Jonathan Biddle – Made in Taiwan

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LA LA Land

While Taiwan celebrates Chinese New Year, my boss took the opportunity to bring me over to Austin for a week or two with the team. I didn’t struggle too hard, since I can reschedule the holiday, and anyway flights out of Taiwan are pretty expensive during the holiday period. I have been through LA a couple of times, but never stopped for more than a couple of hours, escaping from LAX to Manhattan Beach for a swift beer.

This time, however, was different. I finally took Pip up on his offer to visit, and he picked me up at the airport in his new Range Rover. Without hesitation, he asked ‘do you surf?’ and I was too deep in exhaustion and jet lag to say anything else but ‘hell yes’ … I am not going to look a gift horse (or a Brit in a Range Rover) in the mouth. So, before I had even sat down, I was walking out of a surf shop in Santa Monica with surf board and wet suit in hand. Life is Awesome. Otherwise known as LA.

Range Rover + Surf Boards x Los Angeles = Pip Tompkin

Pip in his natural environment

Manhattan Beach in the daytime … long board in hand.

Limited snowboarding and wake-boarding experience have even more limited application to surfing, but I wasn’t about to let that stop me from trying. I mean, first time surfing here … what a start. Pip gave me the basic pep talk; essentially, paddle really quickly, jump up in one motion, don’t fall off … and we were off. I was far from completely fluid, but I did legitimately have some real standing time … I will be back.

After an extended chat on the beach and with my brain still being faxed over from Asia, we spot that the waves had receded. We grabbed the boards, paddled out to beyond the break, and hung out a little more. Some fins approach in the distance … “are they sharks?” I calmly ask. No, a school of dolphins swims by us, flirting in the wake. I bob there, mouth agape, and more than a little overwhelmed by the scene of dolphins, salt spray, and California rising up in the distance.

Jet lag completely forgotten, I decide this is time to catch a proper wave for the first time, and am caught by a fairly serious swell building up behind me. Arms darting into the salt water, I build up precisely the right amount of speed to catch the full momentum of the wave, and it picks me up like a rag doll as I dive off the six-foot wall of water. Screaming like a schoolboy (and with feet flying into the air) I plummet to oblivion, only to be spun around like an old t-shirt at the bottom of a washing machine. Twice.

Emerging from the water, I had nothing but a smile on my face, and water leaking out of my ears. My first proper wipe-out. Time for a burger. Time for In ‘n’ Out Burger.

While only having about three things on the menu, other styles, ingredients and upgrades can be had with the use of secret code names … a very cool idea.

The burger was pretty awesome, but mazing out on all the code names that I could think of broke my flat-mate’s #1 rule of buying burgers: get the basic one. ‘Animal Style’ and whatever happened to the fries, was delicious, but oh so oily. Ah well, start as I mean to go on!

After a quick brunch at Santa Monica staple, Norms, it was time for a tour of the LA sights. Naturally, we swap cars for something a little more befitting of Beverley Hills, Bel Air and Hollywood; yup – a drop-top BMW coupé. Music, shades and attitude packed, we prowled the streets, wowing at the cars on display, the wanton display of wealth, and imagining what celebrities are waiting around the corner (or at least I did). Since we were not rich Chinese tourists, we pointed the car at the mountains, and took in views of Hollywood from Mulholland Drive. It was surreal, taking in all these sights that I knew so well, and yet had never seen.

Wait a moment for the movie to load

Pip has two rather beautiful fixed-gear bikes, and he was kind enough to take out his baby for a spin – what a host. Cruising along Venice Beach was a cultural lesson in taking recreation very seriously; this is the melting pot that lead to skateboarding, surfing, hip-hop and BMX. It’s pretty humbling, and highly entertaining to see new forms of street culture bubbling up in front of your eyes.

Swap four wheels for two.

LA all the way.

Cavendish takes the green jersey.

Santa Monica amusement park at sunset … why doesn’t the whole of America live here?

Watching the scene; I could stay here the whole day.

An absolutely phenomenal weekend … thanks so much Shannon and Pip. You are welcome in Asia!

2011/01/29
Finding an Industrial Design Job in Asia

Leaving design school, it can be really tough to pick a career direction; let alone find a job. Believing ‘change brings opportunity’, after graduating in 2003 I decided to head east and cut my teeth in Asia. Now all I needed was a job, and a destination.

Since I had never been to Asia before (it seems ridiculous to write that now), I lacked any connections or experience in the region. What I did have was a resume that I had been building since leaving high-school that packed a solid range of work experience and internships in some well-known companies. Crucially, a design education that included engineering and management training gave me the advantage of providing something a little different. All this provided a good foundation to start the search.

Leaving Europe. The night before, I had a pain in my stomach unlike anything I had ever felt before … but since the cost of changing my ticket to come home was only €25, I tricked myself into leaving anyway; and almost seven years later, here I am.

Working remotely, it was difficult to get a grasp of the ‘landscape’ of the design industry. I naturally applied through the variety of HR web portals that larger companies maintain, but was not surprised when I did not hear anything back. I browsed design company web sites, pestered my lecturers for alumni contact information, targeted conferences and design festivals looking for speakers and sponsors, and even pored through design award books looking for names. Anything that could give me the crucial ‘@’, that allowed me to crack the e-mail code was considered.

After months of freelancing, interviewing in the UK, and more than a little frustration, I finally hit pay-dirt when an innocuous ad for Asus Computers’ design team in Taipei popped up on Coroflot.com. Phone interviews were followed by a face-to-face in Germany, and before I knew it, I had an offer. I finally hit the ground on May 14th 2004; a solid ten months after graduating. Do not underestimate the power of resourcefulness, patience and perseverance (and even a little cunning).

My first few weeks on the ground were at first a little perplexing.

I struck it lucky with that advert, but a cross-section of my international friends in the region reveals a similar picture; get stuck in with research, and don’t give up. Nothing beats getting your feet on the ground out here, so book that plane ticket (ask your school to see if there are travel or research bursaries). No-one is going to begrudge a meeting with you if you have flown half-way round the world, and it’s likely that if you do meet with other designers out here, your spirit of adventure will likely mean they are more open to help you. You’ll be surprised.

18 months on Asus’ design team was followed by almost three years in design studio, DEM. And this bring me today, working for Dell on the notebook design team, deeply ingrained in the Taiwanese ‘industrial organism’, and a full paid-up member of the Asian Industrial Design Community. More about that next time.

Taking trains to visit vendors in China.

2011/01/14
Things I Learned After Graduating Design School

“Well, they didn’t teach us this in design school”

These exchanges seem to happen with some regularity in the Dell design team. So it got us thinking, what didn’t they – or couldn’t they – teach us in design school? What do we wish we knew then, that we think we know now?

Somewhat inspired by the list penned by Architect Michael McDonough, this is what the team came up with. What else would you add?

1. It’s not about design.

Working away in the school studio, you’ll have more time and ability to focus on a single task than at any time in your professional design career. Savour this luxury. Instead, you’ll be facing a constant barrage of vague briefs, irrational clients, opaque politics, moving goalposts and suppliers that suddenly can’t deliver. It will be the ability to hop, skip and jump between these obstacles that will keep you sane, and help you thrive.

You’ll discover that the world does not revolve around your final sketch. Compared to the amount invested in your beautiful little scribble, actually getting it to market will take technical, marketing and logistical resources many orders of magnitude greater. You’ll discover you have to develop the ability to speak the tongues of business, of engineers and of countless other functions if you want to keep the little germ of your idea alive. And you will, but before that …

Glasgow School of Art in Scotland where I studied Product Design Engineering … photo borrowed from Flickr user 2plus2is5

2. Your ideas will die, often horribly.

The pain of seeing something beautiful rejected by a client is beaten only by seeing it mutate into a hideous zombie, out of your control, and yet entirely your responsibility. You’ll physically revolt as you complete the umpteenth round of revisions, at the behest of someone wearing far worse shoes than you. You’ll mutter under your breath, willing it to die, and loaf around like a teenager, high on hormones that have lain dormant since puberty. If it makes it to market (as these zombie projects inevitably do), the shock of seeing it in the flesh will make you wonder whether you are really cut out for design. Take consolation in the fact that complete annihilation of an idea means potential resurrection.

The hit-rate of products making it all the way will be considerably lower than your expectations. Working in a consultancy, you might see 5% of your projects making it past the finish line. If you are lucky or working somewhere with comically low levels of risk, you might be seeing 50% of your work prevail. Just be ready for constant and repeated failure; but it’s from failure that victory takes flight.

Marketoonist Tom Fishburne nails it in his pithy cartoons.

3. You are not as good as you want to be.

Not in a bad way, it just means you have not yet fulfilled your potential.

As Ira Glass points out in these magnificent videos, the reason you got into design (or any creative profession) is because you have taste. You’ll float through school, get that first job and have this faint, nagging sensation that what you are working on is not all that good. This will continue for years, until that impeccable taste you have been nurturing is finally matched by your blossoming abilities. I began to feel confident after four or five years, and this perhaps matches Malcom Gladwell’s theories that it takes about 10,000 hours of work to really get good at something – but it’s no race, and some days it feels like I have regressed back to the start.

So be aware that you suck a little bit, use it as fuel to improve, but don’t let it get you down. In fact…

4. Be patient.

Getting your first full-time design job can be a total pain. I graduated, went traveling for a couple of months, came back and started looking for employment. Amid phases of freelancing, job searches, twiddling my thumbs and interviewing, I ate up about ten months until I started on my first day at grown-up work. But once you are in, you are in, and you will be surprised how quickly you develop networks and relationships to take you to the next level.

Waiting to get something you are proud of in your folio may also take an age. See #2. Some of the work you are doing will be helping to set a direction, which will then turn into real projects with lead-times about the same length as your entire professional career; cell phones and other electronic equipment typically take 9 months to a year to flow from ID model to the shopfront. Factor in aforementioned failures, and you could easily be waiting several years before you get your first product on sale.

So, slow down. Be realistic. And be thankful you don’t work in the pharmaceutical industry where development times can be measured in decades. Unless you are working in the pharmaceutical industry, that is.

Never stop pushing. Write, take photos, sketch, make models; pick your poison and hone your skills. At the same time, don’t be afraid to chase people, hunt for e-mail addresses and generally ignore signs to give up. Nothing worth fighting for ever came easily.

5. You will hate it.

Perhaps because you do something that you love, when things go wrong (and they will) you will hate it. Not just ‘I hate Tuesdays’, or ‘my boss is annoying’. No, this is unfocused rage, ignited by feelings of injustice at a project being canceled, or disconsolation when your software skills mean the 3D model breaks down at midnight before the presentation. You’ll probably become more philosophical with age, and pass the baton of frustration onto some other unsuspecting junior, but don’t completely lose the ability to hate things. It means you care, and this energy will be what spurs you on to greater heights of quality and delivery.

But sorry, if you want a nice, stable job without any troughs, get a job in a bank. Just don’t expect as many peaks either.

6. Making things that look easy is difficult.

It’s easy to look at the single-piece rubber base of a Macbook, the striking interface simplicity of a Flip, or the bold silhouette of Dr. Dre’s headphones and think ‘I could do that’. Masked behind this apparent simplicity are technical challenges, organisational ‘feature creep’ inertia and battles over risk and cost. 90% of good quality is design is in the execution, but sadly this will be out of your control unless you start doing more legwork. From the moment your idea hits paper, it will try its damnedest to become as ugly as possible by the time it first greets customers; you’ll discover that some obscure country requires its regulatory logo to be as large as a postage stamp, that in order to meet recycling criteria it will need to be assembled with large screws, and that the white plastic you wanted to use has been bought-up by Nintendo for the Christmas Wii rush. Facing these these problems, all you can do is draw on your creativity, manage the damage, and learn for the next time.

Like it or not, the ultimate quality of your product will be decided by factors potentially out of your control, often in another part of the world. Get good at speaking in the language of Engineers, suppliers and the people paid to execute your product. Even better, relish the opportunities to dive into technical problems.

7. Things change.

When I started university, Minidisc was the ‘in’ music format. When I graduated, we spent the last few weeks together frantically filling Zip drives (ask your Dad about them) with MP3s and staring at the rows of CDs we had all splurged our student loans on. The point is, things change quickly, and the world will be a different place when you graduate. Luckily for you, you are a designer and you will adapt, all while scaring yourself silly.

This also means that the things your lecturers are teaching you in first year become irrelevant by the time you leave. So, focus on learning how to learn, and don’t get too wrapped-up in software and the latest widgets – you can learn that from a book or on the job.

Zip disks once held unimaginable amounts of data, and using one at art school seemed awfully professional. Less so now. Photo from Flickr, by Runs with Scissors.

8. Your friends will earn more than you.

But you’re not in this for the money, right? Whatever, it will still irk you that while you are beavering away at trying to score a non-paying internship, your friends will be recruited by management consultancies, lured by the bright lights and Audi A4s of accounting, and generally earning a hell of a lot more than you. While this is not likely to change, what I hope you discover after a few years (see #4), is that you are developing a true career for something you love (see #5). And that is worth more than money.

9. The bum job is never the bum job.

It’s all too tempting to huff and puff at the jobs you deem dull and boring. You want to design the TVs, when all I get to design is the stupid power supply. Poor you!

But here’s the thing; do the so-called bum jobs and you will gain respect amongst your peers, carve new relationships for the role of design, and discover that it’s often these parts that turn up in multiple other areas of the company. Suddenly, the power supply that you originally made for a TV also pops up in other products, and you have planted the seed. So, get in the habit of jumping in with both feet, and people are very likely to take notice.

A friend of mine working at a big European electronics company once took on the challenge of redesigning all their remote controls. What started out in music equipment and televisions, eventually ended up with him building relationships in Medical Devices, and throughout the organisation. Enthusiasm is infectious. Photo by Crouching Badger.

10. There is no one career path.

Looking at the designers that comprise the Dell design team, you see a surprising span of disciplines and cultures. While there are those where the design job followed a path set by the design school, there are just as many with backgrounds in architecture, engineering and medical products; there is no one route. What we share, regardless of background, is a set of attitudes, aptitudes and experiences that enable us to deliver world-class products and experiences. As a designer emerging from school, it’s your job to build these blocks and learn how to combine them.

Good luck!

Jonathan Biddle is Lead Industrial Designer at Dell, based in Taipei, Taiwan.

2011/01/10
HK NYE 2011

A bit late in the writing, but who cares – this year was another HK mission to seek out the new year in style. Flying back from the UK, I popped my head round the door for about 18 hours, before heading back to Taiwan. Lots of fun!

We chose the rather amazing Magnolia as our scene for pre-NYE eating and drinking … BYOB. Cajun food. Great company, insane amounts of food.

Watching the chefs prepare the meal from our ring-side seats.

Insane amounts of meat.

Delicious … but it didn’t stop coming. This mac and cheese probably would have fed us all on its own.

Edgar doing his very best Budda impression.

Obligatory photos of HK neon.

At the Bloomberg studios to watch the fireworks from between the HSBC and China Bank buildings. The prime vantage point … or so we thought.

Pretty cool Bloomberg kit everywhere.

Screens all blank.

My camera lens chose an excellent time to fail … but frankly we couldn’t see anything, since we were actually INSIDE the fireworks display; it was all off the buildings essentially above us.

T-plus five minutes, four seconds … looks rather like the beamer from Tron, don’t you think?

… and if you want to watch the fireworks from Kowloon … we are in the building with the rainbows on it, on the right side!

2011/01/01
My Life Summed-Up in a Single Photo

London Pride beer with a bowl of Hong Kong noodles (with one of the chopsticks the wrong way round).

🙂

2010/12/31
Mountain Biking in the Snow

Yes, it’s that time of the year that you get the obligatory ‘going mountain biking then head to the pub’ post. But we know you love it, Michael!

Dad and I headed over to Thetford Forest, which is usually a quick blast and great for blowing out the cobwebs after eating and drinking too much during the festive period. However, this time, the melt water from the snow and ice settling nicely in the sand, and not an awful lot of human activity, meant the ground was muddy and waterlogged like I have never seen before. Two hours of hard slog for me … not sure how my Dad was feeling at the end of it!

This is how mountain bikes used to look.

Some people better prepared than us.

Naturally, Dad had a puncture in the middle of the most severe mud. Here he is trying to find the hole. Using CO2 in these conditions is always a risk, and again we ended up pulling the valve out of the tube as it froze. Great. At least we didn’t need to urinate on our own hand to release it (like one story I have heard!).

Truly waterlogged

Grinding paste.

Playing with another camera app; 360 Panorama

And an image taken with my ‘app du jour’, Instagram. Mud, mud as far as the eye can see!

2010/12/28
Winter in the Fens

The Fens, while almost utterly flat, carry a certain beauty that gets under your skin. It’s something in the expanses stretching to infinity that at once create calm and mild despair.

There is surely no better time to feel this than when the landscape is covered under a layer of snow, robbing it of any vestiges of life and colour. So naturally, we strapped boots, wrapped scarves and set off across the fields to the village of Toft, taking in Madingley on the way.

The Fens are … flat.

Tracks in the snow.

Christmas trees

The XX

Apexes

Tin buildings

Shivering in the cold

Snowy grove

Signs of civilisation

Some rather nice graffiti

Barbed wire delicately supports the snow.

And, almost at the pub!

2010/12/19
D’Hiver de Paris

“Moi?”

It’s quite likely that I have been to France in the region of thirty times. I have canoed the Ardeche, the Tarn, the Loire. I have frolicked on the beaches of Normandy, of Bordeaux, and of the Mediterranean. I have carved snow in Corchevel, Meribel, Tignes, Val D’Isere, amongst others. I have taken in vantage points from the Massif Central, the Alps and the Pyrennes. But while I have seen the Eiffel Tower many times drifting by on our extended family car journeys, I have never been to Paris.

My Dad decided that 2010 was the year to rectify this injustice, celebrating my Mother’s 60th birthday with the whole family, and giving our Baby Ben (‘BB’) his first trip abroad. The idea of arriving at Gard du Nord on Eurostar, likely mildly hammered on cheap Champagne, ticks all the right Eurocrat boxes, but when we discovered Easyjet was exactly half the price of the train we obviously opted to tolerate a ride with the shit-munchers and save the money for opulent feasts in the city’s eateries.

Mum was delighted! Especially as she actually turns 59 this year.

Notre Dame

Our unashamedly ‘touristique’ weekend started with the short walk from our hotel to the religious heart of the capital; Notre Dame. While disappointed there were no mad people swinging from belfries, it was amazing to see a place in the flesh that you knew so well. The movies clearly use wide-angle lenses, for while the towers were tall, they lacked any intimidating. doom-laden silhouette I was looking forward to seeing. But that could have been the icy wind talking; no-one was really motivated to stick around too long, and we made a bee-line for the Louvre.

“The bells, the bells!”

Subtle lighting inside was inspiring...

Sensitive treatment of the roof...

… and some bloody great big plasma screens.

Warming up on the way to the Louvre – Hot Chocolate went down a treat.

Mild bemusement.

Gazing outside

You can really see Dave’s chin!

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Braving the elements again!

The Louvre

Local lads flirting with giggling hoards of visiting Japanese girls, armed with overpriced souvenirs. It must be easy pickings.

Focus of the first day of visits was really The Louvre. The promise of warmth and dryness underfoot was balanced with a healthy interest in some of the vast collection of fine art. And ‘vast’ is the word; we picked Flemish and Dutch masters, and barely managed to scratch the surface of the subject, merely taking in some of the more well-known masters like Rembrandt,Van Icke, Vermeer and then a whole hall full of ‘Rubenses’. We left the French and Italian masters for the Japanese tourists, and did not have the will-power to attempt a run at the Mona Lisa. I already know what that one looks like anyway.

I must say, the scale and range of what was on offer was mesmerising, but I was left a little exhausted. I am far from being an expert in any of these subjects, and I appreciated it when you were able to see the artists’ sketches or process, or when they grouped different painters together to give a degree of context. I suppose, I would have just appreciated a little more curation, and less density in the way that the paintings were hung. I feel like you could spend a fortnight in there; in London you would simply visit a different gallery in a different part of the city to see the range on offer.

Deeply impressive, but a little intimidating. Although Benjamin didn’t seem to feel the same pressure!

Business class travel, down to the basement lobby area.

Arriving in style!

Snow gathering on the roof, we were happy to be inside!

Views through the mini-pyramids

Waving to a long-lost friend

Pensive

Brrr!

Tracks in the snow

Benjamin appreciates the Rubens hall.

Benjamin’s first snowball fight.

Run away!

The Eiffel Tower

No trip to Paris would be complete without a trip to the Eiffel Tower. A sunny, icy, clear day held promise for being able to see the edges of the city, and we duly queued-up for the elevator to the first level. Sadly, it slowly dawned on us that they were not going beyond the first level, and this was confirmed when we were told ‘ice on the tracks’ made the ascent too dangerous. Never mind, it was still a pleasure to see the fabulous structure, and get a feeling for the layout of the city from up-high. We were even treated to a very memorable display of public art in the grounds of the tower.

The fantastic subway.

The approach.

Greeting other visitors

The space created under the arches is truly breathtaking.

Over-engineered?

Intricate details.

A very public art show!

On our way to the restaurant for lunch, the ice really made negotiating some of the walkways difficult!

A very memorable lunch, taking in scenes of Christmas through the glass of the bar.

Other Stuff

If you ask me, it’s the ‘other stuff’ that makes Paris so pleasant; the moseying along the streets, the hanging out in the cafe, the buying the bread. Paris is almost uniform in its prettiness, as opposed to the highs and lows of London; 60s high-rise sat alongside Greek revivalist edifice, opposite the ultra-modern statement. It almost reminded me of Japan, with its shops, eateries and gorgeous little details popping out now and again. It’s certainly a place I should return to.

Sartorialistes Parisiennes!.

Art Nouveau (very reminiscent of Charles Rennie Mackintosh) up on Montmartre. Especially love the spider’s web!

More Art Nouveau on the Metro.

Art ‘Even More Nouveau’ on the streets … Invader‘s art (as featured in the Banksy movie ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop‘)

And one more.

Views out across the city from Montmartre.

Looking out towards the Pompidou Centre (definitely need to tick that one off the next time I go).

Touring the streets.

Some buildings I once saw in the Tour de France.

Even the road-markings are interesting.

Baby Ben

But the star of the show, naturally, was Baby Ben. He held up very well in the cold weather, and did very well facing delays at the airport in both directions. I shall miss you, wee man!

Gazing in wonder

Looking very pleased with himself.

Wait for it …

Peepo!

2010/12/11
In the Bleak Mid-Winter

I am lucky enough to be in Europe for the whole month of December, joyfully mixing two weeks of work, with two weeks of time with family and friends.

The weather is cold. So cold, in fact, that it has delivered several dumps of snow and layered a delightful crust of frost over the fields on the way to the airport. To Paris!

2010/12/08
HiRecruit 2010

The Taiwanese government’s HiRecruit campaign aims to attract professional talent to the island. This year, they asked me to talk about what brought me here, and why other people should do the same thing. Check out the video below:

Obviously what I really cared about was that I looked good on the bike … 🙂

2010/11/30