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Design Glut's in-house product design studio is known for our line of intelligent, socially-relevant products. We also provide innovative design solutions to outside clients. Learn more.
LATEST NEWS
November 19, 2008
NEW PRODUCTS
Check out the online store for new products by Design Glut! We've launched the World Links necklace, which has the continents of the world connected by links of chain around your neck. And our new Cubic Switchplates play tricks with your eyes. They're only 3mm deep, but it looks like they're protruding inches off the wall.
October 14, 2008
NEW ONLINE STORE AND PRESS
We just redid our online store to make it easier for our customers. The new layout is simpler to browse and has some additional functionality. Fancy Schmancy! We also have new press to report: Elle Decoration, Max, and 5 Au Clock.
September 21, 2008
NEW PRESS AND STORES
The October issue of Metropolitan Home covers the Slow Food Tray as part of a group of products using words as decoration. We also have three new stores: Spring and Stewart and Stand here in NY, and Composition in Colorado.
September 2, 2008
NEW PRESS: SURFACE
The new edition of Surface reports of the trend of designers "using oil as fuel for thought." Crude Black is included.
August 22, 2008
NEW PRESS: DFUN
The Crude Jewelry was just featured as the cover story in the current issue of DFUN, a Taiwanese fashion and design magazine.
July 15, 2008
NEW PRESS: WALLPAPER
The August '08 issue of Wallpaper is hitting newsstands right now. Check out the interviews with "NYC's new design wave": Todd Bracher, Design Glut, Takeshi Miyakawa, and Test Collective.
July 10, 2008
NEW PRESS: WATCH
The Smoking Gun was just featured in the latest edition of Watch.
July 9, 2008
ABOUT DESIGN GLUT
We’ve expanded the About Us area - check it out to get a better feel for who we are and what we do.
June 30, 2008
NEW PRESS: MAX
The fashion magazine Max just published a great-looking piece on Crude Black. We can't actually read it, but we're hoping they said nice things.
June 23, 2008
SMOKING GUN NECKLACE
The Smoking Gun is now available on a chain! It makes one pimped out necklace.
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Are you a creative entrepreneur? Tell us your story. If it's a good fit for the site, we'd love to interview you.
ALL INTERVIEWS
(Alphabetical)
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• Curatorium
• Diaroogle.com
• Domestic Aesthetic
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• Harry Allen
• Mint
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• Todd Bracher
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MONTHLY ARCHIVE
• July 2008
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• November 2008
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ALL INTERVIEWS
(Alphabetical)
• Brad Ascalon
• Brooklyn Salsa Company
• byAMT
• Cake
• Character
• Citizen:Citizen
• Curatorium
• Diaroogle.com
• Domestic Aesthetic
• Exit9
• FuckOffSarahPalin.com
• Harry Allen
• Mint
• Nooka
• NOTCOT.com
• Pomp&Clout
• redstr/collective
• Reiko Kaneko
• Robert Langhorn
• Skinny Vinny
• Sonic Design
• Supermarket
• Swiss Miss (upcoming)
• Todd Bracher
• TZ Design
MONTHLY ARCHIVE
Subscribe to
Posts [Atom]
September 1, 2008
Diane Ruengsorn of Domestic Aesthetic (Part 1 of 2)
Diane is the mastermind behind Domestic Aesthetic. Remember that name. It's a start-up sustainable housewares company that is gaining some serious momentum. Over the course of this interview we learned how one woman got her ideas onto the pages of the New York Times, found out what a Design Management degree is all about, and became seriously inspired.
Domestic Aesthetic
www.domestic-aesthetic.com
How did you make the decision to start Domestic Aesthetic?
It came from the fact that I don't want a 9-to-5 job. It became very clear that I'm just not built that way. It's really hard for anyone to figure out what they want to do professionally, or even with their life, or how to answer those big existential questions. When you realize you don't fit into the normal mold, it becomes that much more challenging. It's hard to draw support. Most of my friends were a bit skeptical and my family is very traditional.
And when did you make the decision?
I started around October 2006. I said, okay, this is it, I'm making this announcement. I don't know exactly what my first steps are going to be, but at least I've put it out there that this is the direction I'm going in. And everyone said, you know, "Good luck to you..." They didn't really get it, and were kind of obliged to be supportive, but ultimately supported that I was doing what I needed to do.
What is your background?
I went through the Design Management program at Pratt for my masters. Everyone in the program is a designer, and they go in and get this "MBA for designers." It's one of the best decisions I've made. It's an excellent program. I didn't want to go to business school; I knew that was not the route for me. I think it was important to be in an environment with other designers, so you all understand each other.
In the program you struggle to learn a new vocabulary, to learn how to speak in an articulate way about business concepts. You're challenged with learning about accounting, and finance, and international business law... The wonderful thing for me, when it came to starting Domestic Aesthetic, was that I now had enough experience in all of those areas to ask the right questions. While I didn't quite know enough to go be an accountant, I knew enough to hire someone effectively.
Wow, so you dealt with all that in the program? That sounds great!
It was. Of course, there are always pros and cons. For me, the pros definitely outweighed all of the cons. The big con was, similar to a liberal arts degree, what do you do with it once you graduate?
It gives you the mindset of thinking about design in a strategic way. Which is especially geared towards design in a corporate setting. You're thinking about how to communicate design to the finance department, how to make a case for the resources you need. You don't really get that in design school, which gives you how to communicate design as a philosophy.
Agreed. Design school teaches you to communicate design to yourself, and to other designers.
Exactly. And I think that's where design gets kind of incestuous. So the Design Management program was hugely beneficial. The con side was, though, I really didn't know what I wanted to do afterwards.
Yeah, especially if you don't want to go into that corporate management job, then what do you do?
You're feeling your way around, and you have this degree which is really great but no one knows how to evaluate it. You can say it's LIKE an MBA, but it's NOT an MBA. People ask, "What can you do? What does this mean now?" The struggle of articulating what I could do, and what skill set I had, became an uphill battle. It was really tough for a good, solid year after I graduated and I bounced from job to job. A lot of my classmates had similar experiences. But I think we all went on to do really great things. Slowly but surely, people made their way and found their own path.
After being in New York for a year after graduating, I saw a couple of options. I could go back to school and get a PhD in Design Management, which I had a lot of doubts about. Or, I could take that same time and money and do what I really wanted to do: start Domestic Aesthetic.
That's a huge decision. What steps did you take to make your dream a reality?
I started talking to Deb Johnson, the director of the Pratt Design Incubator (http://incubator.pratt.edu), in February 2007. I got more serious and started writing a business plan, getting it vetted. In May 2007, I was accepted into the Incubator. So that was the "official" starting point. The next year brought a lot of organic development, refining the business plan, and figuring out in more concrete terms what I wanted to do.
Could you explain the Incubator a little? It's a way of supporting small-businesses started by Pratt alumi, correct?
Right. It's open to alumni of all disciplines as long as your business is sustainably-focused. They are really selective about who they accept, but in many ways it is also self-selecting. The people who apply really want to start a business and are committed to being part of this community of entrepreneurs.
The great thing about being part of this community was that the Incubator created this pressure for me to report in every week, to report in my progress. It really motivated me. I always had to ask myself what I was going to say in that next meeting. They're expecting you to say something compelling and interesting, and to be taking this seriously.
Domestic Aesthetic is deeply rooted in a philosophy. Could you briefly explain what that is?
The mission of the company is to create sustainable products, products that are eco-friendly and socially responsible. A lot of that philosophy came from personal experience I had working in a furniture factory. I saw how much waste there was, and worked with people firsthand, and thought, "Wow, you're sawing a lot of MDF every day, and you're not wearing a mask. And it contains all this horrible formaldehyde." A lot of what goes on in manufacturing is just horrific, and when you work in a factory day in and day out it's that much more apparent to you.
All of these experiences led me to start Domestic Aesthetic , and being in the Incubator helped me begin to formalize a lot of stuff, like getting an Advisory Board together. I knew that would be important for getting any kind of credibility.
What is your Advisory Board?
They're people who I contacted from various industries who I felt were reputable. I worked on getting someone from marketing, someone who represented sustainability, another person from manufacturing, etc. I can then say, these people are tangentially a part of the company. I go to them for advice from time to time.
I took stock of my weaknesses. If I were ever to approach an investor or some larger entity, they would want to know who's managing my company. If I tell them, "Me," and I don't have any managerial experience, that's a very strong concern to anybody who's going to put money in. My Advisory Board gives people more confidence in the business.
The people on my Advisory Board were also really good about vetting my business plan. That was a huge help. I wrote this thing very theoretically. You write the strategy you have for going forwards and the sales projections, but none of it makes sense because you're not even really existing as a company yet. I hadn't even designed any products.
The whole thing seemed sort of an exercise in futility, but it ended up being very helpful. It gave me something to get feedback from. That, in and of itself, was hugely helpful. There were all these different directions I wanted to go in, and people who had experience could then say, "If you do that, be wary of this….."
It was such a learning process for me. As this whole thing has been. For better or for worse, I really am in love with this process. Because you're just constantly learning something.
Click here to go to Part 2 of the interview.
Domestic Aesthetic
www.domestic-aesthetic.com
How did you make the decision to start Domestic Aesthetic?
It came from the fact that I don't want a 9-to-5 job. It became very clear that I'm just not built that way. It's really hard for anyone to figure out what they want to do professionally, or even with their life, or how to answer those big existential questions. When you realize you don't fit into the normal mold, it becomes that much more challenging. It's hard to draw support. Most of my friends were a bit skeptical and my family is very traditional.
And when did you make the decision?
I started around October 2006. I said, okay, this is it, I'm making this announcement. I don't know exactly what my first steps are going to be, but at least I've put it out there that this is the direction I'm going in. And everyone said, you know, "Good luck to you..." They didn't really get it, and were kind of obliged to be supportive, but ultimately supported that I was doing what I needed to do.
What is your background?
I went through the Design Management program at Pratt for my masters. Everyone in the program is a designer, and they go in and get this "MBA for designers." It's one of the best decisions I've made. It's an excellent program. I didn't want to go to business school; I knew that was not the route for me. I think it was important to be in an environment with other designers, so you all understand each other.
In the program you struggle to learn a new vocabulary, to learn how to speak in an articulate way about business concepts. You're challenged with learning about accounting, and finance, and international business law... The wonderful thing for me, when it came to starting Domestic Aesthetic, was that I now had enough experience in all of those areas to ask the right questions. While I didn't quite know enough to go be an accountant, I knew enough to hire someone effectively.
Wow, so you dealt with all that in the program? That sounds great!
It was. Of course, there are always pros and cons. For me, the pros definitely outweighed all of the cons. The big con was, similar to a liberal arts degree, what do you do with it once you graduate?
It gives you the mindset of thinking about design in a strategic way. Which is especially geared towards design in a corporate setting. You're thinking about how to communicate design to the finance department, how to make a case for the resources you need. You don't really get that in design school, which gives you how to communicate design as a philosophy.
Agreed. Design school teaches you to communicate design to yourself, and to other designers.
Exactly. And I think that's where design gets kind of incestuous. So the Design Management program was hugely beneficial. The con side was, though, I really didn't know what I wanted to do afterwards.
Yeah, especially if you don't want to go into that corporate management job, then what do you do?
You're feeling your way around, and you have this degree which is really great but no one knows how to evaluate it. You can say it's LIKE an MBA, but it's NOT an MBA. People ask, "What can you do? What does this mean now?" The struggle of articulating what I could do, and what skill set I had, became an uphill battle. It was really tough for a good, solid year after I graduated and I bounced from job to job. A lot of my classmates had similar experiences. But I think we all went on to do really great things. Slowly but surely, people made their way and found their own path.
After being in New York for a year after graduating, I saw a couple of options. I could go back to school and get a PhD in Design Management, which I had a lot of doubts about. Or, I could take that same time and money and do what I really wanted to do: start Domestic Aesthetic.
That's a huge decision. What steps did you take to make your dream a reality?
I started talking to Deb Johnson, the director of the Pratt Design Incubator (http://incubator.pratt.edu), in February 2007. I got more serious and started writing a business plan, getting it vetted. In May 2007, I was accepted into the Incubator. So that was the "official" starting point. The next year brought a lot of organic development, refining the business plan, and figuring out in more concrete terms what I wanted to do.
Could you explain the Incubator a little? It's a way of supporting small-businesses started by Pratt alumi, correct?
Right. It's open to alumni of all disciplines as long as your business is sustainably-focused. They are really selective about who they accept, but in many ways it is also self-selecting. The people who apply really want to start a business and are committed to being part of this community of entrepreneurs.
The great thing about being part of this community was that the Incubator created this pressure for me to report in every week, to report in my progress. It really motivated me. I always had to ask myself what I was going to say in that next meeting. They're expecting you to say something compelling and interesting, and to be taking this seriously.
Domestic Aesthetic is deeply rooted in a philosophy. Could you briefly explain what that is?
The mission of the company is to create sustainable products, products that are eco-friendly and socially responsible. A lot of that philosophy came from personal experience I had working in a furniture factory. I saw how much waste there was, and worked with people firsthand, and thought, "Wow, you're sawing a lot of MDF every day, and you're not wearing a mask. And it contains all this horrible formaldehyde." A lot of what goes on in manufacturing is just horrific, and when you work in a factory day in and day out it's that much more apparent to you.
All of these experiences led me to start Domestic Aesthetic , and being in the Incubator helped me begin to formalize a lot of stuff, like getting an Advisory Board together. I knew that would be important for getting any kind of credibility.
What is your Advisory Board?
They're people who I contacted from various industries who I felt were reputable. I worked on getting someone from marketing, someone who represented sustainability, another person from manufacturing, etc. I can then say, these people are tangentially a part of the company. I go to them for advice from time to time.
I took stock of my weaknesses. If I were ever to approach an investor or some larger entity, they would want to know who's managing my company. If I tell them, "Me," and I don't have any managerial experience, that's a very strong concern to anybody who's going to put money in. My Advisory Board gives people more confidence in the business.
The people on my Advisory Board were also really good about vetting my business plan. That was a huge help. I wrote this thing very theoretically. You write the strategy you have for going forwards and the sales projections, but none of it makes sense because you're not even really existing as a company yet. I hadn't even designed any products.
The whole thing seemed sort of an exercise in futility, but it ended up being very helpful. It gave me something to get feedback from. That, in and of itself, was hugely helpful. There were all these different directions I wanted to go in, and people who had experience could then say, "If you do that, be wary of this….."
It was such a learning process for me. As this whole thing has been. For better or for worse, I really am in love with this process. Because you're just constantly learning something.
Click here to go to Part 2 of the interview.
