Douglas Weber is an American industrial designer based in Fukuoka, Japan. He formerly worked for Apple in Cupertino and is a fellow coffee nerd. He is currently working on what he deems the perfect coffee grinder at his new company Lyn Weber, which he founded with VFX designer Craig Lyn. We recently talked about the new wave of coffee and cafes and how and why design is becoming such an integral part of coffee culture.
Posted byOm Malik
Introduction
Blue Bottle Coffee helped catalyze the third wave of coffee, which has led to a tremendous amount of creative energy being focused on not only the coffee but also the implements and instruments that help turn an ordinary coffee bean into a cup of joy.
My fondness for coffee prompted Pi.co alumnus , Liam Casey, to introduce me to Doug Weber, a former Apple designer who's living in Japan and is working on what is, without a doubt, one of the world's most perfect coffee grinders. I saw the machine and never before has an inanimate machine said so much. Doug and I caught up on the phone, and ended up talking about everything from coffee to Apple to life in Japan.
This is an edited version of our long conversation.
Bradley Price is a Brooklyn-based industrial designer and the founder and owner of Autodromo, a company that makes watches, sunglasses, and driving gloves that express the spirit of motoring. He loves vintage car racing and puts his 1980s Alfa Romeo through much agony.
Posted byOm Malik
Introduction
From the moment I saw Autodromo's Stradale watch, I knew I had to own it. I had never fallen in love with a thing so badly. A quick email to my friend Ben Clymer, the editor and founder of watch-enthusiast site Hodinkee, and I was soon exchanging emails with Price. As luck would have it, I was flying to New York, and we decided to meet up.
Price invited me to his office, and soon we were deep in conversation about watches, startups, greed, the Apple Watch, Marc Newson, Italian vintage cars, industrial design, and Apple's design philosophy and why others fail to get it. Eventually the conversation zeroed in on the notion of time in the networked age. The Apple Watch makes us challenge our notion of time — if not in its first iteration, then in a few years.
And if you're challenged for time in a more traditional sense of the word, check out this short video of Price discussing some of his design philosophies.
Cole Rise is a San Francisco–based photographer and entrepreneur. He recently launched Lite.ly, an iPhone app that commercializes his Lightroom presets and Instagram filters. He has worked for both Yahoo and Apple, and he was a design consultant for Instagram. He was the founder of Subatomic Systems, Particle Progammatica, and Flagr. You may have seen his work in a few magazines, art blogs, CD covers, and the like, or perhaps used one of his filters on Instagram. You can follow him on Instagram and on his blog.
Posted byOm Malik
Introduction
Visual storytelling was not part of my vernacular until the launch of Instagram. It was the start of my enduring love affair with digital photography, and I have since become immersed in visual computing. But only recently have I started to grasp the long-term implications of this brave new world in which we are surrounded by cameras — big and small, embedded, personal and political.
My exploration of the visual realm and somewhat unhealthy obsession with Instagram has led me to form many friendships, learn a lot about my own limitations, and, most importantly, discover many new worlds. One such world is carefully captured, curated, and re-created by Cole Rise, a San Francisco–based photographer with a substantial following on Instagram. His photos speak a language that has always resonated with me. He recently released an iPhone app called Lite.ly that commercializes some of Cole's Lightroom presets and Instagram filters.
Intrigued by his work, I reached out to see if we could have a conversation about the growing presence of visual sensors and how that shift might impede our ability to create memories. We delved into the concept of a "silicon traveler." Our conversation ended up being a reflection on technology, in particular mobile phones and how they are changing our sense of self, as individuals and social animals. Of course, Rise also shared some of his photography tips and talked about his favorite photo.
