From Kohler to Blendjet: William Gordon's Design Journey

Chris Whyte (: 00:10

Hello and welcome to the Design Journeys podcast. I'm your host Chris Whyte And in this podcast series, we explore the journeys of founders and leaders from the world of physical product design. In today's episode, I'm joined by William Gordon, an award -winning people -centric industrial designer with over 20 years experience spanning corporate environments, startups, and nonprofits. William studied industrial design at Pratt Institute before joining Kohler as an industrial designer. Since then, he's also worked for Faxon on Design, sorry, Faxon Design.

SC Johnson Wax, Camelback, and today William is Vice President of Design at Blendjet, a company known for its portable blender, which has sold well over 10 million units. William's passionate about design, particularly when it facilitates relationships between people. In preparing for today's episode, he told me that design is fundamentally about people and interactions that objects enable. His focus on product design, the design process, and user research has deepened his understanding of the importance of people in design.

We'll dive into this and more on today's episode. So that just leaves me to say, William, welcome to the podcast.

William Gordon (: 01:14

Thank you very much, Chris.

Chris Whyte (: 01:16

very welcome. So I did all right there didn't I, not stumbling too much. So we could, I'd say we could edit some of that out post but when I do that it really messes with the background music so...

William Gordon (: 01:19

Yeah, I think you did. You did pretty great. Not too many. Yeah.

You have a future as a voiceover. They could turn you into an AI voice.

Chris Whyte (: 01:36

Well, it's to be fair, if they can do that, it saves me recording.

William Gordon (: 01:40

I know, wouldn't that be great? think someone's working on that app right now, I'm pretty sure.

Chris Whyte (: 01:45

Yeah, absolutely. may. I don't think kind of there's a lot of voiceover artists that listen to this podcast, but I may have annoyed a few with that flip and comment there. But it's kind of you to say. But it's really good to have you on the show. And yes, we've been speaking for a little while now, haven't we? it's. Yeah, but good things come to those who wait. as we do always on this show, we'll kind of.

William Gordon (: 01:56

You

Chris Whyte (: 02:11

We'll rewind time, go right back to the beginning. So why don't you start us off with Pratt Institute and kind of what got you into industrial design in the first place, William?

William Gordon (: 02:20

Yeah, I feel like I have always wanted to be an industrial designer even before I didn't know what it was. You know, I kind of feel like as a kid playing, I was always making and designing things in a sense, whether it was Legos or plastic model kits or drawing cars or drawing airplanes. And then

My mom found an article about Art Center College in some magazine and I learned that you could do this as a job and it just sparked my imagination, the idea of being able to kind of be a professional inventor, to be able to create a car, create an airplane, create whatever it was.

when I was 10 years old, that was just the coolest thing in the world. And I never looked back. I kind of was focused in an unusual way on industrial design as a path. And it's been great. I I really feel like I can create a world as an industrial designer, which is just a very special thing.

to be able to touch people's lives around the world with the things that I've created, to have those things be in people's lives for years and almost be an anonymous part of their life. To me, that's very special. as you mentioned, my philosophy on design has evolved to really focus on

the relationships people have with each other and how designed objects facilitate those relationships and how, you know, my work as a designer really is about facilitating positive relationships of people in the world. And that to me is really, you know, something I don't think I ever would have anticipated as a 10 -year -old, but it's kind of how my...

mature self has evolved to love design at a whole new

Chris Whyte (: 04:40

Yeah, it's really interesting. Just that perspective on it as well, kind of how your view on what industrial design is and I guess the why has kind of evolved over time from that kind 10 year old vision of kind of maybe sketching and pretty pictures through to what it means to you now.

William Gordon (: 04:58

Yeah.

Yeah, you so I, you know, as I, as, you just said, you know, it was like drawing a cool car or drawing, you know, some sort of beautiful object or creating something sculptural. And that's, know, when I went to Pratt, it was very much, I would say an art based approach to industrial design. And I, know, as, as, as I become older, I've realized that's kind of an old school approach to industrial design.

I still think it is extremely informative to all the ideas of design being about people because to me, aesthetics, that is fundamentally about appeal and about our sort of animal appeal of an object.

or a system or an experience is still fundamentally an aesthetic drive. And so that was very informative to me. And what I was really passionate about when I first started industrial design was the making and really the product aspect of that. And so when I started my career at Kohler, Kohler is a company that has a very deep design.

history and is very into the details of design, into the materiality, into the manufacturing, into the aesthetics. And so it was a great sort of almost like postgraduate work, working there, being able to work at a company where the factory is literally below your desk, where the CEO does a design review with you every month.

and, as interested in every millimeter, was a great education, in terms of that old school industrial design I talked about, but then also connecting it to the people centric aspect of it, of how do you create a brand? What is a brand? How, what is, what is that storytelling that we do as designers? Because I, the other

Chris Whyte (: 07:02

Yeah.

William Gordon (: 07:14

kind of philosophy I have on design. this is what I, is really the cornerstone of how I teach design is understanding that designers are storytellers. We don't make anything. We make stories, right? And those stories are compelling enough that someone wants to invest money or someone wants to produce it. But fundamentally it's a story. Even a technical drawing is a story.

And so when you understand that and you understand what your job is as a designer is to create a compelling story, you understand that that is about connecting people because it's about connecting people to the ideas in your head. And I think that's magical.

Chris Whyte (: 08:01

Yeah, it really is. And I can feel the passion kind of coming through when you're talking about it as well. It's yeah, absolutely wonderful. So talk to me about your time at Kohler then because Kohler is a big brand. We've got Kohler's in the UK. I've worked with Kohler Myra previously. And that's a big outfit in itself. I'm right in thinking Kohler's got like its own village, is it? Or town?

William Gordon (: 08:27

Yeah, it's a fascinating place. So I moved from Brooklyn to this, you know, small town in Wisconsin, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and then Kohler is an even smaller town right next to Sheboygan. And it was literally named after the factory. build a factory and then they build a town around the factory. And then the people named it Kohler, of course. And it's a planned community, the same people who planned Central Park planned the Kohler village. And it

Chris Whyte (: 08:42

Yeah.

William Gordon (: 08:55

is fascinating picture of sort of this Midwestern factory town. And it's very classic in that sense. And they've actually built a five star resort there out of the old dormitories for the factory workers from the turn of last century. And so it's fascinating, like five star resort, chamois chip golf courses, everything. And so the

the brand Kohler is a very exciting place to come as a designer because design is kind of in every aspect of not only the product, but the culture of the company and it's still a family -owned company. And the CEO, when I was there, Mr. Kohler, he's passed away this last year, but he wanted to be a designer. And so...

which is a pro and con when you have a client who kind of wants to be a designer, but he has great taste and he, you know, would, as I said, he reviewed all of the new product every month. And so we, you know, as a 22 year old got to present to this billionaire CEO and, you know, have tons of crazy stories about all of the design reviews we had with them.

You know, so was this tight community of designers, very talented designers from all over the world who moved to this small Midwestern town kind of in the middle of nowhere. And, you know, you were very focused on your, your design and, you know, I have a lot of colleagues who are still there and they just do great stuff. I mean, if you look through the sort of the annals of, of Kohler, you'll, you'll find.

you know, all the best industrial design in the plumbing industry right there. And, and it's all done on the premises in, in Kohler, you know, it's, it's, there's, they use very little consulting outside. mean, they have obviously different design groups with some of the subsidiary brands like, like Myra or, or, Calista or various, you know, Jacob Delafon or whatever, but

started in kind of the early: 2000

Chris Whyte (: 11:36

Yeah, it's fascinating. can't imagine that kind of setup happening these days because it was when... Yeah.

William Gordon (: 11:44

It's pretty hard. mean, I think that they benefited greatly from, you know, hiring international designers who wanted to come to the United States. And so, okay, we're going to sponsor you, but you got to come live in Wisconsin, you know? And so, or they hired, like me, they hired young, talented designers straight out of school who wanted to get their first job and were willing to move.

It's much harder for them to hire as you could imagine as a recruiter, it's harder for them to hire mid career designers who have already set up, know, set themselves up in some other sort of urban environment or what have you. it's much harder for them to recruit those people to, to a rural environment, but it was a great experience. I mean, I got to pay off my student loans and it was very cheap and, and, and.

Chris Whyte (: 12:28

Hmm.

Yeah

William Gordon (: 12:43

what was the best part about it? And this is what I tell my students is move to the first job. Don't just stay, you if you're going to school in San Francisco or New York or Chicago, whatever, move, like find the best job and move to that job. Don't stay in the urban environment just because you want, you know, you like the cool restaurants like move because I was able to create, you know, category leading.

Chris Whyte (: 12:51

Yeah.

William Gordon (: 13:11

products in my early 20s that were all mine. I wasn't the sketch monkey or the cat monkey. I was the person who created it and launched it. And that's unusual to right out of the gate be able to do that type of product. And it's more unusual if you're at a design consultancy, I mean, if you're at a design consultancy, typically if you're a junior designer, you're not going to be working on those types of

products, you're going to be an assistant. So it is a special thing when you're able to find a company like that. And sometimes that means you have to move somewhere.

Chris Whyte (: 13:42

Absolutely, yeah. Yes.

Yeah, absolutely. It's conversation I have most weeks, to be honest with you. Location is one of the biggest barriers on both sides, really. For candidates, they're designers, if you're kind of fixing yourself in a particular location, then there's only so many businesses within that area or they're going to be willing to take you on remotely or hybrid. And the same for the employers, you know.

you've only got a certain geographical area where you can pull talent from. hindsight's a wonderful thing, but I've been in the same area the majority of my life. And I'm pretty happy with how my life's turned out, but you could think how much differently it would have been had I been more open to relocation when I was younger.

William Gordon (: 14:37

Yeah. And I, you know, there is a very special thing about the comp of a, and this is an unusual part of color is they still have manufacturing in United States. Right. And so to be able to, as a designer, learn about manufacturing hands on is unusual these days. Right. You have to go to China typically or Asia to be able to do that. And it has shaped that, that learning of being, you know,

Like literally making toilets, literally being on a foundry line and learning from the factory workers about these different production methods has deeply shaped me as a designer, right? And it shapes me in terms of how I interact with factories that are 10 ,000 miles away. And so I think...

Chris Whyte (: 15:29

That's brilliant

William Gordon (: 15:34

to the idea, I mean, I'm preaching to young designers who might be listening, is, you you really need to be learning a lot about the craft of interacting with not only your coworkers and people who aren't designers, that's a huge thing, but also learning how to interact with all of these vendors.

because they're the hands that are creating your thing. And so it's a collaboration. You you weren't making it. They're making it.

Chris Whyte (: 16:12

you've gone from, obviously, designing kind of...

Basin ware toilets, I'm presumed for Kohler so ceramics you spent a bit of time as a So that's later on actually going going to be a visiting instructor at Pratt Institute But then immediately after Kohler you joined fax and design design consultancy. So how was that transition for you?

William Gordon (: 16:35

Yeah, so I created the consultancy.

I left Kohler and then I moved to the Philippines and I started consulting in the Philippines and then, because I had a big project through the Philippine government, through their Department of Trade and Industry designing furniture and home accessories for a bunch of exporter factories there. And so that...

Chris Whyte (: 16:42

Okay.

wow. How did that come about then?

William Gordon (: 17:02

It was kind of an amazing opportunity. I had wanted to do design in a developmental capacity, right? I wanted to get more connected to factories. I wanted to understand kind of on the ground what the factory world was like. As a designer, you're so dependent on factories. And so I really wanted to get a lot more intimate.

with my understanding of that. So I had a colleague who had done a similar project with the Philippine government and Nick Patterson, who's a great industrial designer. And he connected me with this organization. It's called CITEM and they're really fantastic organization out of Manila.

And they're, you Philippine government organization. bring in designers to work with, all of their, their factories. And so I worked with 16 different factories designed like, I think it was like 180 products in like a six week period. was, it was an insanely compressed schedule. And I'm, you know, sort of flying all over the Philippines because they're all islands and driving to all these remote sort of factories. And these are.

Chris Whyte (: 18:22

Yeah.

William Gordon (: 18:26

furniture, home accessory, and some of them are factories that produce for design within reach and Crate and Barrel and various other retailers like that. Or they're smaller, sort of mom and pop factories. Everything from...

wood furniture, wooden leather furniture to like baskets to everything. But all like high design kind of, know, not, not handicraft in any way. And so it a great experience. And then we, we launched all those products, products at a trade show in Manila. And that kind of launched my consulting career. So I moved back to the States and lived in Brooklyn and then I lived in, in

Chris Whyte (: 18:52

Okay, yeah. Yeah.

Hmm.

William Gordon (: 19:16

and Chicago consulting. And it was a pretty wide range of clients, consumer electronics, plumbing, furniture, kitchen accessories, textiles, know, a lot of decor stuff, know, kind of big wide range. And it was, so I did that for about five years. It was really the great recession in 2009 that kind of curtailed my

nd, you know, it wasn't until: 2009

Chris Whyte (: 19:54

Yeah, you'd had a pretty wild ride up until that point, I think.

William Gordon (: 20:15

this is reality, okay, this is a little more difficult. Because it was, when you are hitting it on all cylinders as a consultant, you're kind of turning down work and you have more work than you can even do, but it's quite easy for all that work to go away, right? so 2009 was a difficult year and then I, in that year, decided to go back corporate.

and got a job at S .E. Johnson, which was another Wisconsin family -owned company, which it was kind of funny, ironic that I got another Wisconsin family -owned company, but it was another tremendous experience.

Chris Whyte (: 20:49

Yeah.

he post COVID kind of boom of: 2020

t recruiters as well. Like in: 2022

William Gordon (: 21:24

was quick.

Chris Whyte (: 21:52

we've over hired or we've over acquired, know, there's, there's consultancies were being bought left, right and center. And then you kind of get to the turn of this year and there's just thousands of industrial designers, especially in the States out of work. And it's like we're saying off air that the there is hiring going on, but it's certainly a different landscape. So how did you, how did you get through that, that time then? Or how did you kind of

Did it take you a while to recognize that?

William Gordon (: 22:22

You know, I would say that for me, you know, as I said, it was kind of my first come up ins in my career. And I think I took it hard at first, right? I took it very personally. And I think that to me is the trap you run into, especially creative people. Typically, you know, they have a well -developed sense of imposter syndrome. I think most creative people do.

Most people do, but creative people in particular, And you really have to rely on your network. I

so I have a lecture that I gave my students. It's about a professional development and the, the, sort of mantra of the, lecture is always be connecting that your career is about relationships.

r, moved through the crash of: 2019

my network and being able to reach out to people asking for help. I had luckily developed relationships with recruiters like yourself, Chris, and even when they didn't have positions available, was still talking with them so that when the green chute started to come up,

I was first on their mind. and so, and, and then the other thing too, that I would say is don't be snobby about an opportunity, right? You know, I had to take a lot of consulting work with like kitchen accessory companies that were kind of not my favorite work. And I still have some products that I, I, from that time that I look up, look at and kind of

Chris Whyte (: 24:39

Yeah.

William Gordon (: 24:46

makes me sort of cringe. It's funny. have this one product that it's still on the market and it's still selling. I mean, it's still like, you know, and it's, it's, it's awful. It's just like, did, why did they produce that? my God. But it's still.

Chris Whyte (: 24:59

Someone out there must not think it's as awful as you think you've been to.

William Gordon (: 25:05

Yeah, I know. I know. know. I, you know, and I, you know, so you, you know, you, you go from these career highs where you're, you know, producing red dot, you know, IDA awarded product, and then you gotta, you know, you gotta, you gotta pay the bills. So you're, like, okay, I'll design some schlock for a little bit. And, and that's below my sort of ideal, but that that's what it took. And luckily,

I haven't had to go back to that since, but, and I've been able to keep sort of riding the wave up, but it's important to understand that you're gonna have a long career and that hopefully, and that any long career has ups and downs and creative spells where you're not doing maybe what you wanna do.

But the other thing to do to me is to always, I always feel like designers, we don't have hobbies, we have other projects, but to always keep those other projects going too. Because that, if your nine to five job isn't sort of truly meeting all of your passions, you can, especially today, there's so many outlets to be able to create.

product and be able to do your own projects and and and so your nine -to -five doesn't have to be where you source all of your Creative satisfaction

Chris Whyte (: 26:39

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. What you've just said there as well, it's kind of reiterates what Leah Stewart said on a previous episode as well, because that was the advice she gave, that she learned earlier on in career. yeah, don't turn down kind of those projects that you might normally turn your nose up at, because, you know, like you say, it's a long career. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, yeah.

William Gordon (: 27:00

especially if they're paying hourly. They're paying hourly to take it. Take it. You know, because I, there is this in every good career there are these times that are down, but I look back at those times as times that I focused on either other things or maybe they were incubate incubation times. Maybe I was learning a skill that I didn't have before.

So there's always value, right? There's always value.

Chris Whyte (: 27:33

You never know who you're going to meet along the way. Yeah.

William Gordon (: 27:36

100%. That's the other thing about the connections is, you know, I been around long enough to see students of mine come back and, you know, give me work. You know, it is this amazing process of connection and relationship sort of development. And you don't, never know where they're going to lead.

Chris Whyte (: 27:49

Mm -hmm.

Do you have a process or any kind of techniques that you either practice yourself or you teach your students to help with building a network and maintaining those kind of starting and maintaining those relationships?

William Gordon (: 28:24

I mean, think, I mean, there's the basics of human interaction, right? You know, a lot of it is, you know, starts with that fundamentally, right? Obviously LinkedIn is an incredible tool. if you're not, if you as a professional or as a student are not on LinkedIn, you need to get on it. It's something I would say,

So in terms of relationships, I feel that it is, you know, it's almost a design project where you are, you know, creating these connections that are meaningful because you have either a common experience or an insightful conversation that you had that's memorable or

you know, a positive interaction, right? To me that that's, that's how it starts, right? Some sort of positive interaction that is mutually beneficial or mutually interesting or what have you, whether it's at a trade show and you had a great conversation. and you know, key to conversations is just asking questions and listening. That's it. You know, if you can ask, I mean, I'm sure that's most of your professional career, Chris, it's just.

Chris Whyte (: 31:20

I hardly talk at all. Just ask a question and shut up. Yeah.

William Gordon (: 31:21

Yeah, it's just, you ask me questions and you listen, you ask follow ups and, it's, it's miraculous when you do that to someone, especially in person, you make eye contact and you know, and you're, and you're, laugh at their jokes or whatever. They love you and they like want to interact with you more. And that's how it works. It's, pretty straightforward. And, and I have, you know, you try to collect that goodwill and, and when you've

Chris Whyte (: 31:37

Hmm.

William Gordon (: 31:50

When you were at a company, what you learn is that, you know, when you're at a company with good people, those people end up going other places and then you now have connections with other people and you now have a network. And it's amazing how quickly that grows. It all for me starts with the cohort at school and then grows from there. You know, I have, you know, obviously,

people that I studied with 25 years ago that I'm still, they were in Crete this last week and their family is growing, my gosh, blah, blah. And that, to me, beyond just developing your career, that's the heart and soul of a career. There's a great quote from...

Chris Whyte (: 32:28

Yeah.

William Gordon (: 32:44

one of the patriarchs of the S .E. Johnson family. And he talks about, you know, the substance of what they do is the goodwill that they build, everything else is shadow. And I absolutely believe that, right? Your project names and your projects you worked on with these people, you don't remember. what was that project name? yeah, that thing.

You remember the stories, remember the trips you took, remember the relationship you have with the person and the...

you know, projects are kind of just in the background of that, as it should be, you it is never sacrifice a relationship for a project. Lots of designers are willing to do that. Believe me, I've seen it, where they're willing to throw a relationship under the bus for some aspect of a project and it's never worth it. It's never worth it.

Chris Whyte (: 33:24

Hehehe

Hmm.

No, like you said before, the community is very small and yeah, work gets around, doesn't it? I think I've always lived my professional life and my personal life. Just try and be as nice a person as you can because it all works out. Even if...

William Gordon (: 34:06

It does, and the product, like I think that there, at least when I was growing up as a designer, there was this sort of thought that, to be a great designer, you needed to be this sort of, kind of,

creative asshole, know, the sort of Steve Jobs sort of person. And it's just not true. It's just not how the world works. It's not actually how things get done. And I think that that idea hopefully doesn't exist. I don't think it exists as much in this new generation of Gen Z designers. But yeah, it's something I know as a young designer.

Chris Whyte (: 34:25

Yeah.

William Gordon (: 34:48

I had to learn was total, was just not reality.

Chris Whyte (: 34:53

Yeah, there's not much space there for that kind of personality. I mean, if you are that kind of Steve Jobs type kind of character, you better be bloody good because otherwise people aren't going to follow you. Yeah.

William Gordon (: 35:04

Yes. And there aren't that, I mean, I've, believe me, worked with those types of designers and

Nobody likes working with them. Like they really don't like they might have a great brand or whatever. But yeah, no. And the truth is, they aren't the ones creating it. It's some nice person who works for them, who's actually doing all this stuff. That's just the truth of it.

Chris Whyte (: 35:27

Yeah.

Yeah, and I think, I don't know, obviously I'm not in that position, but it can't be a pleasant experience because surely the people that work for you in that scenario, they're in it for the game, because they know that they're not doing it for the love of the person they're working for or the admiration. Maybe they respect them from a design point of view, but it's self -serving, isn't it? They're not with you on that journey. They're there to get the experience and then

use that for somewhere where elsewhere may value them or kind of be kinder to them you know that's maybe a little bit simplistic.

William Gordon (: 36:06

Yeah, and it's no way to live. I mean, I totally agree with you. It's no way to live. There's so many other environments you could go to that are positive. I've certainly worked with egotistical bosses and people who were maybe less than nice. for me, I think I found that it doesn't move the ball forward.

It is simply an artifact of their, some psychosis they have. It's not really like a, a truly productive element. you know, they, to me, it's almost, they have all this talent and that actually holds them back. If like, they, if they, if they, if they had all that talent and were just nice, it would probably be even, you know, be like, wow, they're, they're really great. You know,

Chris Whyte (: 36:37

You

Yeah. I imagine, yeah, imagine the possibility. So we kind of went off on a it was it was it was a tangent, but it was almost planned because we talked about it previously. But let's go back to kind of your career briefly then we'll finish that story off. So S .C. Johnson wax. So kind of household FMCG stuff is that kind of is that right? Yeah.

William Gordon (: 37:03

Yeah, we went off some tangents.

Yeah, yeah, a lot of consumer packaged goods. And it was interesting because when I went there, I was recruited there. I didn't necessarily know what industrial design in that context was like. it really, the experience exposed me to kind of many different new areas of industrial design that I hadn't really experienced, including

Chris Whyte (: 37:36

Hmm.

William Gordon (: 37:50

strategic design, design thinking, which I knew a lot about, but it was kind of at a different level. And when you're an industrial designer at a company that big, when you're working on these platforms worth tens of millions of dollars, you're practicing industrial design in a very different way. You are...

getting very in depth with users. You are going to their homes all over the world. You are, again, this storytelling thing. You are trying to understand these users, understand the way they actually live, and then be able to craft a story about that world that educates people to the reality and educates people in terms of

how you're gonna go after their unmet needs and their hopefully unarticulated needs. And so it is a hardcore design thinking. And in that regard, it is about hypothesizing, prototyping, ethnographic research, and being able to then connect that to

manufacturing base and to the business model is to me kind of that magic of industrial design where it is the connective tissue that connects the business to individuals. yeah, so it was a great experience to learn how to do that, you know, because, you know, a lot of the products are relatively humble or every day, but you get

And then, you know, you know, air fresheners, Ziploc bags, you know, mosquito repellents or what, you know, all these sort of like very everyday items. you quickly understand how much goes into everything, how much goes into everything at the grocery store, everything that you see as a consumer has these deep.

deep well of research, deep well of development that has gone into it. And it was tremendous experience. Because we also worked with all of the best industrial design agencies around the world. In fact, because as I said, I came to it right after the recession, there were many industrial design firms that would have gone out of business if it wasn't for S .E. Johnson investing as much as they did in new product development at that time.

Chris Whyte (: 40:06

Yeah

William Gordon (: 40:30

very interesting time to be at SC Johnson.

Chris Whyte (: 40:34

Yeah, it's interesting. I was listening to Atomic Habits earlier today, recommended by Ashley Sire to read that. been listening to that and just got to the bit where it's all about habits, but all of the money and time and research into consumer habits and the dopamine rush that you get and the craving we get for

things even like air fresheners, know, and the positioning of that on the store shelves as a big kind of play into our psyche. it's so you're very close to that as an industrial designer working with the science behind that, but also the use of research. Yeah, there's a lot more to it than meets the eye, isn't there? It's not just a pretty picture. Yeah.

William Gordon (: 41:21

Yeah, so there's sensory science, right? So you have all of these people who are scientists and they're studying, you know, whether it's olfactory senses or flavor senses or various senses and understanding that in relationship to preference. Obviously, shelf, the shelf is just a, I love going to a shelf at a store and kind of analyzing it and sort of saying, okay, this is...

Chris Whyte (: 41:29

Yeah.

William Gordon (: 41:50

how this packaging is working, and how it's attracting your eye, and how it's sort of disrupting the shelf, and you know, because you have these patterns as a consumer, and you have a new product, you're trying to break those patterns, try to attract people. It's fascinating psychology. And that's really where I developed this idea of like, know, design is people. It's just people. It's just how am I...

appealing to people at all these different levels. know, because you get to the psychology of what gets in, what makes someone put a product in their shopping cart. And it is a very elaborate process.

Chris Whyte (: 42:33

Yeah, and companies spend a lot of money getting to that answer, don't they?

William Gordon (: 42:38

Yeah. it's the research, methodologies are fascinating. You know, they, they, use eye tracking, for when people are, they'll, they'll have, you fake shelves and they can track people's eyes to see how their eyes dart about. They have, fake grocery stores, like a whole grocery store. And then you have customers coming in and shopping. So you see that. Yeah. As I said, I I went into literally hundreds of homes around the world.

Chris Whyte (: 42:43

Yeah.

Yeah.

William Gordon (: 43:05

understanding how people actually live with these products and, and, you know, at a really fundamental level, and, and, know, seeing different cultures and how they, know, for instance, air fresheners in Russia, it's all about, have these in, let's say in Moscow, they have these sort of block out, you know, Soviet era block houses and the only private space is the bathroom and they go in there to smoke. So the air fresheners about smoke.

Chris Whyte (: 43:13

That's great.

Yeah. Wow.

William Gordon (: 43:34

you know, dealing with this small room where they're smoking and it's the only private space. So it's sort of fascinating.

Chris Whyte (: 43:35

Yeah.

wow. Yeah, that is really interesting. It's. Well, you've certainly seen quite a few different things throughout your time. So I'm just conscious of time and we're barely kind of halfway through your your career here, I guess. But should we talk very briefly about Camelback and and Blenjet because Camelback, I think, was that a start up when you joined them or that been going for some time?

William Gordon (: 43:54

jeez.

No, Camelback, Camelback's been around for 30 years and they're, they're, you know, outdoor company, very, you know, kind of iconic outdoor company, completely new category to me. you know, that or industry, know, they, and they have a mix of hard goods and soft goods. And I had never done soft goods before. And these are highly technical soft goods used by everyone from, you know, the military to ultra marathoners and

Chris Whyte (: 44:12

Okay.

Mm

Yeah.

So it's for putting water in and it's like backpack that you have like a, yeah.

William Gordon (: 44:39

hikers backpack that you have water and, so it's could be for hiking, could be for running, could be for biking. and then they have water bottles and reservoirs and all sorts of accessories. so I came in as the director of industrial design, kind of overseeing the whole thing and then, really learned a tremendous amount about all of those categories. And, you know, they sell, you know, we,

Chris Whyte (: 44:52

Yeah.

William Gordon (: 45:07

developed a product for NASA. We have stuff for the military, as I said, then soccer moms and kind of everything in between. So it's fascinating in terms of the breadth of product, and then also sort of the focus of hydration and carry and kind of the outdoor industry in general, which is a wonderful industry. really, I got a lot of...

Chris Whyte (: 45:15

Yeah.

William Gordon (: 45:32

passion for that industry. oftentimes as a designer, especially if you're a consultant, you might be designing products that you don't use yourself. So it's really great when you have the opportunity to design products that you are passionate about. so I use my products all the time and that's really fun. Really, really fun.

Chris Whyte (: 45:53

Yeah, I mean, that's the dream really, isn't it? Next to kind of seeing your products on the shelf or being used by people, it's actually using it yourself. So yeah.

William Gordon (: 46:03

Yeah, it's really fun. you know, you, we have, you know, drawers full of water bottles and everything else that I worked on. And it's it's a really fun, that was really, really fun. And it was a great experience, great people. Again, broadening that relationship base to a whole new industry is also a tremendous opportunity too.

Chris Whyte (: 46:10

Yeah.

That's awesome.

Mm

Massively. Yeah. So you went from lead designer with SC Johnson wax, straight into director of industrial design with Camelback. Yeah. So that some, did that kind of come about then? Because that's one of the big blocker for a lot of people I speak to is they're at that kind of that either senior designer or maybe design manager level, and they're looking for the next step up. But I find it

William Gordon (: 46:38

Yep.

Chris Whyte (: 46:54

Very difficult to find an employer that will take a risk on someone who doesn't have say manager or director or head of experience because it's a different job, especially jumping from senior to a management role. There's a big gap there in terms of what the job is. How did that work for you?

William Gordon (: 47:04

Mm

Well, I had, I was lucky enough at SC Johnson to have some direct reports as a lead. so that got me kind of, wet behind the ears in terms of management. That was very helpful. I think teaching design was also for me personally, very helpful because I think I developed my management style through teaching, right?

Chris Whyte (: 47:19

Okay.

Yeah.

Because you've taught throughout your career haven't you as visiting instructor? Yeah.

William Gordon (: 47:41

Correct, I've taught at three different schools. I taught at Pratt and I taught at School of Art Institute of Chicago and currently I teach at California College of the Arts. And when you teach, you have to know what you do. It's like whenever you feel like you teach someone how to drive stick shift, you have to kind of internally understand, how do I do this? And be able to translate that, right?

Chris Whyte (: 47:59

Yeah

William Gordon (: 48:10

And that's really helpful being a manager because you then have to understand how different people process information. So different people process information or motivated differently, are, you know, just wired differently. So you have to be able, you know, as a professor to be able to understand that with students. And then that's very helpful for managing designers, designers, especially.

Chris Whyte (: 48:39

Hmm.

William Gordon (: 48:40

you know, cause designers are, you know, need to feel passionate and they need to feel motivated. They need to feel safe. They need to feed all these things for the, for them to do good work. And so that, that was very helpful. think, I was lucky enough to, you know, find, you know, hiring manager who sort of understood my value. Maybe I was, I was good at, maybe I was good at.

communicating that value of not only having a hardcore industrial design background, but also understanding design process and understanding sort of, you know, how does an idea navigate itself through a corporate system, right? So.

Being a managing design is about understanding the process of design. How do things come to fruition? Not just, I made a cool rendering or I made a great CAD model, but how does it work? How does the idea germinate? How does it get funding? How does that funding?

stay through a two -year development cycle, all of that type of stuff. That's really, to me, beyond people management skills, those are the skills you need to learn to be in design management, is understanding the reality of a product development cycle and being able to not only understand it, but be able to really

like control it and drive it and understand the bottlenecks and how to get over them. And that was a big, big part of what I sort of learned and was able to show through my previous experience, especially the experience at SC Johnson that got me to director at Camelback and then VP at Blinjet.

Chris Whyte (: 50:26

Hmm.

And we're touching there in terms of we spoke earlier as well about kind of talking about broader design philosophy. Is that kind of what you're touching on there in terms of taking the whole wider kind of picture and the wider context?

William Gordon (: 51:04

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, for me, you know, as I said, you know, I have, like, I like this, how I like to think about ideas is try, you know, what is the through line, right? This is what I do for my students or my own products is how do I describe this in as few words as possible, right? The ultimate through line I look at is like BMW is the ultimate driving machine. You kind of understand everything you need to know about BMW through that one crisp statement.

For me, I have my own sort of through line, is product process people, right? So this is, can talk about my career with those three words. And in terms of a philosophical understanding, everything ladders up to people, right? That's the whole point. That's the only reason you're doing any of stuff is for people. And you are connecting people through your product.

And then that there is a process behind that. There is a, there's a process of, of how that product is developed and produced and, distributed. And so understanding all three of those elements is, key to success, right? That's, that's a key to design success. A design isn't just a product. isn't just a process, but it's a connection to people. It's a relationship to people. Right. And, and,

And for me, you know, that that is why I'm always trying to learn. I'm always trying to learn about people and I'm always trying to learn about, you know, a new product category. I'm always trying to learn about some new aspect of this process. When, you know, being at BlinJet, I've been learning about startup. You know, this is a startup and, you know, we've grown from

You know, when I started in: 2020

creating something cool, it's about the marketing, it's about the distribution, it's about this whole infrastructure that is very intricate and everything has to work.

Chris Whyte (: 53:42

Yeah, and think if you, as a designer or as an engineer, if you can kind of embed yourself in as much of that as possible, or at least kind of upskill yourself in terms of what's going on outside of your, your remit and how what you're doing relates to what someone over there is doing or how it affects this department. It sounds like that's what you're saying in terms of that's going to present more opportunities to you in the long term. Highly stick, yeah. Yeah.

William Gordon (: 54:06

It's holistic, right? It's a team sport, right? I can't just be working in my silo. have to be aware of the impacts that my decisions make on not only in users, but the factory, business, the stakeholders, my colleagues. It is one of my former professors, Alan Chachanov,

has a quote about design is about consequences, right? And, you know, as when you are in mass production, you are multiplying those consequences, you know, millions of times, right? So a small part becomes a big impact. And when you truly kind of embed that in your DNA as a designer, I'm making impact, you start really trying to pull out, what is this?

What does this mean down the road? What does this mean for the business? What does this mean for our consumers? Right? So that you aren't just

filling a brief with ideas. You are truly thinking through those ideas at a holistic level. That is, to me, a successful design. It is a design that incorporates all of those different needs and constituencies to the point where everyone has a positive outcome.

Chris Whyte (: 55:34

Absolutely. Brilliant. Well, look, we're rapidly approaching time. just very quickly, if you can, mean, do you have any kind of a favorite design story either for because it went really well or maybe it presented it went terribly wrong, but it presented a great learning opportunity for you that you could share.

William Gordon (: 55:38

Okay.

Well, I'll sell a fun story of Mr. Kohler, Herb Kohler, who is a character. He unfortunately passed away this last year, but anyone who interacted with him and had the opportunity to work with him at Kohler has stories. I have a few. One of my favorites is designing a toilet seat. And when you...

I, you know, was, we had all of this amazing technology where he had like a pressure mapping, you know, pad and we tested all these people's, butts and sort of understood where their sits bones are and created, you know, surfacing. I'm an alias doing the surfacing. And then I'm like, you know, we, we made this beautiful, model showing to Mr. Kohler. And of course he's got to try it out.

And, and so he, he, he sits on it with his pants on. And then I go down and, and he's like, it's not right here. And then I'm going down with a sure form blade and carving coming back. You know, he's going through other things and then he's like, no, it's a little bit here. And then I'm going back finally after a few iterations.

Chris Whyte (: 57:11

Yeah.

William Gordon (: 57:18

I'm gonna take my pants off. You guys can stay or you can leave.

Chris Whyte (: 57:20

The ultimate test.

William Gordon (: 57:25

And then, you know, he tested it and I still to this day, I'm like, yeah, this is Mr. Kohler's butt.

Chris Whyte (: 57:29

scarred in your retinas.

By pants you mean trousers, presume, just for the...

William Gordon (: 57:37

Yes, trousers. Yes. He took off, he had a beautiful suit that was now covered in yellow foam because of the dust that I had created. And then he took them off and planted his butt on the seat.

Chris Whyte (: 57:45

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, there's quite some user test, isn't it?

William Gordon (: 57:56

Yes, but this is what was funny is we did all of this user testing and it kind of went out the door because the man who was, you know, signing the checks, it's going to be his butt that has to be comfortable.

Chris Whyte (: 58:01

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. that we said, yeah, in the conversation that all the designs have passed by him, but literally pass by his backside. Yeah. Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, that and favourite, we always ask this at the end as well, kind of quick fire questions. So favourite books that you're reading or listening to at the moment and okay.

William Gordon (: 58:17

They passed, yes. In many ways.

I love the book, Sapiens, and it is basically a history of humanity, and it's all about storytelling and about how we are the only animal that tells stories and that storytelling is fundamental to who we are as a species and as a culture. it is tremendously instructive for me as a storyteller and an understanding kind of society.

Chris Whyte (: 59:02

Wonderful. Are you listening to any podcasts at the moment?

William Gordon (: 59:06

Honestly, many interesting ones. I usually listen to like either comedy podcasts or political podcasts. But yeah, I need to get into more design oriented podcasts because that'd be a lot more interesting for me. Or physics, actually, that's what I like. I love astrophysics. And so there's a Cool Worlds podcast. There's an English professor.

Chris Whyte (: 59:13

Yeah.

Well, as we said earlier, yeah. Okay.

Okay.

William Gordon (: 59:34

of astrophysics at the Columbia University. It's called Cool World and it's awesome, really interesting.

Chris Whyte (: 59:38

Okay.

I will check that out. Yeah, that's brilliant. So, well, wonderful. Thank you so much for spending the time with me. We're at the end of the show. Yeah, the time has absolutely flown by. think we could definitely do a double episode. Absolutely not. No. So, well, if there's a final kind of parting gift, obviously, this is your episode. So if there's anything you kind of want to leave with the audience or if there's... mean, basically, how can people get in touch with you?

William Gordon (: 59:49

Yeah, thank you. This was really fun.

Yeah, yeah, I hope I didn't drone on too much.

Chris Whyte (: 1:00:11

It's linked in probably the best way for them to reach out.

William Gordon (: 1:00:13

Yeah, LinkedIn is definitely the best way. I'm usually pretty responsive, especially if you're not trying to sell me something. I'm usually pretty responsive. If you're trying to sell me something, I might not respond as quickly. But if you're just reaching out and say hi, that's great.

Chris Whyte (: 1:00:19

Yeah.

Ha ha ha.

Awesome. And is there anyone you want to shout out to? I don't know if that's this, but it's on my notes here. So I feel like I should should ask. Yeah.

William Gordon (: 1:00:39

out. I know. I If anyone knows me or has met me and is listening to that, I'd love to hear.

Chris Whyte (: 1:00:50

Well, we will share the love when the podcast goes live in a few weeks. We'll post it all over LinkedIn. So, yeah, if you're listening and you've enjoyed the show, get in touch and share the love because we love to hear from you. William, it's been wonderful speaking to you. And thank you so much for your time. We'll catch up soon.

William Gordon (: 1:00:56

Great. Lovely.

It's been great speaking with you, Chris.

All right, take care.

Chris Whyte (: 1:01:15

Thank you for listening. I hope you really enjoyed this episode. And if you did, please like and subscribe and tell all of your friends. In the meantime, just a quick note from me. In addition to hosting this podcast, I'm also the founder of Kodu a specialist recruitment business focused exclusively on physical product development. For a little over a decade now, I've worked exclusively within physical product design and engineering, helping startups and established brands hire mechanical design and development talent from mid -weight up to C -suite. I've worked in consumer electronics,

e -bikes, femtech, medical devices, design consultancy, basically user focused stuff. And it's the wonderful people I've met over the years that have inspired me to create this podcast. If you'd like to learn more about Kodu and how we work, please head over to TeamKodu .com or message me, Chris Whyte on LinkedIn. Thanks again for listening.