How Design Drives The World’s Best Companies w/ Robert Brunner

My guest today is Robert Brunner. If you look up “badass industrial designer” in the dictionary, the first thing you’re going to see is his picture. He’s the co-founder + partner of Ammunition Design Group, one of the top industrial design agencies in the world with clients including Lyft, Adobe, Microsoft, AIGA, and so many more. He lead the design of the widely popular Beats brand and built the design practice at Apple – he’s actually the guy who hired the legendary Jony Ive, now Apple’s Chief Design Officer – and he’s a former partner at the legendary firm Pentagram and co-founder of Lunar Design, one of the firms who put design on the map in the Bay Area back in the 80s and 90s.

There’s something amazing about sitting down with someone like Robert who’s been around the block so, so many times – a true, grizzled veteran like Debbie Millman and Joe McNally. Robert is one of the pioneers of design as we know it today – as a core business function that has a seat at the table along with finance, marketing and operations – and whether you know it or not, if you’re a professional creative today you’re benefitting from his work in blazing that trail. He’s built agencies, internal teams, brought countless products to market and as you can guess, learned a ton of shit along the way that he’s here to share with you.

PS – This episode is brought to you by our friends at Freshbooks, who make cloud accounting software for YOU: freelancers, solopreneurs and creators. Sign up for your free trial at http://freshbooks.com/chase (and please enter “The Chase Jarvis Live Show” in the “Where did you hear about us?” section, so they know I sent you).

Today on the podcast,

He cuts through so much of the often pretentious posturing about “Design” and talks about why design is so valuable in a super straightforward, pragmatic way. When you hear this you will totally understand why he was so effective at getting business leaders to understand and respect design — highly suggest you borrow some of these lines 🙂
Why the magic ingredient for a successful creative career is soft skills. You’ve heard me talk about this, but I am far from done beating this drum- collaboration, persuasion, emotional intelligence – these aren’t optional, they are a core part of the job
Some super insightful tips on how to build and develop a world-class design team. Robert has done this again and again, and if there’s anyone who knows the blueprint for doing it right, it’s him.

Enjoy!

I’m a big believer in getting ideas out into the world as soon as possible

FOLLOW ROBERT:
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Some Questions I Ask:

Can you share the story of your humble beginnings? [1:00]
Was there tension between art and science in your upbringing? [3:30]
Was there a plan in the family for you to be an engineer? [4:28]
How do you think the tension between engineers and product designers have been changed? [5:15]
Tell me about your stint at Apple. [7:00]
What inflections were happening within the design culture at Apple when you were there? [10:35]
What advice would you give to a business leader who wants to know how to build a great culture? [16:20]
What role does design play in the building of a product? [18:23]
If you’re a freelancer how should you look at the world? And if you want to be part of a bigger team, how do you look at a company to see if you’ll like it? [22:12]
Is there a different mentality for if you’re working in a company vs if you’re working for yourself? [26:10]
What do you see for the freelancer and how should folks be thinking about their careers? [29:14]
Do you think there’s a pattern to success? [32:35]
Tell us about your time at Pentagram and how it was influential to your career. [36:50]
What are the differences between working in NYC and SF? [38:58]
Talk to me about starting Ammunition. [41:20]
Do you think designers working on nontraditional contracts is a model for the future? [45:00]
Talk to us about design thinking. [47:00]
How do you foster the growth of your employees? [50:57]
Do you have any habits that you subscribe to? [53:27]
You think being able to get people excited about their ideas is something that’s missing from design school? [57:30]
How do you teach people how to communicate their ideas? [58:30]
What other kinds of habits do you have? [59:30]
Talk about professional and personal balance. [1:01:00]
Do you carve off specific time around work to prioritize your family? [1:02:30]
How important is energy and excitement? [1:03:19]

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

How Robert’s entrepreneurial, artistic, engineer parents led him down a path towards engineering but design hooked him and hasn’t let him go. [1:30]
How design thinking has changed the relationship between product design and engineering. [5:40]
How Robert used the power of saying no to get everything he asked for at Apple… even though he wasn’t really sure if he wanted it in the first place. [7:30]
How Robert built up the design studio at Apple with the mantra of “don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness.” [11:55]
On Robert’s epitaph it shall read “the man who brought in Jony Ive”. [13:40]
How to build a great creative studio and design team. It’s more than putting great talent into a beautiful space and asking them to go at it. [14:27]
Why it’s important to have an editorial viewpoint. [17:30]
Why you should respect the interface between your company and your customers. [19:25]
Why the idea of a brand is not about the artifacts that we create, but the way people have about you when they experience those artifacts. [20:30]
Technology is an enabler, but design is what establishes. If you’re a creative, think about how you want to play in that world. [23:40]
The most important thing to put in your portfolio is something that shows how you can shape something in a way that appeals to the human. [24:51]
Why broad collaboration might be overrated, and how Robert approaches it with ownership. [27:40]
Why you should pick a niche to be world class at. [30:45]
How becoming a master at one thing can help you learn anything else you want. [32:27]
There’s the thing you’re doing and the way you went about it. [33:15]
How Robert’s wife used mastery to build Piece x Piece. [34:00]
How I made the transition from oil painting to photography. [36:00]
Why Robert resigned from Pentagram (the Everest of design) whereas the general rule is you either get fired or die from Pentagram. [39:33]
How experimenting with different business models- equity, revenue sharing- made his team better designers. [42:35]
How Apple uses basic design process and problem solving to train all of their employees. [48:00]
How Ammunition develops talent through an internship program and has found great success in it. [51:40]
How Robert uses the quest to get things just right to continue growing and making great things. [54:00]
Why you need to learn to articulate your ideas in an inspiring way. [56:00]
Why Robert made it a point to get better at communicating his ideas, even though he was terrified of speaking in public. [59:10]
Robert’s sketch process. [1:00:30]
How Robert balances work with his big family and draws inspiration and energy from them. [1:01:05]
Just because you’re good in design doesn’t mean you’ll be good at being in business for yourself. You’ve got to be excited enough to do the stuff you don’t want to do. [1:03:50]

This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.