Interview with Paolo Tiramani

The parent company 500 Group which I founded is an intellectual property, engineering and design company, we don't charge fees for design it's a License for royalties.
In 2008 we sold some I.P and this gave us greater freedom to become 'operators' as well as Licensors. After a period of discovery we decided to pursue habitat and automotive ventures because we felt we could add value and create a new product categories for the customer.

This requires a book! if industrial means commercial and design means art then industrial design means 'commercial art'. That is to say we have a master and that master is the public and is to be respected.
I love pure art but that is not my passion because it is too unconstrained for me.
For me the challenge of a successful design solution is one that has the most number of constraints yet is still successful, now that is art for me.
From another direction I would say great design is what is left when everything that doesn't work has been thrown out, this is called a commodity.

Anything that can be rationalized, serve its purpose better, make more people satisfied and made to be beautiful, it doesn't matter what it is.

There are so many probably I would have to say my iPhone because it shouldn't exist yet.

My first commercial products were cocktail glasses where the stem was a straw that wound back up for the user, we subcontracted to a laboratory and sold millions eventually making then in plastic, it was fun, called 'screwball' and 'la bomba' of the three glassed interestingly they were the 3 basic shapes triangle, square (in our case a rectangle) and a sphere.

Carbon nano tubes, robotics, A.I. and the blending between machine and organic that we are at the beginning of. I don't understand some of it that well but it is the future for all of us.

All the time unless I'm watching a movie, but especially in the shower, in the gym or on my motorcycle.

The big picture and making sure we're asking the right questions before cutting up the design pie so each issue can be addressed in great depth.

Excitement and a need to hurry when its going well. steadfastness when its not going well and realizing that if the group thinks long enough a solution will emerge, its inevitable.

Elation mixed with mild panic.

Its completeness in all disciplines.

What question does the design need to answer.

I think all disciplines have their encampments and territories. Design like any other discipline can become partisan and territorial. Its designs job to be the adult in the room to tie all the disciplines together.

We're living through an incredible renaissance, where more people have more access to do more incredible things than ever in our history and this includes design.
Specifically I see design disciplines, which were more compartmentalized before, are bleeding into each others spaces more and more. Its a fantastic thing; where architecture meets biotech and biotech meets mechanics and so on.

We don't have exhibitions.

I have a theory that creative minds have lower mental 'fences' to keep out extraneous input, especially visual input. Its kept at a low volume so an individual can prioritize the task at hand. Creatives have more of a problem with that, their mental fences are lower so they get flooded with input and make more correlations that lead to creation. So the answer to this questions is what DOESN'T feed the creative mind?

After the right questions have been asked and the task has been organised it about 4 things:
1 Eking out the absolute most value from each slice of that design whether its cost or logistics etc.
2 Being able to justify every keystroke, if you don't know why you did it, why did you do it?
3 I'll confess to a fetish; I am an absolute symmetricist to the point that even asymmetry has symmetry.. if that makes sense.
4 Precision.

I am Italian originally, went to school in London and am now a constitutional American. I was fortunate to travel all over and it think its very important for designers to get up and go and not be parochial. I was fortunate.

500 Group uses a licensing model, the concept is simple, we prove a design to industry at no expense to them if they like it they pay a royalty. It's fairly high risk but it's served us well.
In our new ventures we are operators so the relationships span individuals to governments and are more multi-layered and complex.

Kiss a lot of frogs. A resume only goes do far, companies need to 'date' services for a while including design before getting hitched, a trial period that sort of thing.
And as with any other product or service common sense applies.

Ask the right questions.
Scope out the project and divide it up.
Think about each slice as hard as you possibly can.
Make it beautiful.

1 Supercar System
2 The checker flooring in my garage.
3 The plastic Grafton saxophone with acrylic clear birds wing cover, played by Charlie Parker (not my one).
4 A pair of unbranded cowboy boots.
5 My turbo charged GSXR1000.

My schedule like a lot of people breaks down into periods; periods of travel, work, great activity, occasional sloth and exercise.

Go west, there is so much activity on the west coast. that not to say there isn't opportunity everywhere, there is, but the activity on the west coast of the USA is epidemic. As Willie Sutton replied when asked why he robs banks "that's where the money is" I'm not talking about money I'm talking about the opportunity that is generated by cross breeding of ideas that is happening there, although money doesn't hurt either.

Creation is the positive, its thrilling.
I really cannot think of a meaningful negative, except perhaps being critical a great deal of the time.

Think as hard as you can about every single issue, before you leave it, did you really really think about it as hard as you can?

Vision, invention, an eye for order and line and communication, sounds a little trite but its true.

It always starts with a pen and anything laying around but after doing it for so long the early stages you work through in your head.
Quickly it moves to Solidworks and a legal pad, the legal pad is necessary to put down any random thought in order to stay on task.

Like most of us I manage my time badly.

It depends what it is, the auto system has taken a fair size team 4 years and were just entering the pre-launch stage now.

"I have this great invention can I talk to you about it"
about once a month

Occasional failure.

Currently we are involved in only 3 ventures
American Dream Company, Supercar System and our ongoing licensing activites.

Its mostly enjoyable, ideation at the beginning and the fruition at the end.

We do 3 things and we'd like to see them all successful, they will then yield their own additional opportunities organically.

Designs typically need a single hand at gestation, once the design is a 'toddler' the work load can be divided up among various disciplines and additional invention and creativity added.

none that I would talk about in this context.

info@500group.com

I think that covers it.