By 1989, Lunar boasted a prestigious roster of clients and was flying high. The clients included Apple, which had Brunner working on several special projects, including an attempt to design a successor to Steve Jobs’s original Macintosh, now dated after four years on the market without major changes. (The project, code-named Jaguar, eventually morphed into the PowerPC platform).
When Jony came to visit Brunner, he showed him the tubular phone concept he’d built for his final-year project at Newcastle.
The model wasn’t just a mock-up of the phone’s shape, like most student projects. It also included all the internal components, and Jony had even worked out how it would be manufactured. “I was really impressed by it,” Brunner said. “The design was definitely pushing things a bit in terms of being a usable device,” said Brunner. “But what really blew me away was when he disassembled the models . . . [with] all the components inside. I’d never seen a student take a beautiful piece of work and then have it fully figured out. That was pretty incredible.” Jony had even worked out the thickness of the parts and how they would be manufactured in an injection molder.
Brunner said that not only were Jony’s designs the best he’d seen from a student but that they also rivaled some of the best design work being produced in Silicon Valley at the time. “It was amazing for someone just out of school, so young and who had not had a job yet, to [show] not just the natural ability but the interest in how things worked,” said Brunner. “Most students coming out of school are primarily interested in form and image and there’s a few that are interested in how things work, but very few that come up with something provocative and amazing—and figure out how to make it work.
“As an industrial designer, you have to take that great idea and get it out into the world, and get it out intact. You’re not really practicing your craft if you are just developing a beautiful form and leaving it at that.”4
Brunner was so impressed that he talked to Jony about the possibility of working at Lunar. It wasn’t a formal job offer, Brunner said, but more along the lines of We think you’re great, why don’t you come and work with us? In any case, Jony said no thanks, that he had promised to return to London to work for RWG, which had supported him through college. It wasn’t the only such conversation Jony had on his California trip, as several other companies tried to lure the promising new graduate.
In the years to come, Brunner would prove an important connection for Jony. A few months after Jony’s visit, Brunner was recruited by Apple. There he set up the company’s first internal design studio, setting the stage for the work that catapulted Apple to the top of the design world. With this, Brunner tried a second time to recruit Jony.
On his return to the United Kingdom, Jony submitted a travel report to the RSA.5In it, Jony noted that visiting San Francisco had been the highlight of the trip: “I immediately fell in love with San Francisco and desperately hope that I can return there sometime in the future,” he wrote.
Roberts Weaver Group
True to his promise to return to the Roberts Weaver Group, Jony, along with wife Heather, moved from Newcastle to London. His decision to join Roberts Weaver came as something of a surprise to his new boss, Phil Gray, who knew of his other job offers. “He was already being recognized as a very talented ‘Young Designer,’” said Gray. “As an honorable person, he accepted our offer—even though he had plenty of other offers at the time.”
Joining RWG was more than a consolation prize; Roberts Weaver was one of the top design firms in Britain. Jony joined a talented team and quickly made friends, establishing some relationships that survive today. His friend Grinyer had moved on at that point, quitting to join another design firm near Cambridge, but RWG won several design awards in the late eighties.
Like a lot of consultancies of its kind, the company worked on a wide portfolio of projects, from consumer goods to high-tech products, working for international clients in the United States, Europe, Japan and South Korea. Major clients included Applied Materials, Zebra and Qualcast, a lawn mower manufacturer. The management and production structure at RWG, typical of firms at the time, comprised three different groups working together: product design, interior design and a workshop. Jony was assigned to the product team.
His coworkers comprised twenty designers, engineers and graphic designers working in an open studio. Jony and his colleagues had quick access to a workshop, which was directly below. It was a fully equipped model-making facility, with five on-staff model makers. The interior design team had twenty-three designers, architects and computer specialists.6
RWG took on two basic types of product design projects, according to partner Barrie Weaver. One was a full design and development process, typically for clients in the United Kingdom. Such projects involved developing the product concept, producing finished working models, undertaking much of the engineering development and overseeing tooling—in short, taking the project through to production. The second kind of project was more limited, focusing on the generation of new ideas or products, usually for foreign clients, most of them in Japan and Korea. In most such cases, the client company had its own in-house design team but was looking for fresh concepts or a different approach from the outside.
“It is important to understand that our projects were done on very tight time frames and fees,” Weaver said of this time at RWG. “If we did not undertake the project efficiently then the business would lose money. This therefore makes decision making prompt and restricts time to be spent on analysis, research, ethnography, societal opportunities, etc.”
In his new workplace, Jony was as productive as he had been at Newcastle. “Some designers believe the more research you do, the better the solution,” said Weaver. “I personally believe in common sense and intuition. Jonathan’s strength was that he quickly grasped the essentials of a challenge, producing intuitive solutions, which were elegant, viable and had a sense of detail rare in one so young.”
He gained the confidence of his coworkers as an enthusiastic, hardworking team player. “He was a quiet character, with a lovely sense of humor,” Gray recalled. “He was not by any means a loud person in the studio. He was very productive and got on with his tasks. He worked incredibly hard and was very diligent. His productivity was amazing, with consummate quality. He really was prolific. He often would produce half a dozen great ideas in a very short space of time and was not only able to talk about them but could articulate them through some very good draftsmanship.”7
While Jony’s style seemed to suit RWG, the nature of doing business as a consultancy didn’t. As an outside firm, RWG often had to make concessions to its clients, something that would soon begin to drive Jony crazy. “It is important to understand that there are other aspects which come into play when you are a consultant,” Weaver explained. “The client has the final say—they are paying!”
On the other hand, Weaver clearly understood his designer’s frustration. “Sadly, clients’ marketing teams often have what I would call dubious taste and force changes upon the design. In consequence you end up with some projects of which you are proud and others which are a compromise.”
As part of the design pool, Jony collaborated with the other designers. He worked on outdoor garden lighting and lawn mowers for the UK manufacturer Qualcast. He created several conceptual designs for industrial power drills for another British company, Kango.
His confidence grew rapidly and, after just a few weeks at RWG, he asked Gray for a substantial raise: He was talented and felt he deserved it. But he was also young, just out of school, and Gray had to coach the young upstart on the reality of raises.
“I had to balance the interests of the business,” said Gray. “I had to have a very difficult discussion. I had to explain he was on a journey, on a career path. There were others around. Everyone had various strengths and weaknesses. We had to balance the books in terms of making sure everyone got a fair opportunity. That fell upon me to do that. It wasn’t a pleasant experience because one doesn’t like to disappoint people. But we had a rational discussion. He went away. I think he felt he didn’t get the best end of the deal. On the other hand, he didn’t sulk. He just carried on.”
His talents, however, presented other challenges to his managers at RWG. In 1989, Jony’s classroom hearing aid project had been featured in the high-profile Young Designers Exhibition, run by the UK Design Council. The futuristic work came to the attention of an executive at Ideal Standard, a giant in bathroom and toilet fixtures in the United Kingdom. The sales director at Ideal Standard was so impressed with Jony’s work that he approached Roberts Weaver and asked that Jony be assigned to work on a particular design project for the company. Roberts Weaver felt obliged to decline the request.8
“We had a studio of twelve designers and there was no way we could send a fresh graduate such as Jony to go and work with one of our clients,” said Gray. “So we responded to Ideal Standard that they could give us a design brief, which we would fulfill, but it was our decision as to which of our designers we would assign to do the work. When he heard this, he walked away! He specifically wanted Jony to do the project.”
In time, the Ideal Standard executive would reemerge on Jony’s horizon. But in 1989, the savings and loan banking crisis took a toll on RWG’s business. The company’s interior design group had been getting numerous commissions to design dealing rooms for banks in the United Kingdom, Spain and Australia. But as the financial crisis spread around the world, the banks canceled. “With the financial crisis, banks terminated projects leaving our designers without work,” recalled Weaver. “At the same time, the lack of credit meant UK manufacturers pulled back on their new product development programs.”9
RWG had to close down the interior design operation in London. Weaver’s business partner, Jos Roberts, left, moving to Australia, and the product design team was restructured. As part of the restructuring, Weaver drew up new contracts for all the designers.
None of the designers would sign the new contract—except Jony. And he only signed it because the new contract invalidated his old contract, which had married him to RWG because they had sponsored him through college. As a result of the freshly opened legal loophole, his obligation ended. He quit RWG, the first phase of his professional life at an end.
Tangerine Dreams
Jony went to see his friend Clive Grinyer. Together with another London designer, Martin Darbyshire, Grinyer had cofounded Tangerine Design a year earlier.
The partners were old friends. Grinyer and Darbyshire had met as students at Central Saint Martins in London, and subsequently worked together at the London studio of Bill Moggridge Associates. Grinyer had left to join RWG, where he met Jony, then took a job at Science Park in Cambridge, the UK’s version of Silicon Valley. While working in Science Park, Grinyer was approached by the Commtel phone company to design some new phones. Commtel wanted him as a salaried employee, but Grinyer persuaded them to let him take the job as a freelancer. With the £20,000 from Commtel, he set up shop with Darbyshire.
“When I had the opportunity to start up a design consultancy, I asked Martin to go for a curry”—that is, they went out to an Indian restaurant—“and he immediately decided that he wanted to join me. We seem to be glued together through life!”10They set up shop in a front bedroom of Darbyshire’s middle-class home in Finsbury Park, in north London. Grinyer bought office supplies, including a Macintosh and a laser printer, with the money from Commtel.11
Initially they called themselves Landmark, after the Landmark Trust rental houses Darbyshire liked to stay in during his family vacations. They thought the name sounded properly grand, but they were promptly and aggressively sued by a Dutch company already using the name. “We tried to get them to give us a load of money to rebrand, which they didn’t do,” said Grinyer ruefully. After both sides walked away, the lawsuit died and the partners brainstormed a new name. After agreeing on the name Orange they found it, too, was already claimed, in this case by a group of designers in Denmark.
It was Christmastime, and someone saw tangerines lying around. The name was abstract enough to mean lots of things, which the designers wanted. It also reminded them of Tangerine Dream, an early experimental electronic group that Grinyer liked.
“Looking back, it was the best thing that could have happened because Tangerine is a much better name,” said Darbyshire. “It was easy to remember, was understandable in major European languages, and the color was a positive symbol in Asia, a key target market.”12
In the eighties, design partnerships like Tangerine were uncommon; freelance designers tended to set up shop alone. “In the late eighties, design graduates would have gone into what is known as an ‘industry of one,’” explained Professor Alex Milton. “It was an industry of designer–makers, or design art.” But Grinyer harbored larger ambitions.
“A partnership felt more like a real business,” said Grinyer. “And Martin and I were always interestingly dissimilar—and complementary.”
Based in Darbyshire’s house, Grinyer continued to work the contacts he had made working in Cambridge. They designed television accessories and hi-fi components and, thanks to some earlier work, were invited to Detroit to give a talk about in-car entertainment.
“I was also writing articles for design magazines,” said Grinyer. “Our reputation was building.”
Grinyer and Darbyshire made ballsy decisions about promoting themselves. They cleverly made themselves look bigger than they were: As well as writing for design magazines, they took out ads in the same magazines touting their work. The ads got attention, conveying a sense that Tangerine was winning big contracts.
Grinyer and Darbyshire also started teaching at Saint Martins one or two days per week, which helped spread the name of their fledgling company (they taught several designers who went on to become famous, including Sam Hecht and Oliver King). They produced promotional brochures, too, in which they described their work as “products for people.”13
They described Tangerine’s focus as being on end users, who tended to be ignored by other design firms. “No one was speaking about end users,” said Darbyshire. “It was all about ‘how to deliver things reliably,’ not about ‘what should it or could it be?’ This was the fundamental thing behind Tangerine that I believe we all bought into and worked hard to develop.”
The combined marketing strategies worked. “My aim was for us to be among the three most naturally sought-after consultancies to provide advice on product design, along with IDEO and Seymourpowell,” said Grinyer. By 1990, they had enough steady work to move out of Darbyshire’s front bedroom to a real office in Hoxton, in the East End of London, in a converted warehouse. It was just half of one floor, rented to them by a female architect they knew; the timing was right. “My wife was also about to give birth to our first son, so we needed our big bedroom back,” said Darbyshire.
