In this episode, the founder of Tactile, a design firm known for crafting professional tools, shares his journey from dreaming of architecture to studying industrial design at RISD. He discusses his early career, including a pivotal internship at Design Continuum and work at startups like Virtual IO. After gaining diverse experiences, he started Tactile, eventually growing it into a 35-person firm. He emphasizes the importance of practical skills, company culture, and fostering long-term client relationships. The founder also highlights different project categories, balancing desirable work with business needs, and adapting to industry trends. The conversation also delves into his leadership style, focusing on employee satisfaction and trust, while acknowledging the challenges of running a mid-sized firm in the 'zone of pain.' The episode offers insights into the evolution of the business, its current state, and aspirations for future growth.
The Journey Behind Tactile: From Start-Up to Success
In this interview, Tactile's founder reflects on the company's 20-year journey, starting with his early design influences and education at RISD, and leading to the thriving design firm it is today. He shares personal anecdotes, including hosting Halloween parties and working for the Forest Service, and delves into the challenges of building and running a design business. Key topics include the importance of craft in design, maintaining a balanced work environment, and fostering long-term client relationships. Insights on leadership, team-building, and the evolution of the company's physical and cultural workspace offer a comprehensive view of the firm's success and aspirations.
00:00 Meeting Tactile: A Personal Introduction
01:54 The Journey to Industrial Design
02:40 Early Career and Key Experiences
05:16 Founding Tactile: From Freelance to Firm
07:47 Building a Team and Office Space
12:25 Balancing Business and Design
17:55 Client Relationships and Project Selection
29:02 The Value of Commitment in Design
30:07 Balancing Work and Personal Life
31:06 Collaboration and Expertise in Design
32:18 Enhancing Internal Design Teams
33:25 Finding Positive Influences and Community
37:06 Rivalries and Competition
37:56 Team Structure and Roles
38:44 The Importance of Craft in Design
39:40 Visual Storytelling and Marketing
43:32 Lightning Round and Conclusion
44:35 Tools and Work Environment
48:04 Design Education and Craft
51:01 Future Goals and Aspirations
For more visit https://seattlecreative.directory/
And do say hi! jonny@seattlecreative.directory
ad: Edited in Descript https://get.descript.com/rj9bozp5wx8e
This is a generated transcript, apologies for any errors
Bumper: [00:00:00]
Jonny: I first heard of Tactile, when my colleagues Kim Gladow and Phelan
Miller
worked for you.
That was in about 2012, but I first met you actually outside of Hilliards at one of your Halloween parties.
Josh: Oh, okay,
Jonny: And you were dressed as Thor.
Josh: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Jonny: I was, I think I was like Sasquatch or something with this huge Right [00:01:00] on.
So you had
already been in business for
at least 10
years at that
Josh: Yeah. Yeah. We're, we're up at about 20
Jonny: yeah,
it's been, it's been twice as long. which, which is awesome, you know, and especially the work that you do is so fundamentally.
hand
tool, eye oriented and by that nature, it's, it's, it's so very people oriented, which is really cool to see throughout all of the work that you do. so you're balancing this huge range of
client
industries and, and products and experiences and the solutions still have a shared.
Perspective, you can kind of see something you're like, Oh,
yeah,
actually, I bet tactile did that.
Josh: Oh, that's, that's nice to
Jonny: would you know? And I mean that in a
good way, not
like, you know, it's Helvetica on everything,
but in like a, okay, you know, I can, I can see that perspective coming out. But you obviously, you didn't start at that, you didn't start producing that work
at [00:02:00] that level.
And you, you studied at RISD, Yes. you are from Boston, New York. okay, but you spent some time East Coast, okay, San Francisco,
Portland
to here.
Josh: Yeah.
Jonny: Walk me, walk me through that story.
Josh: Um, yeah, you know, I, well, just, you know, growing up, my, my, my mom was an artist. My dad was an architect, sort of.
He was really an engineer. I just loved architecture. I thought that's what I wanted to do. It's a very standard story for industrial designers to go to school for architecture. And then, and then have this like, oh, that's industrial design. You know, that's pretty common. And that was me. And yeah, went to school back east.
I... I took a, a year off of school, but I can't remember which, between maybe after my sophomore year. And I worked for the Forest Service. I took, I had to take a year off of school in order to do that. I worked on a, on a fire crew and a friend of mine did it and it just sounded awesome and I joined him for it.
And I did that for four, four or [00:03:00] five years and that's how I pay for school. But that led me to the taking a year off allowed me to get a really long internship at a, at a pretty big Boston design firm called Design Continuum. It's called Continuum now. That was probably like my, my most important early design.
You know, moment where I got to work with like at the at the time they were really on fire. I was working with amazing designers. They had incredible clients and I was just kind of eating it up and I was able to stay for I think I worked there for almost nine months or so for like an internship. And so when I went back to school, it was pretty special to have that, you know, experience.
And after I graduated, I just, I don't know, I just wanted to live out west. So I just got my car and drove out west. And lived in San Francisco for a while, worked at a small firm there, got a job offer to work at a place called Virtual IO up in Seattle, which was a startup company making head mounted displays.
Way back when the [00:04:00] resolution was terrible they had a head tracker that, you know, the visuals would... Catch up with your head about a second after you moved it and kind of make you want to throw up. Made me want to throw up anyway. But it was, I worked with some great people. The product was launched and everything and it's, you know learned a lot and made friends and made contacts and ended up staying here.
And that was twenty something years ago. So, yeah. And then I after VirtualIO went bankrupt. I worked for a small design firm called Fiori Product Development. I learned a lot about myself there. I learned a lot about what I liked and I didn't like about design there. Wasn't the, it was a good, socially it was great.
I loved all the people. From a job perspective it did not work out well. And I, sometimes Understanding what you don't like about the job or a career or where you don't want to be or what you don't want to do is, is great.
Jonny: think equally is valuable.
Josh: learned a lot of that there, to be [00:05:00] honest. Even, even things like, that I still apply here, like, you know, how, how the owners of a company interact with their employees and things like that.
And I actually got let go from there after about two years and that's when I started. Working for myself and working kind of like the way I wanted to work with people that I liked and all those things and I didn't I didn't think it would lead to like like a design firm at the time I was just sort of going day by day and I had, I was able to get a bunch of contract design work and I was doing that and I loved it and I was still looking around for jobs, but I never found a job or, or, you know, to be fair, never got offered a job that I, I would have liked more than like working for myself.
And, you know, one day I got enough work and decided to hire somebody, and I hired a guy named Jared Randall, who's an awesome person, and he became the first official employee of Tactile. [00:06:00] And that sort of started, you know, the idea of just getting enough work and building a client base and hiring more people and getting an office and all that kind of stuff.
Jonny: What, what was that turning point where you said, like, I, I'm overwhelmed. I have too much work coming in
and you just, and he was a friend or a colleague or how did
you
Josh: find him?
He went to RISD also and he was introduced to me by a, a, a friend of mine who I graduated with. And met him, liked him right away.
And I, I was, I was busy enough and it was really like, I think it, I, I, I don't, I hate to like sort of downplay these kinds of things, but it really was just like, Yeah, I like this guy. Like, I could, I could, like, hang out with him in my shop. And it was kind of as simple as that. I started working with him as a contractor and then eventually, you know, hired him on full time.
And that's, that's when I had to start thinking of things like, like he asked me one day, like, Is there some kind of like a retirement plan? And I was like, I don't, [00:07:00] I don't know. I'll, I'll make some calls and see what, what it would be like to set up a retirement plan. Like, I had no idea. Insurance, you know, all those little things.
Not as hard as I think most people probably think it would be to do stuff like that.
But that. But you're, you're learning on the fly. You're figuring out as you're going. even
up to three or four employees, I still wasn't
sort of like dead set on Like this is what I'm gonna do. Like I'm gonna build this company. You know, I was still I wasn't necessarily looking around for work, but I wasn't.
I was still just sort of taking it as it comes. You know, so
Jonny: Was there, was there a conscious risk in that process? I think, I,
Josh: think I
think the moment that I we got our first Big is a relative term for a small company like ours, but when we got our first, like, actual office space, which was right across from the Moore on [00:08:00] Second Ave that, that signing that lease was probably the moment where I said, okay, I'm like, I'm in this for a while.
And I think that felt like a risk. In hindsight, it wasn't that much of a risk, but it felt to me at the time like a huge risk.
Jonny: Putting pen to paper
Josh: Yeah, yeah, like committing like, you know, when when an individual signs a lease, it's most often there's what's called a personal guarantee involved, which is you agreeing to even though you are your company is signing this lease.
If you can't pay, they're going to come after you personally. So that was that was sort of a scary, Paragraph to read? Yeah. In the, in the lease for you know, I was 20, I'm trying, I won't, I won't do the math, but, you know, I was just a lot younger then, and then never had that responsibility before, so, yeah.
Okay.
Jonny: so that was your
first physical space. What makes, to you, what makes a good physical [00:09:00] working space? You talked about having kind of a garage
studio or... I mean, walking around here, you said you had a, an actual fabrication studio downstairs.
Josh: Yeah.
Jonny: What,
what do you need and what do you want that physical space to be? And, you know, kind of have you developed that here? Or are you still trying to find it?
Josh: I, I, I think so. You know, I think, I think everybody does have a different idea of what kind of space they want. if you asked designers in New York City what their ideal creative space is, it would be much different.
I just saw, like, David Byrne on 60 Minutes, you know, a couple weeks ago, and his space was very New York City. It's tiny, there's books in every nook and cranny, there's something creative in every little spot. You know, space kind of drives that, you know. For me, I think there's like two... Two things that come to mind.
One, I mean, I'm an industrial designer RISD in general was a very hands on sort of prototype mock up kind of a an education, and at the time, to, clearly date [00:10:00] myself, like that was before, every designer knew CAD and everything, so there was just a lot more making.
We still, there is still a lot of making here. We have mechanical engineering, we have designers that are. Making prototypes all the time in the shop. So, so that physical space to make is, is super important. I wish, and I'm sure everyone here would agree, we wish our shop was five times as big. I mean, that would be amazing.
But our shop is a decent size and, and it works for us. The, the other thing that really comes to mind for, for me, very, this is sort of my personal view,
I want a space that's sort of just right in terms of like, we want a nice space, but I don't, you know, fancy, expensive, too nice. Like that's just not our style.
And it's kind of saved our ass, I think definitely during COVID. You know, our, I think our space is comfortable I think people feel welcome. You know, clients have walked in and they, they've said like that they like our space. And I think it says something about us, [00:11:00] you know, like when we're, we're charging by the hour.
You know, and if you walk into a space and your space looks like a crazy, expensive, fancy, you know, kind of overdesigned space, you know, that that says something about you and how you charge and what you think of that. And, and, you know, I, I take all that seriously and I do think about that a lot. You know, during COVID, I know a lot of other design firm owners that had, have or had much nicer spaces.
And, when remote work started to kick in and all that
they're paying significant amounts of money every month for a really, really nice office. And I'll admit, I've been jealous of other people's offices. when COVID hit and we were able to keep our office and some others weren't, that really said a lot.
Something to me. We looked around and there was a certain point, maybe five or six years ago where we looked for a new office. We thought we were growing and we thought we'd need more space. And it was, it would have been three times more for us to get a space. We were, I think, in my mind, I was thinking that fancy design studio [00:12:00] that's in all the magazines and everything.
And I'm really glad we didn't do that.
Jonny: so, so you're, you've created this space for yourself. You've created this group of people that you surround yourself with. is that in and of itself kind of freeing to you to be able to pursue something?
Or has, has the running the business taken over instead of doing the actual, like, enjoyment of the design work itself?
Josh: I mean, for, for me the, yes. The running of the business has definitely taken over. The design work, I don't really do much design work anymore, unfortunately. I have some, some pursuits at home, but for the most part, you know, there are amazing designers here.
At the end of the day, this firm is just a group of people and awesome people.
I'm, I'm super fortunate to work with the people that I work with and really fortunate that so many have been with us for so long. it's things like that, coming in and seeing a group of [00:13:00] really talented people that like are happy to be here and have been here for a long, long time.
when I walk in and I see them and I see like the ultimate days are when you kind of walk, and you can see like our office is kind of like this row of desks like as I walk down and I look at each person's desk and I like the best days are when, when most, if not all of those desks, I am like, that's a cool project they're working on or that's a great problem or, oh my God, look at that work, you know, like it's sort of seeing that, like that I feel like, You know, it's my hope that the people that work here are working on projects that they like, that they're interested in, care about, that are, you know, doing some good for the world, all those kinds of things.
I feel like if I keep my focus on, how people feel about working here, that's the best thing I can do for our culture and just them.
That's, that's pretty important to me and I do get a lot of satisfaction out of that,
Jonny: I always have this mental image of, like, the studio principal [00:14:00] is the conductor.
And
they're just trying to get all of the right people playing the right parts. And,
and they're responsible for playing the
music.
But, but you're responsible for everything that leads up to the actual performance. And
everything that leads into
preparation
of,
Okay, now you have everything you need to just run.
Josh: you
Jonny: But you're kind of behind the scenes at the same
Josh: run. I can't remember the moment, but at some point there was a moment where, a project came in the door and, the work started to happen and presentations were being given to clients and I never, I didn't see, I didn't even see the presentations before they were shown to a client.
when we have, Jonah as a design director and Rich in Boston, leading the charge there.
when you're in a handful of meetings and the work is awesome and they are, Giving this feedback to people working on it to make it better and better.
And it's, your own expectations about what your company is [00:15:00] capable of. That's like pretty amazing feeling. And it's, it's also a great time to sort of step out knowing that those people are, are, are just, you know, killing it and focus on something else.
So.
Jonny: Okay, I, the, the
answer that I expected you
to say was, was actually like, hold on everyone, stop.
Like, I don't have, I don't have an understanding
of how
this thing is running. So that's cool that you can
Josh: take
Jonny: that step
Josh: back.
I have found it amazing when, when I can take that step and be confident that like there, there's amazing work getting done and I don't need to see every part of it.
There are these moments where, where an issue pops up. You know and the doubt the major downside of that is when an issue pops up when there's some client that's super unhappy or, and it's not often that this happens, thankfully. But when there's, when there's some challenge I will admit it takes me a very long time to sort of jump back in and sort of figure out [00:16:00] what's going on and then what to do about it, if anything.
Obviously it would be easier if I was like super involved in everything all the way through, but I don't think that the designer, the design directors and design managers here would do as good of a job as they do or like their job as much if I was super involved in everything they do, you know, I mean, I, I always think of this analogy, I, when I was in college, I was I was a shop tech which, well, one, I got paid for it, but the other thing is I got a key to the shop, so I could go in the shop at all hours, open or closed, and take my friends.
But, I remember the shop tech was, he was a nice guy, but he was, So concerned about safety that he would be looking over people's shoulders all the time. And I watched him do that. And I watched people get hurt on tools, and it's totally because he was making everybody nervous. And he was just so focused on on people not messing [00:17:00] up that people messed up, you know?
So I do think there's an element of, having a company and And, if you're gonna trust people to, do great work, you really have to trust them. You have to,
show them
that you trust them. You know, same with, I guess there's analogies to kids too, but like, like you can't just pretend to, you really, you really have to.
And there's, there's real risk there, but, if you've got great people, the risk isn't as, as high. And the other thing is. To allow someone to just lead the charge for somebody like me to, to think that I would do a better job than them like I, I won't, I would, I might make different decisions at times, but am I going to be right more often than them?
Like, probably not, you know, so mistakes will get made, but in general, it's not that.
Jonny: it's not like there's or
what is your process for, for finding new clients or finding new[00:18:00]
essentially one
off projects or long term projects? Is it, is it individual relationships? Is it ongoing relationships?
And. What, how do you, how do you balance kind of work that you are excited about, that you know that your audience will be excited about, and, okay, but we need to keep the studio
running.
Josh: Yeah, yeah, that's, that's a, those are great questions. And it's. You know, I, I, I look at it in several ways. I mean, one, one is just at a really high level. I think of these like three levels of, of work, to back up a little bit, we, we decided a long time ago, probably 10 years ago that, designing equipment like tools for professionals, like this audio equipment right here, this is, these, this is the kind of stuff that we want to be involved in.
And it's. It's lower volume, higher value to the user. You're, you're not gonna use this for a year and then get a new one next year [00:19:00] because a new color model came out. it's like you, you're buying this tool and there's, there's like a real functionality, usability to it that like, you, you are an expert and you know about, I mean, if, if we redesigned that, everything that.
We would do to it would have to be measurably better for you like you would you would only consider it worthwhile if you saw that model and said, Oh, man, they're doing this now. Like, I love that. Like, that's so much better than the old one or whatever it is. So so we want to work on. We decided kind of collectively that like those are the things that we want to do.
And ever since then, hiring people that explicitly want those same things, Over time, builds a culture of everyone being like minded about the kinds of projects that they find compelling. So, so there's that. And I feel like we've, we're fortunate enough to have gotten there and also fortunate enough to have chosen subject matters where there's real work to be done.
[00:20:00] there's lots of other things that we would like to do. But there might not be a business there for us. like All of us love camping for the most part. I'd love to design camping gear. I'd love to design tents and all that kind of stuff. I, I, I'm sure there's business to, for doing that somewhere.
But I haven't found it yet. I haven't found a company that can pay our rates and keep the lights on by designing those things. And so, maybe someday, but, but so far we haven't found that yet. So once our sort of the kinds of things that we want to do is defined, then I think of these three stages, one being like, well, if it fits into that category, it's like, obviously we want to take that on and we want to do it.
That's a client that we want to go after or or a call that we definitely want to answer and respond to. And and in that upper even if we're full, we're Like, even if we don't have any time, chances are we'll find a way to take on that project because it's something we want to do.
And maybe we'll hire contractors to help or maybe we'll just work longer hours or whatever it is. it's like this [00:21:00] problem that we have all identified is like the problem that we like solving or working on. Then there's that middle level, which is it's the, meh, like, yeah, I'll do it.
it's not something that offends us, it's not, we don't feel like it's going to be landfill tomorrow, or whatever it is. It might not, it might not be, ideal, but like, it's something that we're still willing to do. But, the way I phrase it is but we won't, we won't build our business on it.
Meaning, if we're really busy, we might say no.
Will we hire contractors to do it? Maybe, maybe not. If it, if it ends up being a lot of trouble, we might say, no thanks to that. there's those projects where you'll take on if you, But if we're, if we're low on utilization and we have time, like, of course we'll take it on.
We'll be happy to do it. And then there's this lower level that is like, Stuff we don't want to do, and stuff we don't feel right about working on. And, if we're really busy, it's an obvious no. If we are not busy the [00:22:00] tough conversation is taking on this work, Will that really help?
Like, the conversation, as harsh as it is, do we take on a project that none of us want to do, And watch morale? Go down and, and watch people kind of be miserable or whatever it is, you'd be better off not taking it. And, and then you're like, well, you know, if that happens a lot, do you end up having to reduce staff and things like that?
And those, those are the really tough conversations. But, it's not hard to come up with a list of, of moments where we've been asked to do things where we've, we've had to say no, even if we had time available. So
Jonny: how do you balance that We, we took this work on because we needed it. And, and how do, how do we not get
known
for
that? How do we not get known for doing those kinds of projects that we don't actually want to do?
Josh: that?
we don't have? Yeah.
Jonny: Because,
you're, you're still going to do them
to the
level of quality of [00:23:00] work that you do other work at.
Josh: Yeah.
Jonny: But you, like, almost don't want people to know about it.
Josh: Yeah, well, I mean, I, I guess the, the first thing is, you know, do our best to not be taking on those things.
You know, that that's, that's a big one. we're not, we're not perfect. Like we, we've taken on projects that at the end of the day, we are not like overly thrilled, about that I think any design firm has those projects. And I think it's just sort of a matter of not putting it on the resume or the website or, or maybe just trying to pull, you'd hope that there are some, some shining moments in there that you can pull out and, and tell a story about or something.
But, you know, doesn't go into sales presentation. I'm a big believer in. you know, if you present work you're proud of you'll get more work that you're proud of, you know? So just focus on that, I guess.
Jonny: Do you have a lot of repeat work from the same clients?
Josh: We do a lot. I would say that is [00:24:00] something I'm, I'm super proud of and I, I, I think that's something that we're very good at and That honestly keeps, keeps our business going as a design firm.
as a design firm versus like an engineering firm, let's say, our project timelines are super short. a mechanical engineering firm, if they were gonna, let's say they were gonna get a project to do the engineering work on a medical cart, that might be a two year project, or more.
For us to do the industrial design work on that medical cart might be a few months or, maybe, maybe it's a few months of intense work and then like a, a little bits of work over time. But there, there isn't the, there aren't the hours there that another firm has. I just constantly feel like I'm I'm on a moving train and I'm just throwing the tracks down in front of the train,it doesn't feel like much of a one way, and so if life was always like that I'd have, I already have sleepless nights. I have a lot more, but
one of the ways, one of the best ways that we have found to sort of combat that [00:25:00] is to build, super trustworthy, longstanding relationships with clients where sure, every project might only be like a few months.
But you can count on there being, an ongoing stream of projects from them. And so, if you string together what we do for our repeat customers
sure, the project timelines are short, but if you string them all together, you get, you get 2-3 years of constant work. And that's where I think we, we do really well.
We, all the things that sound very salesy, I think we're good listeners. I think we are, you know good to work with. I think we you know, really try to think of a client's like situation and their corporate culture and work with them to try and make, what we do a good fit for them on, on all aspects of work.
I, I think we're also good at kind of weeding out, clients that maybe aren't a good fit, but once we find those clients that we like and [00:26:00] we work well with and they like us and they work well with us and we're providing them like all the things that they need and we're doing good work and all that that, that's pretty awesome moment.
And we do, we're fortunate to have a lot of those. I mean, we have we have a lot of clients that we've done work with for over 10 years. And that's, that's pretty cool to be seeing the same people for that long.
Jonny: have you ever come back to something that you did previous
In the studio's history?
Yeah.
Josh:
Jonny: of like my own work in the internet, it's just, it's faster.
You can tell something is successful or
Josh: not. Oh, I
Jonny: But there's
not necessarily
a a body that is managing what is appropriate or not.
Josh: FDA.
Jonny: in the medical Okay.
Josh: And that's if you are doing a device that's sort of a like truly a medical device, it's always going through that. That's sort of the governing body that's like [00:27:00] telling you whether you, you've passed or failed. The real challenges in the, in the larger companies that we work with, larger medical companies. Sometimes they get so caught up with FDA requirements that they use that as the definition of success. Like, did we pass or fail FDA? And if they pass, then they're good. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's a great design or great user experience or, and all those kinds of things. And so we, we do our best to kind of.
You know, think beyond just simply getting FDA
approval
for something,
although it's tough for these companies. I mean, some of these big medical companies might have hundreds of people whose only job it is to make sure that this gets put through FDA approval. So I think of hardware and, or ID and UX as sort of like like the difference between like train, [00:28:00] trains and buses, there's less, to put a sign up on the street and call it a bus stop it may be a lot.
I'm sure a lot of thought goes into that. But there's less risk. You can pull that sign out and put it somewhere else if it doesn't work out. To design and build a train station and decide that's where it's going to go and that this is where the train tracks are going to go, you know, it's just a much bigger commitment.
there's a lot moresort of like agonizing over decisions like that. because once you've built that train station, like it's just there. I think that on average, there's still train stations that have been built in places that they shouldn't have been built there, but on average train stations end up not only like sort of being in the right spot because people thought through it, but they're also they end up being the right spot because people thought through users commit to it, you know, like neighborhoods are built around train stations, you know, you know, property [00:29:00] value goes up because it's not going to move.
the value comes from both sides, both in all the decisions that led up to it being there and then the commitment of it there and people's users commitments to it. like when you design a piece of hardware. It's nothing's ever perfect. But it's, it's kind of is what it is.
of course, if it's terrible, it's just terrible. But like, if it's pretty good you know, people might adopt it, and then you might get a chance to improve on things any, in a year, or in a couple years in, in the case of a medical device. Might be like five years away. it's just very long cycles, whereas with digital things with a with a with a U.
I. Or U. X. Or did you digital experience? There's that first Bali? And then those updates can come faster as as you learn. There's lots of analogies. Skiing, snowboarding, all that stuff. There's same process in general. the nuances of how [00:30:00] decisions are made and the sensibilities there, I think, plays a pretty big role into how successful things are or not.
Jonny: are. Does that, that level of commitment keep you up? Like, does it
does the amount of research that you have to do affect how much your brain is still in this space even when you go home?
Josh: Being
the person here that's not focused on the actual design work as much I wouldn't say that I go home any longer worried about the success or failure of a particular product that we're designing.
And I think that's one, because it's probably on the, on the minds of other people here more than mine to, I think that I go to bed, I go to, I go home at night worrying Do we have enough work? Are our people here happy? Like that's the stability of our company is, is really in those two things.
Like, do we have enough work? And are people here happy? are they working on things that they want to be [00:31:00] working on? Are they busy enough? designers, creatives, we're not happy if we're not doing something creative or working on something.
The other part of it is, we as the design resource for a lot of these companies, we're one component in of many in getting like a piece of hardware, especially like out in the world. And so
I,
I don't, and I hope these, I don't think anyone here holds the weight of that completely on their own shoulders.
There's a lot of collaboration with clients and being in this kind of a field where we're designing tools for professionals. We're almost always working with people that are experts in this field. And we're also interviewing. non bias experts, too. And we're collaborating. the amount of the amount of expertise that we're usually collaborating with is pretty impressive.
And I would say that, yes, we are making some pretty big decisions on some of these products, but [00:32:00] we're making them alongside a lot of other people, too. that is that always
Jonny: of these in house groups? Is that, you, are collaborating, you're brought on to help enhance what they're able to do?
Yeah.
You're never competing with some other internal group inside?
Josh: No, no. I think that word you use, enhance, is, is, is spot on because that can describe, there are times where we are the design group for them. But still we're enhancing what they're able to do. And it's, it's actually very common. I don't think people realize this that we are being hired by an internal design group and we're either hired because they don't have enough time to do.
The particular project or work that we're being hired for, or we're being hired because they've been working on this problem for a really long time, and they're looking for a fresh outlook, or there's a certain component of what they do that they don't have experience with and [00:33:00] we do maybe that's CMF, maybe it's, you know, a certain working in certain materials so there's a handful of reasons that we're hired but we're always there to enhance whatever an internal group can do.
Jonny: now that you've
kind
of crossed this threshold where you're not working on
day to day product design activities, but you are essentially
designing the
business,
Where, where do you go to find that kind of positive influence back into your, your own process there? Is it, is it the community? Is there, is there a group within Seattle? Is there a group within your industry that you can, that you can reach out to and talk to? Or are you still trying to find those peers?
Josh: Yeah. That's a great question.
I have been in a few sort of like design firm owner round tables. One is called the collective conspiracy.
Jonny: Oh, yeah.
Josh: yeah. You probably know those guys. I think they were on your podcast [00:34:00] too.
Jonny: yeah. Yeah.
Josh: And so that's, that's one. So I meet with them and they're, they're really great.
There used to be a group called APDF, Association for Professional Design Firms. The artifact guys were in there and Teague. That is not in existence anymore. I think that just nationwide, it was a nationwide organization. I think that there's some regions where the competition is, is I guess you'd say more fierce than it is around here.
And what ended up happening, happening with that organization is they, the number of people willing to sort of openly discuss things you know, started to diminish. I feel like Seattle's a great place. Like I, I genuinely feel like I could call and have lunch with, and in fact I do. With with most other design firm owners around here or firms that do similar things to what we do or are even our competition and I [00:35:00] feel that way.
Well, one, it's a bit of a Seattle vibe, but it's also if you've got your own story, you know, like Teague, for example transportation is their primary story, you know, airlines. Car design, things like that. And they're amazing at that. I love those guys. I think they're great. Ours is Tools for Professionals.
You know sure we cross over from time to time. But like, we have our own story. And if, if I, if I imagine that I was like a doctor. and I perform knee surgeries, that's my story. I'm not gonna try to tell you that I could totally like fix your heart because I'm a doctor and there's just obvious lines there.
And I think design firms in some areas don't think that way. They sort of say, this is our process and we can design anything with that process. And that's not true. I think a lot of designers maybe think it is. That you just apply this process and you can do anything. And that's, industries vary [00:36:00] greatly.
I, I'll, I'll narrow that down a little bit more. I don't actually think all designers think that. But I do think that there are consulting firms. That
think that.
Jonny: They kind of, they, they peacock what they're capable
Josh: Right, right. And you know. We have never designed anything in the automotive industry. I don't want to say that we can't do that. But we, we, we, we certainly wouldn't present ourselves as like the place to, to, to hire to do that. So when I think about that, I think about it kind of makes it easier to Whether it's share great things or commiserate with other, other people.
I also have business, business advisors. I work with someone who used to run an engineering firm in the area that I've gotten to be good friends with over the years and I rely on him for advice quite a bit. I used to work with a gentleman who was the CFO for IDEO. For a while. He was very helpful.
And so, you know, I've, I've sort of built up a group around [00:37:00] me. I have some other sort of mentors and peers and things like that.
Jonny: Do you have any arrivals?
Josh: have any rivals?
Jonny: Yeah. Is there, is there another
studio that you're like, Oh man, they
won that pitch?
Josh: You know, that's a great, that's a good, a good question.
I love it. It's hilarious. I'm going to say no, but there is, there is this firm in California that I feel like for very random reasons, I really don't know what the connection is. I just feel like we have ended up competing with them fairly often for projects. I, I really don't know why. I don't know why they would go to them and us
I feel like it's been maybe, maybe like eight or nine times that I have found out that we either won a project over them or that they won a project over us. I don't, yeah, it's just funny. I don't know.
Jonny: That's awesome. I'd
love to talk about the
people
here. How
many people are on staff?
Josh: So [00:38:00] total in the company is about 35.
Jonny: Okay.
Josh: Myself included. I think we have four like non billable sort of management only people. Everyone else is a designer that's doing design work and, and billable to some degree.
Jonny: And that's either industrial, mechanical, UX?
graphics
Josh: CMF color material finishes. And then we also now have what we call a VizDev.
We have I think six people that are dedicated to just really high end rendering and animations.
It started as sort of a byproduct of industrial design. there's a craft in industrial design and every creative field, obviously, but in industrial design, the craft is, it's making physical objects.
It's making cat models. It's, it's doing renders and creating, photorealistic imagery [00:39:00] and if you were in house at a place like Amazon I mean, I would argue that that craft is still really important. But the culture there almost looks down on that, like, like, that's a waste of time.
if you're presenting a perfect render to me, that means you spent hours and hours on something that isn't valued by the organization. So, that's kind of their MO. But here we take that craft very seriously.
People like it, it it's, there's just
a, a very zen aspect in my opinion to you know, having the sketch be a really great sketch, having the render be a really great render.
And what that's kind of done over the years is, is it's shown clients, the power of, of that and storytelling and the tools and the skills have gotten good enough that like from a, from a marketing standpoint, like when there's marketing people in the room watching our, seeing our presentations, they're thinking, I just want to [00:40:00] take that render and put it on our website right now, you know?
They are different people that use some different tools, but the idea that we're gonna start selling visual, renders and animations just for marketing purposes kind of became a no brainer for us at some point. And, and it's really, the work is amazing and the, the work they're doing is much more creative than I'm, I'm making it sound.
we're being hired to do, to tell stories through. Motion graphics that are either going on websites to sell products or, or internally used to sell ideas up the chain to get funding to actually make products real. it's turned into a really valuable offering that we have for companies and it's, it's also added a lot of stability to our income.
Jonny: as
you describe it, that kind of started as a byproduct of your own process. And at what point did you recognize that? And you're like, okay, well, actually, what do you guys need? Do you need a bigger GPU? I'll go find one [00:41:00] and, and start to grow those people's skill sets.
Josh: it was a particular client and it was Rich Hanks in our Boston office was the, or is still the account manager for that client.
their marketing group approached him. that story I told just a few minutes ago is, is actually quite literal. Like, their marketing people would see our renders. And, and then when the product became real and it was their turn to sort of, like, you know, create the marketing assets, they would then go hire a firm to create those assets.
And it just seems kind of silly. It seemed like a lot of duplication of effort. And, and the question was really like, could you, you know, could you take the renders that you're doing and crank it up several notches and just we'll use that as marketing material? I mean, I am oversimplifying it a little bit, you
know, we said yes to that.
we did hire people that specialize in that. we didn't ask [00:42:00] our internal people to get better at that because what we just found is that there, there are people who live and breathe this stuff and I,
I
didn't want, and I, I think everyone here would agree with me to sort of take a designer that is designing products all day and then and then carve out a certain amount of their time to just do marketing renders wasn't really a desirable thing for a lot of the people on staff at the time.
In fact, everyone on that group has been hired specifically. Because they are rock stars at that have a, have a real passion for that and, you know, just want to be in a position to, to again, like, be handed projects that they're super excited about. back to your earlier question.
That's like my, and I don't, I'm not the only one doing this, but I consider it my job and my responsibility to be bringing work in that. [00:43:00] That these, every, every, every one of these disciplines gets super excited about.
Jonny: Yeah. Which is huge.
Yeah.
not everyone has that connection, I think, to.
the other half
of the studio. I think a lot of the time I've seen principals get excited about a project that no one else in the studio is excited about.
Josh: Yeah, I've been in that position before.
Jonny: Yeah.
Josh: I,
you know,
when I'm, I'm like, isn't this great? And everyone's like, eh, not really.
Jonny: That's
Josh: awesome.
Jonny: Let's do the lightning round.
Josh: Oh, wow, okay.
Jonny: This is for points. for points. Oh.
Gif or
jif?
Josh: GIF.
Jonny: Sans serif
Josh: Personally, Sans Serif.
Jonny: Do you have a favorite?
Josh: My favorite font? You know, I'm just gonna admit, I don't. I, I know some real font people. they make me nervous. And I'd hesitate to even say [00:44:00] anything knowing how much of an amateur font amateur I am compared to them. So I'm gonna I'm gonna pass pass on that question.
Jonny: rounded or chafer.
Josh: personally, I'm a chamfer guy. Yeah, I just think the Christmas is a little more timeless.
Jonny: Mm-hmm. Wood or metal
man.
Josh: in short, it depends. I guess I'd say metal. Yeah, I'll say metal.
Jonny: let's see, smooth or textured? And that's obviously a loaded question because there's
Josh: Yeah, of course it depends. But, but I get it. I'd say, I'd say smooth.
Jonny: Okay. what application do you have open the most on your computer?
Josh: Boy, my whole firm would make fun of me to say that Slack is my most open thing, because when we first started to use Slack was pre COVID and everybody started using this tool and, and everybody was coming in and everybody's sitting right next to each other.
We didn't have a Boston office [00:45:00] yet. And I'm like, why are we adopting another? tool to do what feels like almost the same thing as all of these other things we use. I'm on Slack all day long. I mean, my job is, is mostly about communication, you know. And so it's, it's actually a pretty awesome tool.
I'm not really using, unfortunately, the tools that,I know maybe you were hoping to hear of, like CAD and Photoshop and all those kinds of
things. Um,
Jonny: no wrong answer.
Josh: yeah,
Jonny: What is, what
is your setup? Is it laptop,
phone, watch,
pencil? Or
Josh: I'm at a laptop and a monitor, I can work a little bit on my laptop, but for the most part, I'm just the kind of person, probably ADHD and things like that, where like my, I am a hundred percent more productive when I'm just sitting at my desk with my monitor, my mouse, my keyboard, I will take notes about what I need to do or [00:46:00] who I need to respond to, because I feel like responding on phones it's just so challenging to just to get the right, just the right tone and I take that very seriously.
I sort of organized my whole life to be uber efficient when I'm, when I'm at my desk in this office. I come in early, I come in pretty early every day. And I mean, I love everybody here, but I do love the hour or two I get on my own. That, those are my most productive moments of the day.
Jonny: most productive moments of the day. Yeah. Do you have a, do you have preferences around like,
Josh: Not, not huge, no. I mean I have a Mac keyboard and I think I have a Microsoft mouse actually.
Is a big, clunky, chunky mechanical keyboard? Yeah, you know the VizDev guys have these, they're louder, the action is, they're more like gaming keyboards. And [00:47:00] it blows my mind, they've got no, no nomenclature on these keyboards. There's no, they're literally
Jonny: blank.
Josh: And I'm like, my son does that too. I'm like, how do you do this? You know, but it's impressive.
They're, they're just way smarter than me, I guess.
Jonny: That's awesome. Quiet or loud? Do you have music playing?
Josh: Music in the background, I think, is keeps me company. That's that's I when it's too quiet, it's feels very like sort of
lonely, I guess. So,
yeah.
Jonny: yeah. Mornings or nights?
Josh: Mornings for
for work for sure. Night night time feels like The time to be let loose, I guess.
Jonny: Last one, R, G, or B?
Josh: I'm going to say B. I don't know totally what that means, but I'm picking blue.
Jonny: I
Josh: okay,
Jonny: don't know at all. But I'm picking okay, so, what are your, on the kind of [00:48:00] topic of education, what
are your thoughts on? design across, multiple disciplines, but what are your thoughts on design education today? Have you taught before or have you participated in classrooms? Did you, did you study at RISD and you're like, I'm never going back?
Josh: First of all, I love, I loved my time at risd. If anything I regret in the early years of risd I regret not taking things like the, you know, freshman art history class more seriously because at the time I was just a free.
18 year old and now that, that I would take that class again in a second and I'd love, I'd sure I'd love it every second of it. to say I've taught is, is probably a little bit of a stretch, but we have as a studio and, and myself have run many projects at UW and Western Washington University.
We even have some employees here that were in the class, the first class that I helped out with at UW, which is pretty [00:49:00] cool. I love the environment and I love sort of, you know assisting with project based work and education. I, I don't, and I'm not just being self deprecating, I don't think I'm the best teacher.
I don't think that is in line with my personality. I'm so psyched for all the teachers that are doing it well. I do think that when I, I'm not an expert on all of the school, all schools programs, but I do sometimes think that schools feel like they're either like focusing on.
Conceptual thinking or sort of more tactical, you know, design skills. I haven't seen a lot of programs that do a pretty good job of balancing both of those. I know a lot of people that have, everyone that graduates has a comment on something that they didn't learn in school that they wish they did.
You, you're never gonna satisfy everyone. But I think at the core of it I just think that, The tools, the craft. I'll go back to [00:50:00] that. Those are how designers communicate. And I think that some schools shy away from really like, you know, pushing on craft in schools because they don't want to project the sense that designers are just Ducat or are just good at Photoshop.
I think that's a miss in my opinion because I think there's a real value in design by doing. I personally think that if I was going to sort of run a design program, I would in a. In early years, I would focus heavily, heavily on craft and communication skills and transition to much more conceptual thinking later on once they've mastered those
skills. And they've gotten a little older, a little more mature, but I think the communication of, of ideas.
Is at the root of what people should be doing early on in their school careers.
Jonny: [00:51:00] where are you now? And where are you headed?
Josh: you? Where am I now? I still feel like there's, we have a ways to go with this firm and what we want to achieve here. You know,
there's a funny, funny term that I read maybe about a year ago about companies our size and it was described that companies are, and our size are, are in what's called the zone of pain, which I thought was hilarious.
But what they meant by it was that our firm, our, our, our size with our business is such that we can't afford to have like dedicated people doing certain things like a. Head of operations or, you know, things like that. And what that translates to is people here wear many hats. one of our design managers who's awesome and has been here for a long, long time.
He, does a lot of I. T. Management stuff on the side, and he's great at it. you know, he's happy to do it. But like that means that we're really paying [00:52:00] him to do something that he's not an expert at,and so to get to that point in what I think to where we can have a healthy amount
of separation
of disciplines here and people sort of doing like the job that we've hired them for where we probably need to be about.
30 percent bigger. And so just from a like growth standpoint, just from a pure business thinking mindset, we want to be about that much bigger. When it comes to like the work that we do we definitely want to continue honing our craft and of designing tools for professionals and do that on a higher level for for more and more companies, we'd love for that to continue to sort of narrow in on our on our on our only focus.
And, you know, as we talked about earlier, like being a firm, like I wouldn't say we're taking on work that we don't like or we don't want to do on a regular basis. it's always the goal to be doing work in that first category,it would be [00:53:00] amazing to walk in here and see everybody working on like a true, tool for professional that we feel like is going to make someone's life better or help someone or save someone or whatever that is.
if every single project was like that man, that would be a huge win. And we're getting there. So, that's what I kind of feel like is next for, for Tactile for sure.
Jonny: What's next for you?
Josh: You know, I'm not sure.I've got that sight. Set for the next few years at leastif we can get there, there is a bit of maintaining that and then there's like this, like, sort of awesome moment of saying, okay, what's next? I don't know the answer to that yet, but I'm not afraid of that question.
We'll see. Yeah.
Jonny: What gets you up at
5 a.
m. with a smile?
Josh: Oh, with a smile, there's not a lot that gets me up at 5 a. m. with a smile. I would say at 5 a. m. going skiing or on a big hike or [00:54:00] just like traveling in general. those are all things that I will happily get up at 5 a.
m. for. Most of the time getting up at 5 a. m. is because our dog saw something outside that he was unhappy about.
Jonny: Awesome. Well thank you.
Josh: Yeah, really appreciate you coming by. Absolutely. Alright. Alright, I hope, I hope I gave you enough there. Oh, that was great.
Bumper: Thanks for joining us. And to find out more, go to seattlecreative. directory.