Tobi had an unmatched ability to re-mix cultural artifacts, making objects that comment on our society and explore the notion of value. He was the master craftsman of humor, beauty, and wit. When Kegan and I started Design Glut, it was because we dreamed of creating conceptual objects with the kind of impact he achieved. His work sparked our imagination.

Boxcutter by Tobias Wong, 2002

Cokespoon #1 – a bronze casting of the ubiquitous pen cap dipped in gold

Doorstop – Concrete casting created in a Savoy vase, which then has to be unashamedly smashed in order to yield the form.

Camoflauge iPad case by Tobias Wong and Chelsea Briganti

I cannot believe I’ll never get to see a new idea from him, a brilliant nugget, something that alters my perception of the ordinary.

The first time we met him, in 2007, he was our hero and we were a couple of kids just out of school that could barely contain our excitement. Then and every time we’ve seen him since, we found him to be incredibly friendly and down-to-earth. Even though we only knew him casually, the news of his death is hitting me terribly hard. We wouldn’t be doing the kind of work we do if it weren’t for his influence. He was completely genius, unique, irreplaceable.

Thank you for the inspiration.

Kegan (left) and Tobi (right) outside the Wrong Store. Image via Core77

Design Glut is a very small company of 2 people. We’d gotten pretty comfortable with that, until our latest adventure. As we curated and organized a show during Design Week called Uncomfortable Conversations, all of a sudden we were working very closely with a group of 15 designers and 6 sponsors.

There were plenty of times when we found ourselves less-than-amused by the number of uncomfortable conversations we had to have to pull this thing off. It was a ton of work, but by rallying a group, we were able to make a statement of such greater magnitude and depth than we ever could have done on our own.

On May 16th, 400 people came out to the opening party. Uncomfortable and comfortable conversations were had. Conceptual design was appreciated. And we realized that Design Glut has the ability to bring together the design community IRL, not just on the internet, which is super exciting. Here’s a recap of the our first event – with more shows definitely to come!

In the gallery, a.k.a. an empty storefront in the Meatpacking District that we took over for a week.

photo by Jacob Krupnick

Chrissy Conant’s A2Zzz Pillows. Cuddle up with some Ambien.

Will Robison’s Kevin Carpet Bench. For an hour each day that the show was open, a fetishist was rolled up inside the carpet and show-goers were invited to sit on him. Here’s a series of pictures showing Julio, the human carpet, going in:

Will sitting on Julio.

photo by Jacob Krupnick

From left to right: Liz, Julio’s wife, Vincent, Julio’s adorable little baby boy, and Matthew Waldman of Nooka

photo by Jacob Krupnick

Demian Repucci’s Consumption dinnerware is decorated with infographics that describe the vast differences in food and water consumption around the world.

Vincent Lai’s Deterrent bag is reversible, allowing you to bust out some spikes on a would-be attacker.

Uncomfortable Typographic Situations by MSLK shows what can happen without proper kerning. Also a good litmus test for how dirty your mind is – different show-goers saw different things on first glance…

photo by Luke Escamilla

Body Function by Matthew Waldman. It’s uncomfortable. Enough said.

photo by Jacob Krupnick

Materious’ briefcase/paper shredder (cleverly titled In Case) is a must-have accessory for crooked CEOs.

photo by Luke Escamilla

Chi-Merica by Paul Loebach is a reconfiguration of his Half Mirror, putting an uncomfortable conversation about the ethics of furniture manufacturing out there. That’s the designer, caught nervously biting his nails.

photo by Ryan Heiser

Ana Linares’ It’s Not You / It’s Not Me necklaces are a conversation starter, but a relationship ender.

photo by Ryan Heiser

Which contrasts with Sruli Recht’s Garrote necklace/choker – a conversation starter, but a life ender.

Karl Zahn’s hanging lamp, Heavy, addresses the terror of the cartoon world – death by falling anvil.

And then there’s the Trashlight by Craighton Berman. What do you throw away? What dirty little secrets get hidden in those black plastic bags? If you think you have nothing to hide, or if you’re a bold exhibitionist, cast light on your refuse and put it out on display.

And the final theme of the show was uncomfortable conversations about touching. For those of you who find the subway too germy and and tightly packed, put on a pair of Andrew Haarsager’s Mind The Gap gloves. Should someone’s hand start to drift down the pole towards yours, you’ll be well-protected and ready to impale them.

If you’re the angry type (and New Yorkers tend to be), perhaps you should consider letting go of some of your grudges. Shaking hands with your enemies might seem too extreme a first step – so use Dominic Wilcox’ Pre-Handshake Handshake Device to get used to the motion.

photo by Ryan Heiser

We believe it’s the role of creatives to start the uncomfortable conversations that cause people to grow.

“A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.” – Timothy Ferriss

Inspired by the quote above, we challenged a group of designers to create something which provokes an uncomfortable yet important conversation. Participating designers were given complete freedom with the type of object they created, the materials they used, and the topic of the conversation they set out to provoke.

As a result, we have ended up with a wonderfully broad body of work – housewares and furniture, jewelry and fashion, graphics and video. Still, everything exhibited here has one thing in common: the desire to make you uncomfortable. It’s your turn to judge how well they succeed.

- Design Glut, Curators

GROW HOUSE GROW
Grow House Grow is a wallpaper line created by Katie Deedy, and it’s like nothing you’ve seen before. All of her wallpaper patterns are inspired by stories. At BKLYN Designs this year she’s showing three new patterns, all of which are inspired by female scientists from the 19th century. How cool is that?! If you want to learn more about Grow House Grow, read our interview with Katie from last year’s BKLYN Designs.

The lovely designer (and new mom!) herself, on the left:

HUGH HAYDEN AND KATIE VITALE
We met Hugh Hayden last year at the GSS Jello Competition, where we adored his jello “chicken” wrapped in “plastic wrap.” Well, this talented guy is at it again. At BKLYN Designs this year he’s showing a line of wall-hanging, framed, ANT FARMS.

Hugh and Katie:

This one is my personal favorite. Fun fact: The black stopper in the upper left is covering the hole that you can feed your ants through!

PALO SAMKO
Palo Samko was one of our favorites at BKLYN Designs last year, and this year he did not disappoint! His furniture pieces have a fun sense of whimsy about them, and his sculptures are incredibly intricate little worlds.

MATTHEW FAIRBANK
Matthew Fairbank returns with a new collection, branching out into hanging lamps and ceramics. I’m digging the bright colors and gold accents, and am always impressed by the impeccable craft of Matthew’s work. To learn more about Matthew, read our interview with him.

ESKAYEL
Shanan from Eskayel is another designer who’s branching out. She’s applied her patterns to ceramics and textiles this year, creating a comprehensive line for the home. We love the surreal quality of the having plates and pillows with the exact same pattern as your walls. For more Eskayel, read this interview!

RAM METALS
RAM Metals is a custom metal-fabrication studio that had a bunch of great pieces on display. Raine Heidenberg is completely new to us, and we love her work. She designed this huge, severe, geometric chandelier.

These planters were one of our favorite pieces in the whole show, designed by Charles Constantine for Platerworx.

The ‘Flight’ shelves below, designed by Charles Constantine for TIDES OUTDOOR, also have very striking geometry.

LAMACEK
Last but definitely not least, we completely fell in love with the lighting from Lamacek! They won Inhabitat’s award for Best Lighting, and we completely agree. I’ve sworn a million times that I never want to see anything again with antlers, and then someone goes and proves me wrong. And the robot with it’s little red heart is, well, irresistable.

THAT’S ALL FOLKS
These are our favorites – go see the show and let us know if you agree!

How you got involved with designing pop-up shops?

Well, let’s see. My partners, Jesse Warren and Josh warren, are cousins. I grew up with Josh. Last summer he called me saying, “My cousin’s opening up a store in Southampton, he needs help with the build-out and designing the interior.” It was very last-minute. I went out there over a long weekend and threw it together. We put in racks and hung a huge beam in the middle of the store to drop lights down from. We lucked out finding furniture – a couple stores in Williamsburg were going out of business, so we got lighting, racks, and mirrors from them.

The biggest thing I did was the dressing room. It looked like a Saharan tent made out of canvas drop cloth and 2×4s – which ended up being a total fire hazard. The first weekend that I built it, the fire marshall came in and said, “Not a chance, you guys have to change this.” It was a big learning experience. I ended up being able to just change the structure a little bit and keep the aesthetic.

T.B.D. pop-up boutique in the Hamptons

From there, how did you end up in Aspen?

My involvement in the first store was just on the front end – designing and building out the space, and I did it for free. I figured I’d put it in my portfolio and that would be it. But it ended up being a hugely successful season for Jesse, and when it came time to do another store, they brought me on as a partner. Originally I wasn’t planning on moving out here. Then 2 weeks before the trip I thought, you know what, my job is flexible, I can sublet my apartment, and I’m going to Aspen for the season!

How long have you been out there now?

I came out December 9th – we opened December 18th.

Whoa, that’s really fast.

Yeah, the build-out was intense. The craziest thing is that the first two weeks of our business were the busiest weeks of the season. We had to figure everything out so fast. We didn’t get our credit card machine until the day we opened.

How was it different planning a design and build out that was going to be in Colorado?

Here’s where it gets interesting. I had maybe a month’s notice that we were going to try to do this store. A week before we were supposed to leave New York, we still didn’t know if it was definite because we hadn’t signed the lease yet. My partners Josh and Jesse came out here, checked out the spaces, and locked in an incredible storefront right in the heart of Aspen. It’s across the street from Prada. It’s next to Dior and Gucci. The Ralph Lauren store on the corner is the company’s second-most profitable store location.

So you’re in good company.

We’re the small fish in a big pond. But we decided that if we were going to do this, we had to just go balls out and get the best spot possible.

Most businesses do pop-up shops as a marketing thing. Whereas our model is, wait until the last minute and get a lease in the best spot possible for the cheapest amount. That’s why everything had to be so last-minute – it’s all about negotiating a lease, in order for us to be profitable.

That makes a lot of sense, especially right now. There’s probably a lot of storefronts sitting empty since the economy’s so bad.

Exactly. There’s quite a few in Aspen and it’s a shame. But because of all this, I didn’t have the green light on this project until a week before we left New York. I rented a U-Haul in Bed-Sty and spent 2 or 3 days going around Brooklyn picking up things for the store. I cleaned out my studio in DUMBO, pulled a bunch of stuff from my apartment, and went to Build It Green in Astoria and bought some stuff there.

Before and after shots of the store space

Could you give me an idea of what kind of a budget you had for the store design?

I had pretty much no budget, because we had to pay for our entire lease upfront. We were running really low on capital in the beginning. The only place that we actually spent money was at Build It Green, where we bought the flooring, a couple chairs, some odds’n'ends. Then we drove the U-Haul to New Jersey, where our partner Mikey had just come up from Florida with his dual-H pickup truck and 30-ft horse trailer, which we loaded all of the stuff into.

That sounds like the world’s worst thing to drive across country in.

Oh my god, it was a nightmare. We had vehicle problems the entire way across country. Flat tires left and right. We didn’t even make it through Pennsylvania before we had to stop and get a fuel filter and all these things for his truck. Then we got stuck in Kansas because we didn’t have snow tires. We finally got here, and we arrived at like 3 in the morning, and it was -5 degrees out, and we had to unload this entire trailer into the store.

For the next week, we lived and slept in the store, trying to build it out. The first thing we had to do was lay the floor – there was this terrible carpet when we got here. There was horrible paneling on the walls which we ripped off. We had 6 guys out here at the time, and I had to keep everyone busy and make sure they were doing good work. The build-out went as smoothly as something like that could go. But in all honesty, the store is just now looking the way that I wanted it to.

There’s so many things to do here, and in the beginning it was just us, the owners, running it. Buying, selling retail, working the floor, crazy hours, all night long. We worked our asses off for a month and a half before we were able to take a breath. Now we have two full-time employees, which lightens the load considerably.

Now that you’ve gone through that whole process, what’s been the hardest thing to learn about running a successful store?

Honestly, there’s not enough time in the day to do everything that needs to get done. It’s just prioritizing. For me, the hardest thing was making sacrifices. Visually, things weren’t up to my standard of what I’d like them to look like, but there were other things that needed to be done for the business first.

This store has been the biggest learning experience for me. I was never really interested in designing stores or spaces before, and now I feel like I can make a living out of this. I feel like I just got a mini-MBA. I now know how to run a business, which is really cool. But I’m lucky, because Josh and Jesse both have finance backgrounds and business degrees. I could never do it without them.

Now that you’ve sort of gone through this crash-course in the business, do you think you’ll approach your own work differently?

That’s a great question – I’ve been thinking about that so much. I’ve always been so into furniture, and products, and jewelry, but now I fell into other this thing which could be a great opportunity for me to continue doing store design. I’m not sure where I’m going to be 2 months from now. I think we’re going to do a summer store in Southampton again, and we’re talking to someone about possibly opening down in Dallas. We’ll see!

“We create our designs through an iterative and experimental process. After brainstorming an initial concept, we write a pattern-generating algorithm in the computer through which we further explore our ideas and ultimately create the finished product. You can use the applets we share here to create your own one of a kind jewelry designs or just to play and learn.”

Pinch Bracelet

One thing that really sets Nervous system apart is that your products aren’t just about the final pieces, but the programs you build to generate the designs.

Jessica: That’s what’s always interested us. It’s how we would want to design anything. People at Harvard heard I went to MIT and said, “Oh, do you know how to program computers?” I got pushed into that box, and decided to explore it. I had previously done a lot of programming, and worked as a research assistant at the Media Lab. Jessie’s background is in computer science. We have a shared interest in computational design.

I just opened up one of your applets and started playing with it – it’s really cool. How many of your customers are getting custom jewelry? Is that a big selling point?

Jessica: Conceptually, it is. We have a lot of people who use the applets. But not that many people actually purchase the things they designed themselves. We’re not really pushing that aspect. It’s there as an educational tool which allows people to understand our process.

How did you two meet?

Jessica: We lived in the same dorm. MIT has this crazy dorm system where houses get to choose the people who move into them, so they maintain a certain culture.

Jesse: And we started Nervous System when we were both still in school. At that point, Jessica was studying architecture at Harvard’s GSD and I was at MIT. The jewelry sort of emerged from work we were doing for Jessica’s architecture degree, which used a script to generate a spring mesh.

Filament Necklace

So how did an architecture project transition into designing jewelry?

Jessica: I was just working on a project for school, and making a lot of laser cut models, and eventually 3D-printed models. Some of the pieces were lying around on my desk. The weirdly-cut paper started to curl up. People kept coming up to my desk and asking, “Is that a bracelet?” I started thinking that I could try making bracelets.

Jesse: We threw them up on Etsy, on a whim.

Jessica: Once I did it, there was a tremendous response, so I decided to keep doing it on the side and make a little extra money while I was in school.

What were they made out of?

Jessica: They were polystyrene, which was totally horrible, because they didn’t have longevity. They were very fragile. But we sold them only $15 or something. I was making them at school – I wasn’t considering outsourcing, so they weren’t as durable as I wanted them to be.

You use a lot of unconventional materials for jewelry, like rubber and rapid prototypes.

Jesse: We approach materials practically. We wanted to make stuff out of a strong metal that would be durable and affordable, so we naturally chose stainless steel. We wanted to use a flexible material that wasn’t likely to break, so rubber was the natural choice. We take things as they come. We don’t have a background in jewelry design, so we don’t have a predetermined conception about how things should be made.

Radiolara Necklace

When did Nervous System become more than a side project?

Jessica: I was selling these products, and doing studio and classes, and it got to be too much. I decided to stop doing the jewelry after a month or two. But since we thought it was fun, during the next summer we looked into doing it more seriously and maybe making it a business. We spent time looking for manufacturers, coming up with new designs, and working on the website. By November of 2007, we decided to produce a lot of pieces and try to market them. Every time we had time off, we’d work on this project again.

Jesse: It happened slowly. Our business basically launched that November. We launched the website, did our first show, and met the west coast editor of Metropolis, which led to a great article. That was pretty cool and fortuitous. Then, around February, we moved back to the east coast. The company I’d been working for also had an office in NYC, where I started working part time. In May 2008, we did the ICFF with DesignBoom, and did really well. After that, Nervous System became full-time.

Do you mostly sell through jewelry stores, or through your website?

Jessica: We sell a lot on our website, and wholesale to museum stores, boutiques, and clothing stores that sell jewelry. The larger orders are coming from museum stores. Our wholesale business is getting a lot larger, right now.

Where do you hope for your company to head?

Jessica: We’re interested in larger-scale projects. We don’t innately have any interest in jewelry, in an intellectual way. We want to work on furniture, housewares, and architectural-scale projects. A small building of some sort. Hopefully we’ll start on that in the next year. We’re hoping to move from Boston to a more rural area where we can have the land to do large-scale projects.

Radiolara Brooch

What advice do you have for creatives going into business for themselves?

Jesse: We’ve just focused on doing things that are interesting, exciting and new. We’ve gotten our stuff out there and then let the blogs and press spread it.

Jessica: There’s never been a better time than now to be out on your own, as a designer or businessperson. It’s never been easier to get your product out there. Through the internet, you can get exposed to everybody at almost no cost. You can send your things out to manufacturers and just get a couple pieces made by rapid prototyping. It’s easy to explore and see what it’s like to have a business, without putting in a huge amount of investment. People should just start doing it. Even if it’s just in their weekends or evenings.

Jesse: I was giving a talk yesterday at MassArt, and one thing the professor mentioned ties into that. In traditional manufacturing, the designer might get thousands of units made because that will bring down the cost. Then you’re stuck with thousands of units that you have to sell. I’ve seen people at shows with ceramics they’ve gotten produced, and at the end of the show they just want to give them away. They’ve already paid for the thousands of them, and they just need to get rid of them. But now there are manufacturing technologies that allow designers to do small runs and not make such an investment. You can just test out the waters – see what works and go with that.

At first glance, they look like something you’ve seen before – old-fashioned brass candlesticks. Then you realize that they’re doorknobs! Suddenly it’s not old-fashioned at all – but something new and fresh and clever.