They say time flies when you’re having fun. That’s exactly how I feel about the last 25 years since founding Whipsaw in 1999. It has been an absolute blast. Starting and running a company has its highs and lows and there are times you want to scream but at the end of the day it’s the most rewarding thing you can do. A silver anniversary seems like a good opportunity to reflect on our accomplishments and to also thank the many employees, partners and clients who have contributed so much to our success. Whipsaw is not just an ordinary company to me or anyone who has ever worked with us. It’s a community, a journey, a way of thinking, a culture, and an inspiration. It’s a wonderful story that keeps unfolding and its future is brighter than ever.
Back in design school I dreamed about having my own design firm. That ambition ignited when I worked as a co-op student at Richardson Smith and George Nelson Associates. It was in these two firms that I witnessed teams of hyper-creative people working together. They brainstormed, sketched beautifully, made models, and fussed over every detail. They laughed, played rock and roll, and had great parties. They magically transformed crazy cool ideas into real products, and that blew my mind. I was instinctively drawn to this constructive creative pursuit. I felt it in my bones. Design was suddenly my newfound life purpose. That was my first epiphany, and I tremored with excitement about it.
My interest in design, and particularly design consulting, grew exponentially when I went on to work at Henry Dreyfuss Associates and Frogdesign. HDA taught me critical foundational skills including the hugely important business side of design. Where Dreyfuss was like a sweet ride in a Cadillac, Frogdesign was like jumping into a Lamborghini Countach. “Form follows emotion” ruled the day at Frog. There I was able to really spread my wings as a designer and a leader.
During those influential work experiences, I saw the power and freedom of being a consulting agency instead of working inside a corporation. Back then consultants were top of the design food chain. They were the renegade nonconformists underneath a polished professional exterior and I liked that contrast. Expectations of excellence were high, and since you were the outsider being paid for your ideas, you typically got the attention of the client’s head honchos. I also loved the hustle nature of consulting, and still do.
All of those amazing experiences had prepared me to start my own company. After working with demanding people like Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison and Hartmut Esslinger, nothing scared me. I remember the day twenty-five years ago when I realized it was time. I called Hitesh Sheth, a Director at Cisco who we were courting for a project at the time to tell him I was leaving Frog, and he said “well, we want you for the project, not Frog”. I was thrilled, and Cisco Systems became Whipsaw’s first client. I soon teamed up with Bob Riccomini who had been an engineer at Apple to run the engineering side of the firm. Even though we were a small company of only a handful of people, we moved into a huge studio in San Jose, CA that was originally an old horse stable. Where every other design firm was in San Francisco, we were the contrarians down in San Jose. Times changed, and the Silicon Valley edged northward, so we are now in a gorgeous studio in the Potrero Hill district of San Francisco.
We wanted an edgy business name, like the work we aspired to do. After working as a consultant for 16 years by that time, I saw that success wasn’t only about doing great design. The people factor was also critical. To succeed you need to have crystal clear communication, inspiring leadership, good organization, selling ability and many other soft skills on top of being a great designer. I wanted a company name that captured this spirit of collaboration and balance. Hence the name Whipsaw. A whipsaw is a two-person reciprocal saw. It was a strange metaphorical name, but it stuck. It’s been mispronounced Whipshaw, Whiplash and Whispaw, but the one I like is “Whipass” because it fits our relentless creative drive. We make popular T-shirts with that one on it.
Soon came a surge of new customers including Acer, Creative Labs, Eton, Gateway, Intel, Leapfrog, Pioneer, Rio Audio and Roku. We were well on our way. We worked tireless long hours. We laughed, played rock and roll, and had good parties like the firms that originally inspired me. We established a strong philosophical and cultural base in those early years, which has endured for 25 years. We instituted a set of design maxims that prioritized the end user and encouraged design bravery. We had getaways at distant resorts, massage Fridays, chili cookoffs and burrito eating contests. We had “design hootenannies” in jam rooms, not war rooms. All these traditions and values remain today. Keeping your company culture alive and well over a long span of time is one of the hardest things to do, and one of the things I’m most proud of at Whipsaw.
After our first five years of mostly designing electronics and computing products we pushed and nudged our way into other fields including medical equipment, wearables, housewares, sports, scientific goods, robotics, kid products and other vertical industries. To us it was important to diversify the work. It makes you a more well-rounded designer, plus it’s fun to work on all kinds of different challenges for all kinds of companies. You can also weather economic downturns better because as one sector falls, another rises. Diversity helped us get through the pandemic unscathed. More recently we’ve leaned more into wellness, fitness, furniture, lifestyle, and brand development.
What’s changed over the last 25 years since founding the company? The design industry has become more complex. We’ve gone from only designing objects to also designing experiences and businesses. Design now considers not only form and function, but the entire user experience from optimizing the initial brand exposure all the way to product disposal. Design is a business action; a verb as much as it is a noun. Design is now intertwined with other corporate functions from the get-go, unlike in the past when it was a late add-on. Technology is so ubiquitous now that digital design is included in almost everything we do. Tech has also changed the way we work, especially 3d printing, AI, and software collaboration tools. What hasn’t changed is the creative process with all its inherent mysteries, surprises and wild twists and turns. We don’t want that to change. We like creative chaos. Making sense of it is an artform.
Design projects are loaded with story making opportunities, and boy do have a lot of them after 25 years of practice. Design projects are usually like intense expeditions, loaded with thrilling moments of discovery and revelation, but also dispute and struggle. What makes these projects so memorable and meaningful are always three things. The difficulties overcome; the personalities; and the conceptual breakthroughs. That’s the good stuff.
Perhaps the thing I’m most proud of is the positive impact that Whipsaw has had on our world. Most of the things we design and engineer go to market, and many become hits. Consumers rarely know us as the creators behind the products they use, but that’s okay. We’re happy when we see our creations out there improving lives by working well and delighting users. We’ve had over 1,000 of the products we designed go to market, which I find staggering. Like time, one doesn’t sense gradual accumulation. Perhaps a “day in the life” journey of a consumer that encounters Whipsaw-designed products is the best way to illustrate our impact (see forthcoming article).
To consistently deliver good design takes a team of dedicated and talented folks, and to them we are most grateful. To the over 200 people that have worked at Whipsaw, or as partners in some close capacity, we say Thank You. You are an integral and indispensable part of this company’s story. It also takes inspired clients who want to innovate as partners with us on the hope of succeeding wildly. To the over 400 clients that have worked with Whipsaw, we say Thank You. You are also an integral and indispensable part of our story.
It’s gratifying to look back at what we’ve done with 25 years, but it’s the future that will show us what we’ve learned, and that excites us most. We have even bigger dreams to fulfill, and the perfect team to do it. Walker Harden, Director UX; Cole Derby, Director ID; Mike Elam, Director Engineering; and Anne Van Itallie, Director BD are all leading the charge along with a vibrant team of designers, engineers and strategists.
We will of course continue to focus on industrial design, UX/UI and engineering, but also expand our research and strategy offerings. We are most interested in the nexus of all these fields, where physical and digital elements are so well integrated that the total brand and product experience becomes transcendent. Given that businesses need more insightful vision nowadays to differentiate and stimulate much needed change, we’ll emphasize more front-end work that we call “sunrise innovation”. We’ll also make a few of our own branded products, and the first ones are coming soon. Considering the bleak state of the planet, we are delving deeper into sustainability, an urgent issue that we think every design firm should master. Whipsaw Design Labs, an in-house playground for pure design exploration, is also a future focus.
In short, we are poised to continue our commitment of creating artifacts and experiences that are beacons of excellence. As a former Whipsaw employee once wrote me, “A snappy hip cat has a wish, to see his whipsaw go swish-swish” …and swish-swish is exactly what we plan to keep doing.
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