every time I see it. But this watch makes me happy when I put it on every morning and I wear it every single day and it makes me just a little bit happy every morning.

42:15And I know that's sort of superficial for a watch to make you happy, but like I feel it. Yeah, you can derive joy from products. It definitely doesn't do the inverse, which is good. Yeah. I wonder what else. Yeah. I don't know. I don't ask of this of other people's tools, but I think of our tools that we design and make, we want it to do the thing that it's supposed to do really well. Part of what we try to do is always simplify it so that it can do the thing really well. Yeah, so I don't know. iPhone's, I think, the opposite. It's trying to cram as much functionality into a small device. And I think they do a pretty decent job.

43:00Like it actually does that well. I think there are many other tools that don't do that well. But its incentives have changed too over time. The iPhone of today is not necessarily the iPhone of 2012. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And you know, it's very hard to do in the physical world, cramming mechanisms to make something do a whole bunch of things. It just never works actually. I don't know if a good example. So yeah, I feel like in the physical tool world or like physical device world, it really wants to just do one thing really well. And I think it also means that you know kind of aligns with so many of the things that we try to do like it makes it last longer fewer moving parts so it physically lasts longer it kind of checks all the boxes so i think yeah that's how we like to design our stuff we have a project that's i don't know hopefully in the works it's in the works that is is a banana phone and see you're laughing yeah but really the idea behind it is we wanted to make a phone for our kids we're pretty against having like we want to prolong them having a phone for as long as possible but we like this idea i initially liked the idea that the phone was just a single button thing and they could just call me on it and so it just like made me smile that he would have to like put this banana in his backpack every day and like what are you doing i'm calling my mom pao's calling his mom again look he has this banana in his ear i just think like and that won't be the best phone but it'll just be it'll definitely bring joy and it won't do the inverse something very beautiful about something you know exactly what it is for yeah there's this like i think it's from steve jobs or maybe some guy worked with and he's like great objects should explain themselves it's like maybe the banana part is confusing but another part of this is and this goes back again to first word art maybe and last word art but you've explored sort of remixing and building on existing things that you appreciate but refining them i think probably this is most notable with pens and specifically this one cartridge that you seem to be obsessed with the high-tech c this cartridge is used in all of your three pens and i i went back and watched the first kickstarter video for pen type a and you have this specific line you say an amazing stainless steel holder for this cartridge because that's what it deserves which is just amazing and so i was curious if there are any other areas that you've thought about or observed of like there's something cool in the world that i really love it for what it is but there might be a way to whether it be able to build a container for it or you and if you wanted to extend this question you could even say there's an amazing thing but it it hasn't had the right story told about it or the right brand put around it is that an area of interest yeah well solid state watch is that yeah yeah it's such a great point I've had many F91s.

46:07Yeah, it's a celebration of the F91 watch movement and how it's this piece of technology that works incredibly well that's gone unchanged since the 80s. It's amazing. But are there other things? I think there are many. Yeah, I don't know if all, yeah, definitely not all of them like turn into even prototypes, but we think about it a lot. it yeah i think also this isn't going to be relevant at all necessarily but like there's some electronic parts like these little transistors that i just really really like and i like how they look and i like how they work because i know how they work and i just like using them like little things like that that have kind of percolated like plenty of ikea products where i'm just like man if they just like tweak this a little bit it'd be so much better and just like moderately more expensive so there's like a i think i gotta write an email book about that i don't know it's just like all the time like we could just like look around this room and i could probably pick out a whole bunch i think it's like yeah just like observing the world and noticing things where you actually that was my assignment for my students last week is exactly this it's like find i think i said find 10 things in the world in real life and come up with a way to improve it and then take two of those and actually improve it but like you know little things like yeah like that cover plate on the plug it's like why is it like that why why can't we make a better version of that like why does that look like that i love the component example too because especially in technology we have this sort of default notion maybe in contrast to other parts of design or fashion like history lineliness is appreciated technology it's like oh just always make it incrementally new and so i'm i'm really enamored by the idea maybe inspired by the solid state watch of like take a component this component like they actually did it really well and now i'm going to use it as a building block versus making the component new i think that's a problem prototyping is seems to be the sort of through line of your entire process or at least the sort of like engine of it i guess a couple of questions in this category like what have you learned from prototyping as sort of like almost like a way of life it seems like much of your disposition around life and certainly creation is prototyping what makes for good prototyping tools maybe as a extension of that like would you have any advice for those of us who are certainly many people living digitally centric lives, doing more in the physical world, doing more prototyping, using their hands more.

48:47And I realize that's an open-ended question. Yeah, we prototype a lot. I think it really depends what your goals are. But we, for a very long time, we don't use renderings ever in our studio. Which is extremely rare, I would presume, for the type of work you do? Yeah, I think most students are taught to produce renderings as a way to communicate ideas, which I think in any other studio environment is really important. But because we're so small and we have a workshop. Even for communicating an idea, I think a rendering communicates a false idea. You know, I love it whenever I go to a school, like an architecture crit or a design crit, and I don't see those polished renderings.

49:34And I see the sketches of like what the story is, the body of the work and not this i like a rendering like does so little we never produce renderings for ourselves we just go straight to prototyping and the thinking happens in prototyping and i would say even like like the cad tool like working in cad is just working in cad to get to the prototype. So I think the way we work, I'm just trying to minimize all the process, all the steps it takes to get to the physical thing, both the amount of time I spend on my computer, the way our workshop's set up, everything is to just get us to the physical prototype, because that's it.

50:20That's the thing that's going to prove or disprove your idea. And based on that, I want to just like make that cycle as fast and efficient as possible so that we can keep evolving an idea into something that we're really happy with. Prototyping is it. It's like everything happens in the prototype and different kinds of prototypes too. We'll have like look like prototypes or like functional prototypes. Sometimes they're separate things. Sometimes they're the same thing. But yeah, everything is in the prototype. my sense is and maybe i'm just projecting people who are otherwise creative in other mediums especially digital mediums there's this sort of sense that like making physical stuff is like a boogeyman behind a wall or something do you have any and maybe the answer is just that it is really hard and you need a lot of tools and things but obviously you teach like is there would you have i think probably the majority of my listeners are spending most of their lives digitally, at least from a creative standpoint.

51:20Do you have any guidance or wisdom for or even encouragement for people to maybe take that incremental nudge into using their hands or prototyping in real life? I think it's not as hard as people think it is to make physical things. It is hard to make physical things. Don't think that you're going to become a billionaire from making physical things because it's expensive to make physical things. But yeah, you know, Now, because of CNC technology, there's not the same setup cost to make a physical thing as there were 10 years ago. There's plenty of shops all over the world that are happy to take your work on.

51:57And it's not like to cam something isn't the most expensive thing anymore. And to set up your job, if you want to make something out of metal, it's actually not that cost prohibitive, even if you want to make just a few of them. Like even when we were in grad school, Sei Wei was sending out parts. He was getting them made in China and he was paying like 40 bucks a prototype for these things. And that was like 15 years ago. Yeah. Yeah, I would say it's similar. It's relatively easy to make prototypes. I think the hard part is making something that's ready to be manufactured. I think that's a whole other ballgame.

52:35And the whole point of the prototyping process, I think, is to like keep exploring and building up your knowledge to get to a manufacturing level. I think the hurdle or maybe the part that's misunderstood is people who want to get into hardware design that are just like, I'm going to design this thing and get it manufactured. And there's a whole chunk of work in between having the idea to making it manufacturable that they're missing. And sometimes it's like a couple prototypes. Sometimes it's literally hundreds of prototypes and you kind of have to be ready to go either way. We also struggle with that.

53:15Or I don't know if it's a struggle, but we just like we accept it as part of the problem. It's like sometimes we start a project and we're like, oh, I think we're going to launch this in two months. And then two and a half years later, we're still tweaking stuff. And we've accepted that as being part of the process. And I think for people who want to get into it, you kind of have to also understand that, hey, this thing takes time and iterations. And if you're lucky, maybe if everything works out properly, it could be relatively quick, but it could also just like drag on forever. And you have to be willing to accept that.

53:50Seems like prototyping is sort of like the opposite of a shortcut. With both those other things, rendering and getting straight to manufacturing, it's like, I kind of want the shortcut. I want it. Yeah. Yeah, no shortcuts, unfortunately. We maybe got this a little bit with the remixing theme, but are there any products that you just love so much that you either wish you designed or you think there's nothing left to say there that really stand out? One is the spatula. It's a handmade spatula. One of one handmade. It's a one-on-one, yeah. Blacksmith made it and we were gifted it because I begged for it.

54:27but yeah it's the best thing we have in the house i think i was telling someone else the other day that if there was a fire that's the thing i would grab and leave the house with you know partly because it's a one-of-one and that we've used it so much so there's like a lot of history and love that we've embedded in it but there are also other ones like yeah you made me think of it yeah thinking of things that i wish i designed the super clamp manfrotto they make like camera gear have they have a clamp for clamping against pipes essentially for camera gear like lighting and tripods and stuff like that and just like the way yeah it's quite thoughtful the way they've designed it so that it's compatible with itself and like a whole world of accessories that now many companies kind of bought into and i love stuff like that that's not the only example like products where sort of like last word they like solve the problem and they're like this is it it works really well so then a whole bunch of other like third-party companies are like yeah we're gonna build on top of that system because that system works so well yeah i don't think we've ever designed anything like that but that's like there's many of examples like that where i'm like i wish i could come up with something like that that then is kind of accepted as like yeah yeah like an industry standard.

55:47I can never think of things that I like that much. Taylor doesn't like a lot of most things. High bar. Yeah. You both, I think when you met at MIU ITP, this sort of unique program, merging design and technology and software and all these things, we talked a little bit about software and electronics at the beginning. Taylor, you've said software, you've talked about how much you love it. Like it's so powerful, it's accessible, it's flexible. back to the earlier point about hardware being a little harder to get into. And it seems that we're getting to a point now where even around 3D printing and other types of prototyping stuff, like the accessibility, the cost of chips, like all of these, the ability to put sort of technology into things, even creating software now is getting cheaper and faster, if not free.

56:36Do you think that, and maybe you mentioned this briefly, that there's maybe more to come as you see all this happening. And is there an inclination to put more, to electrify more of the things or have them be kind of more attuned to this sort of digital connected Internet world we're living in? Or do you think you'll still kind of do plenty of stuff that's just purely analog? We definitely don't want to make things that have software in them. The reason I like software is because you can get on your computer, you can model things, like model ideas really quickly and solve problems really quickly.

57:14And it's predictable. And if you mess up, it's like if it's broken, it's your fault. It's definitely your fault. I like software for that reason. But I don't like software in products in the sense that it makes a thing be able to do all the things that software can do. That said, I am really interested in electrifying our projects, but not with programmable microcontrollers necessarily, but for purpose-built parts that work a very specific way and making those things visible and like part of the actual structure of the thing itself. That's something that interests me. Yeah, I agree. There's no reason to make your toothbrush Wi-Fi enabled.

57:59Like, I think it's like a, that's like a artifact of components just becoming so cheap that you can embed them. And I think there's just because you can embed chips and things you don't, it doesn't mean you should. I would go, yeah, all of this stuff, like Wi-Fi enabled fridges, Bluetooth enabled blank. I think it's kind of problematic because it makes those devices not work properly without connection sometimes. I think that reduces its longevity and it's a real problem. Like I think it's, yeah, it's actually quite bad that we do that. But yeah, I still love electronics. I think there's a place for it and it's useful for certain things.

58:40But I think we have to be careful generally about like embedding too many things just because we can do it. so you gave a talk i think in 2018 on generative design which was i think you were really thoughtful and in some ways kind of saw what was coming but listening to it back seven years ago Does it hold up? Yeah, I think it really holds up. But it's also just crazy to think about how table stakes much of it is now, at least in terms of how people are thinking about creativity in the world. I can't remember if it might actually be from a separate interview. You had said a bunch of things are going to converge in the next five or ten years.

59:20AI-driven design is going to replace CAD, be integrated with everything from camming, machining, and laying out electronic boards. at a certain point the ability to design and take something to production will be in the hands of many more people that's going to blow up everyone's practice small ones like ours big companies all of them there's two components to this that i'd love to talk about one is generative design specifically you have this i think you call it the dream stem which is this like weird organic bicycle handle that looks like it was designed by an alien which is sort of the generative piece there's a couple lines from that that i thought were really interesting and you're talking about sort of like the way that we make aesthetic value judgments and the ways that machines might do that.

1:00:01You said we have an image or an idea of what an antenna wants to be. And that's why we're so restrained from sort of designing the optimal antenna in theory, back to the generative design piece. And you also have this line, you said, translating intuition into clicks on a screen, which is maybe like the defining design or creative process of the last 20 years for a lot of people. We're sitting here in 2025. obviously many creative people are technology inclined ones are really excited i think a lot of creative people and a lot of artists are really terrified they feel like they're losing the humanity we feel like you can press a button you can generate something i'd love to hear i mean now we're also in the staring kind of down the barrel of human machine kind of collaboration you even said designers will become conductors rather than composers directors rather than actors and air traffic controllers rather than pilots.

1:00:48And yet you're also two of the people, at least in my experience of the world, who are like most like in the nitty gritty, like really being, for lack of a better word, like human in your design. Are you feeling, how do you feel in this moment? I'm pretty excited. I'm not averse to using any of those tools. In fact, yeah, every time I see a new thing, I at least try it. because I think it's interesting, like all of that stuff, but I don't think we're there yet. It's like, it's still quite far, but I think you can see it because of the way, you know, other things are ahead, like software, for example, like writing code.

1:01:29We write code too, but actually nobody writes code. We're just copy pasting code, everybody. And so that shift is probably a few years ahead of how we do hardware design. So if you need to like design something on the computer. There are some like early stuff where you're just like describing stuff and you get a 3D model. It's not that great yet, but you can see it's like, it's going to happen. I'm just excited for it all because it does mean that it changes the way we think about like the process of design. Like it's, it becomes less cumbersome so that your ideas or yeah, things can flow smoother.

1:02:08So again, just like compressing the time and effort between an idea and prototype or an idea and manufacture just becomes shorter and easier and i'm excited for it because it just means like way more people can design weirder stuff because we're so like our world is made up of stuff that's designed for the masses like for the average which i think is a pretty boring world and so yeah i'm just excited that we get to design more weird things and if more people do it, it means we get to do it more. And if these tools allow us to make more of them faster, that means we get to put out more ideas, which is super exciting for me.

1:02:46I think also like you brought up the word intuition a little bit, and that's something we talk about a lot. Also, intuition is something we value a lot in our studio. And I trust my intuition and I trust Saewe's intuition and I need him to trust my intuition for the day to go smoothly. I think it's one of the things we value most. And I just want to make sure this is something, I'm not sure where my intuition comes from. I'm not sure where Sayways comes from. But I know, I trust that it's something that I've been developing for my entire life. And I trust that my, whatever I've been curious in has fed into my ability to make intuitive choices today.

1:03:32You know, there's lots of experiences that have contributed to this. And I don't know, we talk about this a lot with our kids. We want to make sure that they're able to experience the world in a way that makes them unique and makes them able to make creative choices that aren't like, oh, you do X, Y, Z, and then you get to this. you know the ability to just pay attention to the world to take in things to cross-reference information to cross-reference different subject matters i'm sure ai will be able to do this in some sense but i do think that there are human ways that we are that like i do think that we will be different from the machines in some way but maybe i'm wrong about that yeah i actually don't really think it's a right or a wrong thing like our machines are us and i do feel strongly about that but yeah i do think about and like worry a little bit about how our kids are going to be in the world i'm not so worried they're gonna be great something i think about that i think ties to both of your answers is this you got it a little bit which is i think some people are worried that everything is just going to be completely systemized and mechanized and there's going to be no entropy or emergence or anything.

1:04:51If anything, I think the generative design stuff is indicative of the fact that like, or like, I don't know if you ever read about Lee C. Dole playing AlphaGo. And it's like, there are a couple of moves that happened in this kind of famous game of Go where one that there's a few that the AI made and one that Lee made that like defied the bounds of no one had ever made a move like that. So that's really interesting. I guess the part, and this certainly gets to where we're going and maybe your kids is like how we relate and it's an ego thing to like how tight our grip is on even the idea itself like your handlebar was like not like in some sense totally your idea you set you pressed go you set it up on the other hand it like it it did it without you yeah and i think like to your point also like we're probably experiencing this most right now with software or like for the first time many of the serious software engineers I know are like I'm live coding like it's doing its thing and so that's the maybe though like if I were to try to double click anywhere I'd be curious for how you might relate to like would you release a product that you didn't that you yeah set up but didn't design yeah 100 % like I think for the dream stem though it feels like you didn't like Like you designed it, but like that's kind of just the way it's supposed to be.

1:06:13That's almost like final word. No, hold on. Really? This is definitely not. Yeah. So, I mean, just like image generation too. If you're prompting to get image generated, you're not going to pick the first image, right? Like you do that process over and over. So this goes back to like being like a director. Yeah. Like you're not creating the image, but you are definitely making a selection. and you're, you know, exploring like the gradient descent world to just be like, that's the one I want, that direction. I want to go down there. You know, like you're kind of navigating that space. And I don't know.

1:06:52Yeah, who knows if maybe that space that you have to explore is going to get smaller and smaller as, I don't know, the tools get better. Could get wider though too. It could get wider. Maybe we want it wider even. And, you know, it's like, I think that's the work. That's the input that we provide to get to the thing we want. Or it's not even like trying to get to the thing you want. It's sort of like exploring it. It's like it shows you a thing and you're like, I want to go that way. Or like, I'm interested in this path more than that path. And coming up with the Dreamstone was the same. It was very slow because I had to generate each one and it took like five hours.

1:07:31But like, it was the same process. It's like it generated, I had it generate a whole bunch of things. And from that, I had to like tweak the parameters to be like, okay, I don't want it to like be that blobby. I want it to be more like this. That's what I mean. Like I think the time and space that you have to explore is maybe going to become more specific and quicker. But I think that will kind of maybe always be there as long as that type of interaction is how we interact with these tools. That may change. I think it will change, like the way we interact with them. I think the big shifts are going to happen.

1:08:08I think we're on this kick right now where it's like, oh, it shows you a bunch of stuff. You copy paste or like tell it where to go. That kind of interaction will probably change. But for now, you know, for the next five, 10 years, that's how we're going to be dealing with it. And I would love to design a product that way. It'd be really fun. But I think the tools are not there yet. I also think the proof of work is shifting to a different part of the process in a way. Like in a sense, you could, my sense is that your children on a relative basis are going to be more equipped, even just from an ideological standpoint to like, might sound heretical to you, but to like prototype their way through lots of options and have a point of view.

1:08:52My hope would be at least to your point would be that even if this speeds us up on the sort of going through all the frames it leads to like that much more depth right yeah but i'm sympathetic in terms too yeah but also in that same framework as we essentially decrease the amount of friction to arrive at these ideas i think we also lose things you know so like in in prototyping the way we do now it's quite arduous we have to like print stuff machine stuff so hard in 3d printing it's so hard catting things walking down to the basement cleaning your print bed oh my god so much work but all of those things in prototyping like you know sometimes yeah i have to like turn a 3d print to like get it to what i need it to be or like you know sand it or whatever all these things that we consider as like frictions that we want to remove that potentially like interaction with the machine learning model will remove that friction that we sometimes think is not good is actually productive and i think that's sort of where we maybe have to be careful it's like how much do you want to like shortcut that process without losing all of that or maybe like shortcutting it is so beneficial that you know it's sort of like when i was in school we Not everybody had to do this, but you had to make your own graphite before you got to draw on the paper because that meant something.

1:10:24And I think probably very, very, very few people do that now. Very few people even sharpen their leads to draw. And so something was lost there, but maybe it wasn't enough to discount all the benefit we got from going straight to CAD. Or maybe there's other ways to insert the friction or insert that type of thinking process back into the way we make things. Yeah, I don't know how it's going to go, but something will be lost. I don't know what it is yet. Technology is really good at reducing friction. And so there may be a little bit of, where am I going to intentionally add it back or maintain it?

1:11:03I sometimes spend way more time than I should be spending editing photos. and I shouldn't be using my time for that, but I do like doing it. And I think I like doing it because I'm doing this very rote methodological thing that gives my brain space to think about other things. I can't listen to a podcast or even music when I photo edit, but I'm thinking still. And I really value those moments. That's a complete waste of my time otherwise. But it's not apparently. Yeah. We only get so many things to care about. Yeah. That's worth all the time in a sense. You've built, obviously you are CW &T in some sense, but you also built this brand thing in the world, CW &T.

1:11:52And much of that is the objects and the art and the product. But a lot of that too is brand and storytelling. And you send out the weekly newsletters, you make cool videos and all different types of kind of things like that. But I also think it's interesting that like the defining thing to me about stories is time. And it's like we keep coming back in a loop here. Maybe this is something you thought about a lot. Maybe it's something you haven't thought about much. What is the brand of CW &T? What story are you trying to tell? Yeah, good question. What is the story? I was talking to a friend the other day about, yeah, what happens to CW &T when we die, like when we retire.

1:12:37Because that's the same, right? Die or retire? Dying and retire is the same thing. It's the same, yeah. And in my head, I'm like, yeah, I would like it to keep going because it is its own thing. We started it, but it has its own life. And I would love to see, I wouldn't get to see it, but like, I like the idea that it can continue beyond, like, we've set something up that can continue. You're like, we should just shut it down. Like, there's no more. It is us, I think is like Taylor's point of view. It is us. And then it's like, it's sort of a question. Could we do this? It's always been a question for me in Sewe.

1:13:22We have these things that we would like to do in this world. Is it possible to do those things and also support ourselves? and I would sort of almost just think of it as like a case study that would hopefully encourage other people to come along and be like oh it is actually possible you're not going to be gajillionaires but you can find your own way and carve your little niche in the world and be able to do what you want to do on a day-to-day basis and you know feed your family wait but why can't you do that and have it continue I just like that's the thing exactly like if those people see CW &T and are like, that's cool.

1:14:00Like, why would they want to go work at CW &T? They should just do their own thing. No, like this is not how the world works. Sorry. Why not? First word art and last word art, a little bit, right? For example, I have a good example. Like, Issey Miyake, he built a pretty awesome brand. And it has like an approach and philosophy that after he died continues. Yes, but it's not going to continue forever. Oh, it will continue forever. I guarantee it. Rand as a word is probably means less than it used to. But like, I don't know. I have a relation. It's commercial and there's plenty of criticism. But I have a relationship to Nike that like I've always really admired Nike for two reasons.

1:14:48One, because I loved it as a kid. And two, it's like the only brand I can think of that can be like Virgil can put it on the runway and then it can also come down to like a Walmart T-shirt for some six-year-old. I relate to this, by the way. And so like I really hope that Phil Knight, bless him, he's pretty old. Like he handed it off a while ago. And granted, there's plenty of critiques. So, yeah, I would wonder for you, is it partly that just CWNT is so personal? or maybe it's that what you were saying, which is that it's like a template and it's like, oh, it's not actually the container. It's the template for you to do.

1:15:23It's the blueprint for you to do this your own way in a way that Nike is a little bit more of this substantive organism. Yeah, I would say that we're, you know, we only have, we just have another person working with us as of like two months ago and we are not professional at that. We're not there. Yeah, but you're in year 13. you got plenty of time so young still i think i have a i have an analogy for your argument it's like and we've talked about this before where you know it would be weird if a band continued beyond the life of the members of the band exactly grateful dead's kind of doing john mayer's in there like that's true and i would argue that's the most the band that's the most an idea right Right.

1:16:09Yeah. It holds an idea. But other bands probably can't pull that off, which I think we relate to. We talk about like putting albums out, like the way we operate. It's like, yeah, we're not in any niche category. We're just like, hey, we want to work on this new album. We're just going to put it out. And if you like it, you like it. and I think as long as we operate that way, it is maybe hard to define us as a brand. It's like you don't really know what's going to come out. You probably don't know what products we're going to make. You may have like some ideas how we approach it because it comes from us.

1:16:44Well, I know it when I see it. Right. Maybe you know, yeah. But that isn't nothing. That is like there's something inside of that just because we don't have the words or the scripter. Right, yeah. Yeah. But maybe I could also see us being more like a band. And then maybe there are other cover bands that show up, but they don't officially become part of our band. When we're done, it's like we're done and you can be a cover band of us. But the company, the band is done. Yeah, I can kind of see it both ways. Yeah, it could be interesting. We'll see what happens. We still have many years. I hope so.

1:17:21Yeah. on a slightly more practical note you've built a business on the internet as two people without tons of resources one big part of that has been kickstarter which i i think maybe is not certainly not as exciting or sexy as it used to be and yet you continue to return to i'd be curious for any thoughts broadly on kickstarter and what it has allowed for you from a momentum or an audience or capital standpoint and two if you just have any reflections on building this sort of weird identity personal life like mix of all of these things into sort of like an internet business any reflections on that yeah i have too many reflections on that lots of emails you know i kickstarter is very much responsible for where we are today i don't think like we would have gotten a start in any at all if we if it wasn't for Kickstarter that really made our first project take off like it did.

1:18:18And it helped us build a fan base that it's really hard to find a following on the internet. There's lots of people on there. Lots of noise too. Hard to please. Yeah. Very distracted. Yes. Yeah. And I really like the idea of using Kickstarter. I think that crowdfunding is a way that makes sense of putting a project into the world. Like you should see if people actually want it before you go and make a thousand of them, 10 ,000 of them so that you're not spending a ton of money and wasting a lot of money and resources on garbage that nobody wants. So, you know, it makes sense. That said, like Kickstarter is not that cool.

1:19:00It was kind of cool. It was really cool. Yeah. But it's not anymore. And, And, you know, for us, we've still, we just launched a project on Kickstarter about a month ago and a month and a half ago. Encil Type-C. Encil Type-C. Still available? We're going to ship this week and it'll be on our website really soon. Yeah, it's a big question now. Once we sort of have an audience and not sure, I actually know that Kickstarter doesn't bring that much more of an audience to our work. I like the idea of us being on there and just kind of like doing it over and over again just because I think it's a great tool.

1:19:40And I want young studios, small studios to be using it for that and to be able to use it for that. And if like we can't use it, then like those other studios aren't going to be wanting to use it either. So I just like, I feel like I want to use it for solidarity. but it's it's not that helpful to us anymore sadly wish it was as you were talking i was thinking about like the most recent peak design launch like they launched a suitcase which huge campaign and that's like their they've been on kickstarter too for a long time but they're a much bigger company you know they have these huge campaigns but they started small also and it makes me wonder yeah who is kickstarter for you know i think we all you know peak design included like we all started pretty early when it wasn't such a crowded place and now it's super crowded partly because yeah more people are on there trying to launch things but also there's all these legacy companies that continue to use it and in some ways are kind of like soaking up all the attention.

1:20:49And I don't know if that's actually healthy for Kickstarter in terms of their original mission. You know, it's like, it produces income for them. So I understand why they would do it, but it's like, it doesn't quite align with what Kickstarter was meant to be. And yeah, I just, you know, I'm sure they think about it. I don't know if they're doing anything about it, but yeah, I would also love to see a platform where it's not for us. It's like, It is for people who were in our position 10 years ago to get going. And I don't know if Kickstarter is that anymore. But I'm very glad we were there. We were there at the right time, right place kind of thing.

1:21:28I think if we launched the same product today, it would be crickets. You are partners in life and work. There's a bit I'll read. Taylor tends to think of things from a systems perspective. She likes to have a comprehensive understanding of the problem before diving in. Sewe likes to tackle things as if it's a sprint and continue on that momentum until we run out of steam. And then Taylor, you had said, I think somewhere else, something that comes with having kids is a sense of empathy towards difference. Before having them, I assumed they would be like us, but they aren't really not. There's this deep sense of appreciating and loving them for exactly who they are and for their differences that has been really valuable.

1:22:07and so in some sense it seems like you're both sort of a whole and a half at the same time you're half of this thing you're building together and then you're obviously two very different distinct people who have your own strengths and weaknesses and instincts and all this stuff and obviously anyone who spends their life as a partner to anyone knows a little bit about what it's like to be kind of a shared organism but you guys are really doing it kind of at full dial even in little ways i was curious like most of the stuff you do publicly in the social accounts it's like it's a cwnt you're usually doing it together there's an old website you made on noodles and you even talked about like i don't know if you were doing this but you talked about the notion of like sharing a password and a username with somebody who you care about to like sort of leave these diary entries do you try to draw really clear lines are you do you let yourself merge in some areas and and not in others what what is this like what's it like what's it like i think it's really different for it's a weird thing that people do right like we couple with other people and you know i don't know if this is like a female characteristic but i've found that in many relationships that i've not many because i haven't had that many relationships in my life but i have always found that i have a tendency to really merge with that person.

1:23:29And there was always a tension of where I was within that. And so that's something that I think about all the time. And still to this day is like we, I think it's a female thing where women, I think men do this as well. I actually don't really know that much about it. But amongst my women friends, like we've felt this ability to transform and become a lot like our person and lose a sense of self, especially when you have kids too. Your identity becomes very revolved around this like new type of person, which is a mom. So like we have that, which all people who are coupled have, but we also have a working relationship.

1:24:10And I think that those are constantly just, we're changing all the time. And I find like sometimes I do kind of make a concerted effort to decouple from you and like really do things that are just siloed in my own practice. And Sewe is probably more like, why do you need to do that? Like, come, come hang out with me. But I think he has like more of a solid sense of self that hasn't mutated in the same way that I think mine has. I'm also not very sensitive to these things I think I've definitely mutated And definitely influenced by you And I don't know how you feel So I don't know if it's more or less But it's there But yeah, I also see the mom thing As like a significant transformation Both in terms of like priorities And just like how you think Having kids also shifted the way we work quite a bit You know, and it's been cool It's been a cool adventure.

1:25:15When we first started, you know, we spent every minute together for several years. Now, when I think about that time, I like long for it. I'm like, man, that was such a good time. We were so productive. We like came up with all kinds of cool shit and we did a lot of cool, fun things. And then kids like shifted our priorities. I think we were still quite productive and I really enjoyed that working process where it's like oh okay now we have to like include this third thing and it still worked and I still love it it's just like a different thing and I find it really fun that we've kind of moved across these different ways of being together and yeah hopefully keep continuing keep doing it yeah we were talking about moving somewhere else We'll see if that happens.

1:26:09Yeah, it's like many years away. We're like, yeah, what are we going to do when they go to high school? I think those are more transitions to come. You know, it's like, yeah, what happens when our kids become teenagers? Our family dynamic is not going to be the same as it is now. What happens when the kids leave the house? It's going to be this other phase. And I look forward to all of it. And I like that the CW &T part, like the design studio, is a constant. and that we've been able to like transform the way we work so that it fits the way we live instead of the other way around. Like I think, yeah, I think in other people's cases, like if you work somewhere, you kind of have to like fit your life around this like work thing.

1:26:51And I think we've been fortunate enough that we can do the opposite and it feels quite nice. Like it's really cool that we've been able to evolve it that way. It seems like your North, and I think you probably said this your north star seems to be in the business freedom answering curiosity is this exploration you joked earlier no retirement plans i think you said like some people sort of like sprint towards 60 and then they can retire and you're like i'm gonna do a slower marathon haruki marakami i think said something similar he's just like i'm just trying to i want to keep writing i have a couple questions about that process maybe from a looking forward and longevity standpoint the first is just how much you think about like getting better another way of putting this might be like explore versus exploit seems like your disposition at least how you talk about it is usually just like we want to explore stuff we want to do whatever is exciting but you're also clearly one obviously very talented but two even the the quality and the output seems to be i think the trend line is improving is that just something that is a byproduct or is that something you're ever conscious of?

1:27:58I think it's a byproduct. I see us improving as well, just because we're learning more, you know, like we're learning on the job. And you're practicing. Yeah, we're practicing, working with like really amazing people and like learning from other people and learning from other people's practices. Yeah, I think all of it converges and adds up to like things that we put out that look, I don't know, look better, perform better or yet closer to what we want it to be but yeah we also the exploit thing is really interesting because we also do get excited about certain new pieces of technology that present them to ourselves where we're like oh that's cool like how can we exploit that to become part of the way we work and it might be a tool or it might be like a component or it might be yeah whatever a new piece of fabric and that's also part of how our studio moves.

1:28:54It's like, yeah, we want to explore, but then once in a while, we'll also like find these little gems where it's like, what? Someone made that? Like, why, why does that exist? And why aren't people exploiting that to turn it into a thing? So there's a lot of that also happening. When you say exploit, do you mean like, you know, have it take an idea that we already have and like really run with that one? I think it's a framing that is used in lots of different ways, in different contexts. And this one, I suppose what I mean is explore I'm relating to is just like the purest essence of like follow curiosity and exploit is a little bit more considered or contrived.

1:29:30It might be around a tool. It might be around an opportunity. It might be around like we actually want to get better at this part of the process or business or whatever. Okay. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. I think, you know, something that has come up with just conversations in our studio, we have a new person who's been working with us. And I think it's our responsibility now to share what was going on here with them on a day to day basis. And the other day I was we were eating lunch and one of those people asked the question, like, why don't we make like they saw this opportunity? Like, why don't we make a really inexpensive pen that's just very affordable?

1:30:14And I was like, no, what? Like, I didn't mean to be rude, but I was like, that's not what this is. So there are opportunities, right, to exploit some of the niche markets that we've kind of put ourselves into. Not purposefully, but like we do make a few writing tools. We do make other. You have an audience there, at least. Yeah, we have an audience there. And yeah, I guess like we relinquish a lot of opportunities to exploit those areas because it's just not what is interesting to us. But yeah, I do think that there's opportunities to like figure out more, figure out strategies to, you know, optimize how our existing things are already running.

1:30:58And we should do that and we are going to do that. Yeah. Yeah. This might be contradictory to the whole kind of small collaboration thing, but are there any dream collaborators? That could be people, that could be brands, that could be institutions. I think it would be cool to do something with Nike. We have some brands that we do like a lot that it would be interesting that, I don't know, work sort of outside of what we do or what it appears that we do. It would be fun to do something with. Yeah. Yeah, I don't have any specific ones in mind, but like... Yeah, I consult on other projects, which is really fun.

1:31:36And the thing I realized is I just really love working with really good people. Ultimately, that's what would make a collaboration fun. I don't really care what the brand is. Brands can be huge and they kind of have an image. But yeah, if we can work with people who are really like, I don't know how else to describe it like at the top of their game like really do whatever they do really well working with them is always like such a pleasure it doesn't matter if it's a tiny brand or not or a big brand it's like if the people care and do the thing that they do really well like it's such a huge learning opportunity for us and collaborating with them ends up becoming fun for everyone involved.

1:32:30So yeah, we're not like actively seeking collaborations like that, but once in a while, something like that shows up and it just is the best. It's really, really fun. I like the idea too of sort of capability or even domain outside of, I don't know, you mentioned Nike, like I found some old thing that listed like the San Diego Zoo and Yves Saint Laurent and like clearly you guys have, there's possibility. Yeah. The last question on this, this before we begin to wrap up, what in clearly you're defying this in many, maybe small and large decisions. But like, what what would it look like to be more resourced to have a kind of a more ambitious version of this?

1:33:17Or would there be anything that would get you excited about that, acknowledging that clearly why you've kept it how you have is largely due to compromise? and in getting to have it be what you want it to be. Yeah, I have thoughts. We've talked about this and it shifts. I think, yeah, if you asked this question maybe a few years ago, I would have had a really straight answer, which is essentially just like incorporate every step of the process in-house. So like if we had more space, more money, I would just buy all the machines we need to produce all the products that we currently produce so that we fully control that process.

1:33:56All of the manufacturing. Yeah, like big machines, essentially, which is sort of where we started, like when we learned how to run all these big CNC mills. And so that's part of maybe our magic sauce is that we understand what it takes to make these things and we prototype that way. But it would be really awesome to have that capability in-house so that we can iterate as we're manufacturing, which we currently don't do or don't do for all of our products i think that would be one is like if we had infinite resources that's sort of like the way to round out our practice and the other constraint is essentially time time to work on certain ideas and so just like more people like more hands on the prototyping process or like bringing ideas into manufacturing so that we're not the only ones like pushing it there but if you had like multiple tracks going at once it would be amazing because then we can get more ideas out i think also one of our big bottlenecks is just storytelling and the whole marketing side of our business which is nothing like we do the nothing it's not nothing but it's like it's very very we don't spend that much time on it i'm mostly responsible for it.

1:35:16And it's, you know, it's over the years has become like not something that interests me that much at all. Actually, it never really interested me that much. You do like storytelling. I do like storytelling. Yeah. I think that having somebody who is in-house, who is able to tell stories on a day-to-day basis and put those into the world would be really great, sort of in tandem with how we're working that aren't like we made this project like let's now go and like photograph it a bunch and make it look fancy so people on their phones can want to buy it like i don't i'm not really interested in that my last little bit is like a kind of i guess like a lightning round doesn't have to be super quick answers but just a miscellaneous list before before we wrap up the first is on teaching you both teach i think have taught at least over the years.

1:36:08And you wrote recently about, we talked about this when I came in, you wrote recently about getting a piano teacher and neither of you having had a teacher for at least 10 years prior to that. What makes a great teacher? Somebody that you want to get better for. Somebody who you're just excited to go and be with every time you have your lesson. Somebody who makes you want to be better, like, and motivates you to be better because they see something in the work that you share also and you just want to participate with them in that world that's kind of that's how i see it with my teacher your piano teacher yeah excites you taylor describes it as like the most exciting part of her week is like going to see your piano teacher and i agree it's like that's a very cool relationship to have with a teacher but my my definition would be different I would be like a good teacher is someone you want to learn with, like study with, you know, it's almost like a study buddy, you know, so I think it's less about like someone who you want to learn from, like someone who you think can give you the knowledge.

1:37:18I think that's sort of like a misguided relationship to the teacher. It's like someone who you want to like study with, like kind of break apart a problem with them and like work through a problem with them. I think is a great teacher. And obviously all these other things like to want to do that with someone, I think is hard to foster, but is the ideal situation. Well, both of those answers are about energy, right? The knowledge is out there. Like the Harvard lectures are on YouTube. That's not why people aren't learning. It's the energy to actually get up. You live in New York City. I think you've lived here since 98.

1:37:55You probably like a few years after that? 2007. seven okay okay in any case i'm pretty new to new york you lived in new york for a long time my specific question about new york is how you relate to or balance focus and serendipity in a place that maybe isn't always catering to both of us yeah i think it caters well it can cater to both of those actually in the best possible way i think serendipity is one of the most important. You know, it's so special. And when serendipity happens, it's like there's nothing like it. And New York is a place that optimizes for it's optimized for serendipity. Like you go out on the street and like there's a pretty good chance that something serendipitous is going to happen to you.

1:38:43And that's like that's what's beautiful about living in New York. And I don't know, we're fortunate that we have a home that we're comfortable in. We spend most of our time focusing in our home and don't get out much. But when we do get out, serendipity can happen. And that's why we live in New York. It's because we don't make a ton of effort to do all the social things that you're supposed to do. Yes, but it's low friction when you want to tap into it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, same. Good answer. I agree fully. We talked a little bit about music. You're learning piano. know you did this like 365 days of the teenage engineering i don't even know what that thing's called op1 op1 are there notable either domain wise or specifically are there notable inspirations from other creative mediums for either of you both of you we go see a lot of art like especially when we travel like if we ever go to a new city you know we basically hit up as many museums as possible yeah just because there's so much good art out there it's really fun seeing what other people make and think about like oftentimes what happens is like we'll go to a museum and then we're both like itching to go home to like work on stuff because it's so inspiring we're just like damn i want to go home and work like yeah and it's not even about like making the work that we saw it's more just like being inspired that people make work that make work at a certain scale or make work that makes you feel a certain way and we're like oh man i want to go home and craft or do something yeah i also feel i i share that feeling but i also get a lot of inspiration from books just from reading i have so much respect for people who can move people like they do with just like the simplicity of words on paper and storytelling.

1:40:43Just squiggles on tree. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. You mentioned in a Reddit AMA recently, somebody asked about a book. And you mentioned like maybe, maybe it was you. One of you mentioned the possibility of doing a book one day. Two questions, you can answer both or neither. What do you think the cover would be or what would it feel like? and two, what would you, if you had to try to predict, what do you think you would want to say in a book? Well, the book that we've been thinking about is essentially a monograph. You know, so it's like lots of imagery, but I think it would be mostly about our process.

1:41:22Like, yeah, like what we've been talking about. I have a very strong feeling about what I would want our book. I know what I want it to feel like. I don't know what's on the cover of it, But I want it to feel like a novel and not like a monograph. I don't want this like fancy, heavy art book that like squeaks and stuff. I want that kind of gross paper too. Oh, I don't want that gross paper. Well, we're going to have to find another. It makes sense to make two versions. Yeah. When you're reading it, I want you to like snuggle up with it and have the experience of it being like a novel. in terms of its intimacy and, yeah, not like a coffee table book.

1:42:08Yeah, I don't think it's, in my head, it's not a coffee table book, but it feels like... A novel. In my head, it's like... It's like Frankenstein. No, in my head, it's like this feeling that I had when I was younger. This was when, like, Flickr was really big. and I spent so much time basically snooping on other studios you know because people had like automatic upload features and flicker so some studios had like every photo they took just like automatically uploaded to flicker and I would just it felt like I was stalking them but it's so cool because I got to see so much of like the behind the scenes stuff they're like oh that's the machine you have it's like oh and you put it in this tiny space or like what you're just a two person you know like i learned so much that was yeah not presented on their front face right and i feel like the i would love our book to deliver that as well where it's like yeah we're not you know we really don't have any secrets and so you know in interviews like this or presentations we're always trying to be like hey especially during q a sessions we're like hey ask us literally whatever you want we have no secrets but i don't know people are maybe like shy about asking hard questions but i i would love to like give back because i think i learned so much from other people being so open about their practices unknowingly unknowingly yeah yeah yeah you're the lurker the last time i was here the only first time i met you guys about a year and a half ago you recommended a book you're the second person to recommend it the other was also on this podcast he's like a science-oriented venture capitalist you you guys aren't that so two pretty different groups you both recommended this book the overstory oh yeah which is probably the most meaningful book i've read the last couple years it's about trees in the natural world to what extent is nature an inspiration for you a lot yeah just the other day i was this is i'm gonna sound very silly but i was just doing the dishes and i looked over at our plants that are by the window and i was thinking about there's one of them that we bought when tree was a baby and it's like really big now it's not even doing well tree is your son tree is our son yeah it's a tree and we've got that plant it's like not even a good plant really like it's not doing well but somehow it's grown and it's fine and i was just like you know we have a 10 of these plants that are doing really well and we do so little for them i take care of them what do you mean you do so little i do so little for them every sunday sayway waters them but it's just like bloop bloop i also tie them yeah i make sure they're growing in the right direction very very little i i just think like nature you know these plants like they ask so little of the world of us but yet they give so much and they're so beautiful it is awesome nature is awesome yeah speaking of time there aren't in that books obviously about that it's like they're they're kind of at a different pace yeah yeah i find nature not inspiring directly but i just find it so awesome like i have core memories from doing multi-day hikes with my dad that i don't know how it's affecting my view of world but it is just so deeply embedded in my memory and like a happy memory like a joyful memory that i want to also provide that for our kids and so one of the things we decided a few years ago was just like when we go travel let's like let's go see awesome nature things because there's nothing else like it like you cannot yeah museums are great but you cannot like you it's like listening to Bach.

1:46:07Like you can't not feel the awesomeness when you see awesome things in nature. Yeah. And you feel it. You feel it. You don't think it. Right. Yeah. You cannot not feel it. And so, yeah, I find it really important even for myself now to be like, to seek it as grownups, you kind of have to like seek it because we don't have parents that are like, oh, we're gonna go do this now. You know, otherwise we'd just be in New York all the time, not seeing awesome nature thing. So every opportunity I get to experience it, I'm like, yeah, we have to go do that. This is, I guess, a question probably more for you, Sewe.

1:46:41Two disciplines, one that I think you were actually part of starting some degree program at Pratt, morphology and then architecture. Two pretty, maybe morphology is broad, but two pretty distinctive disciplines. I'd be curious if there were any theory or observations or lessons from those disciplines that you think might be more generally applicable to creative people, to technologists, to people in the world who, they feel sort of behind a curtain, especially architecture? Oh yeah. I feel like architecture is very closely related, at least from my experience. I think the discipline of how you design in architecture, like the rigor, I think, just Like being so rigorous about the choices you make in an architectural design process, I think carry through to basically every other design discipline in a really good way.

1:47:38Like it's so rigorous that you kind of have this advantage if you study architecture. And I think the other one that I can think of is the practice of reducing ideas into a concept, which I think is very hard. I still struggle quite a bit with it, but I think great projects have clear concepts that are easy to disseminate to the group, essentially. I think the reason we have these amazing architectural projects is because we have these amazing concepts that everyone in the project, from the junior designers all the way down to the construction workers, all understand that we're all working towards this idea.

1:48:22and so anytime you try to cut a corner you're like well we have to do it this way because the concept is this and it's sort of like a north star is that like a christopher alexander pattern language type concept or something more meta level or i think it can be anything almost so like i think of like herzog and de maron like they make some pretty amazing buildings but like conceptually it's like almost like motif right it's like they're just like here's a cool motif but this is it this is what we're doing and it's going to be everywhere in the building you know versus like other architects where the concept is more abstract and more meta i think that can exist also so i don't think it it doesn't at least in my head it doesn't really matter like where the concept lives but as long as there's one that everyone kind of agrees to to be like oh this is what this design is about then all the details and everything kind of can fit within that puzzle.

1:49:19Even for like your parents' house, it was like the core idea was population explosions. It has to be comfortable for two people, but also comfortable for 10. And those things can't be at odds with each other. Architecture, I think, yeah, it's like quite closely related to the way we operate. um i think yeah morphology i don't know also i think is very closely related morphology that program was started by harash lavani he's i would say is a mentor of mine i helped establish it as a as a minor but it already you know it existed for decades before i arrived and that is very much more about understanding the world of form through systems so actually there's two parts to it there's like understanding like he calls it the genome of shapes so that every shape actually has like a genetic code to it so you can understand that shape's relationship to other shapes thinking about the world of shape through the system is sort of like one branch and the other branch which i think relates to many of the things we do and also like the architecture the way i think about architecture it's like form through force so not understanding shapes through function to be like oh this needs you know it's like very popular to think about like form and function but form and force is more like it's more on the structural engineering end where it's like oh if this thing this thing is shaped this way because of the forces that are applied to it it's a little generative design yes exactly yeah so that's kind of like yeah where that branch ends up is sort of like generative design optimization work but i think as like a as a way to think about form making I think is like really interesting because it's actually one of many branches.

1:51:24Like, I think it's so interesting to me that actually general design ended up where it is, where it's like very alien looking because it is just topology optimization. I think because that's kind of a math that we were capable of doing and we could ask the machine learning models to do. But there's so many other branches of form finding that we haven't even touched yet. you know and i think that part really excites me it's like oh yeah we know computers can do this but actually anything you put through this machine learning topology optimization kind of looks the same like they all look like bones or like you know because that's all like form follows force but yeah if you want to do like form follows function that machine learning model doesn't exist yet like we have to work on that and then yeah there's so much more stuff and i think a lot of that stuff sorry there's like a tangent we're getting like sidetracked by like the way we've been doing image-based stuff you know so like image-based generation is all about like here's a source material now generate something that looks like this stuff and i think it's a little bit unfortunate because it just misses all of the information if you apply that to physical things because this physical thing was designed not to look like this like there's so so many other forces at play and i think if you don't include those forces where it's going to be a weird world like yeah or a highly digital one yeah which of the objects you've created are you most excited to give to a grandchild oh grandchild i would say it doesn't exist yet But that time capsule.

1:53:08Oh, yeah. Yeah. But hopefully we have it out soon. I'd also just say like a pencil. There you go, kid. We might not have paper anymore. Yeah, use this. Please use this thing. Yeah, our kids have time capsules that when they turn three, our friends and family put little letters in there for them and they get to open them when they're 18. What's something you hope that in 20 years you haven't let go of? Something that is still true, you've held on to? It could be about you guys, yourselves, your work from a value standpoint, from a principle standpoint. Curiosity. I think for me, it's just like doing what we do now.

1:53:54I think the way we operate and the way we get to experiment and make things, I feel very lucky that we get to do it. And so I hope in 20 years we're still doing it. My final question. We talked a lot about time, especially at the beginning. When or how do you best experience timelessness? Oh, definitely when I'm playing piano. Yeah, the hours just melt away. I guess maybe when I go on a long walk. I love eating gummies and going on long walks. It's maybe one of my favorite solo long walks. It's so enjoyable to me. And it feels like time slows down a lot. That's all I got. Cool. This was wonderful.

1:54:43Thank you both. Thank you so much.

1:55:01you can email me at pod, P-O-D, at jacksondahl.com. See you next time.