What’s your collaborative process like with your clients?
I have this thing called the cake theorem. If you go to a bakery, they know how to bake a cake and you don’t question that. But designers are questioned constantly by clients. There’s always a dialogue about how a client thinks a cake should be baked and how we, as professional bakers, think it should be baked, so there’s always tension. In those discussions, you begin to learn a lot about the type of collaborator you’re going to be working with.
How do you define a successful brand narrative?
If we extend the chef metaphor, I have to be this pastry chef constantly innovating to create some new concoction with different flavors and textures. We have this diagram that we draw—trust and love—and you can run this through almost any sector. If the brand is already trusted, how do you increase the love? And if it’s already loved, how do we create the trust element?
What can we expect from cultural hub Design Society in Shenzhen, a partnership with London-based Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum?
Our positioning was the V&A in London, built in 1853, was the first museum in the 20th century. I said, “We’re building the first museum of the 22nd century.” Design Society is both a noun and a verb. It’s somewhere where you can go see work and cultural output, but it’s also a verb. That’s the mission of the place, to design society.
Are there ideas about luxury that you’re bringing into your hospitality work with JW Marriott, Proper Hospitality (shown), and Bisha Hotel & Residences?
The one thing that no one can buy more of is time, and that is something that we’ve really begun to think about in terms of hospitality brands in particular. We try to look at the notion of luxury and hospitality through the lens of time because that is the ultimate luxury.
How has technology changed your work?
Technology has allowed us to create dynamic and responsive systems, logos, animations; it has opened that up to us in a different way. I’m not the most forward-thinker [when it comes to] technology, but I immediately recognize what it can do for us. The proof is in the output. We’re doing the most innovative work in the history of our practice.
