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22: There Is No Finish Line with Mads Svanegaard
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Mads Svanegaard is a veteran in the design and engineering world with over 15 years of experience. Based in Ringe, Denmark, just a few hours outside of Copenhagen; Mads has experience working in telecommunications, homewares, and medical design.
We sat down to talk with Mads about the importance of networking, the path to running your own design business, the contrast between the fields of design & engineering, the process and many considerations behind making hearing aids. Plus, whether the Scandinavian approach to design is a dream or reality.
Hosted by Fraser Greenfield with guest, Mads Svanegaard
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Designersvane
Mads Hindhede Svanegaard (@designersvane) | Instagram
Heylo By Coloplast A/S
Custom made by ReSound
https://www.linkedin.com/in/msvanegaard/
After All, There Is No Finish Line: 50 Years of Nike | Culted
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Redacted-Mads-Svanegaard-Draft Edit-1 (Transcript)
[00:00:00] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: Please hold whilst we connect you redacted.
[00:00:21] Fraser Greenfield: This is Fraser
[00:00:21] Fraser Greenfield: Greenfield.
[00:00:23] Mads Svanegaard: This is Mads Svanegaard and you're listening to. Day, date,
[00:00:28] Mads Svanegaard: date,
[00:00:29] Fraser Greenfield: mass Vanguard is a veteran in the design and engineering world with over 15 years of experience based in ing. Denmark. Just a few hours outside of Copenhagen, mass has experience working in telecommunications, homewares, and medical design.
[00:00:44] Fraser Greenfield: You might have seen his work with brands like Jabra and ColorBlast, or helping people with medical devices such as hearing aids and catheters. Welcome to the show, mass, and thanks for being here.
[00:00:55] Mads Svanegaard: Thanks for having
[00:00:55] Mads Svanegaard: me. It's a pleasure.
[00:00:57] Fraser Greenfield: Always a good sign to have someone from Denmark on the show. [00:01:00]
[00:01:00] Mads Svanegaard: We're dated.
[00:01:01] Mads Svanegaard: We're dated. We're dated. We're dated. We're dated. We're dated. We're dated. We're dated.
[00:01:07] Fraser Greenfield: How would you describe yourself to someone who's not familiar with Mass?
[00:01:10] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: Vanguard? I'm an industrial designer and a
[00:01:13] Mads Svanegaard: 3D visualizer with more than 12 years of experience. I have a background in design engineering, and I have extensive knowledge designing medical
[00:01:21] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: devices, including hearing aids and incontinence devices.
[00:01:25] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: I live in
[00:01:25] Mads Svanegaard: Denmark with my wife and my two kids, and I just went independent with my own consultancy firm, Swan,
[00:01:32] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: about a year and a half ago. Very cool.
[00:01:34] Fraser Greenfield: Probably shouldn't give this away, but my old man has actually used one of your hearing aids. Oh, cool. He said the design was great. Fitted great. Terrible battery life.
[00:01:43] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: Oh yeah. Well it is
[00:01:44] Mads Svanegaard: a pain in the ass. The battery life, was that a rechargeable or was it one with actual
[00:01:49] Fraser Greenfield: physical disposables? He's upgraded to a rechargeable sense. For those of you listening in, turns out flying a fighter plane for decades ruins your hearing, and that's what they don't show you in Top Gun.[00:02:00]
[00:02:00] Fraser Greenfield: So true. Could you tell us a bit about your background and how you got started? Industrial
[00:02:04] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: design. I always had a good
[00:02:06] Mads Svanegaard: imagination, basically, and that was super great when I was a kid and I
[00:02:09] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: played around with Legos a lot, making cities or cars or whatever thing you wanted
[00:02:14] Mads Svanegaard: to make. And then I also loved drawing flying cars or hovering cities like futurist.
[00:02:21] Mads Svanegaard: I've always been very interested in the future and that drawing thing just stuck with me through the teenage years. I just kept drawing stuff. I wasn't very good at it, but I
[00:02:30] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: really liked it. In Denmark, we do 10 years of regular school and then three years of donation, which is about 15 to 18 years, more or less of age.
[00:02:41] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: And during that time you have to figure out what you wanna
[00:02:42] Mads Svanegaard: study afterwards. And I sort of hooked onto architecture or biology. I didn't know about industrial design at that time, but my girlfriend's mom actually sent me
[00:02:53] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: an article about a new education called Design Engineering, and it was about more like how do you design
[00:02:59] Mads Svanegaard: a product [00:03:00] from idea to finish more holistically looking at the whole process.
[00:03:03] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: And that just like clicked something inside of me and I knew I had
[00:03:06] Mads Svanegaard: to do that. And then while I was studying to become a design engineer, I was introduced to the design tools as an industrial designer, what they use like sketching
[00:03:15] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: and modeling and all design thinking aspects of concepting
[00:03:19] Mads Svanegaard: and ideation.
[00:03:20] Mads Svanegaard: I was drawn to that, those phases of the development process. When I graduated, I went working for a hearing aid company for a couple of years as a development engineer, and I was focusing a lot on the
[00:03:32] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: later stages, like detailing, construction of the different parts, and I just realized
[00:03:38] Mads Svanegaard: I really enjoyed the earlier stages.
[00:03:40] Mads Svanegaard: So I decided to apply to the Danish Design School in Copenhagen, and I got in and I took my masters there. That's where I started. Basically,
[00:03:48] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: my interest and everything from there on. Would
[00:03:51] Fraser Greenfield: you say that you're more of a mechanical engineer to start out with and then you've blossomed into a designer? I've
[00:03:56] Mads Svanegaard: heard the term used around
[00:03:58] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: my mechanical engineering [00:04:00] friends that I went to the dark side, but I have other friends who says, ah, he saw the light.
[00:04:05] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: So, you know, depends on perspectives. Obviously, as someone who
[00:04:09] Fraser Greenfield: has to straddle both dark and light, I certainly sympathize. Were there any big surprises when you first moved into medical design, both as an engineer and a designer?
[00:04:18] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: From an engineering point of view, I always knew that it was a pretty long
[00:04:21] Mads Svanegaard: process of getting the product from a concept stage to an actual product that we're ready to launch.
[00:04:28] Mads Svanegaard: It's not only because it takes a long time to construct and get everything ready for tooling, but it's more like it takes time to get it tested and approved of
[00:04:38] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: different regulations, and you have. Material requirements
[00:04:41] Mads Svanegaard: that you have to meet, and there also has to be tested individually and together as a product.
[00:04:46] Mads Svanegaard: It's a lot of certifications and testing and regulatory that you have to live up to, and that takes quite a long time of the development phase, actually. So that was a bit of a surprise for me, or a bit of an eye opener. And then also this thing about how [00:05:00] big these projects can be in medical device development.
[00:05:03] Mads Svanegaard: You start with maybe a couple of people
[00:05:05] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: very, very early on figuring out what you want to do, and then it just like expands.
[00:05:09] Mads Svanegaard: It just grow, grows into this huge amount
[00:05:12] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: of people, like maybe 150 people at, at some stages, at least in the companies that I've been working with. To clarify, was
[00:05:18] Fraser Greenfield: this the company growing or just the project took on more and more?
[00:05:22] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: Yeah, the
[00:05:22] Mads Svanegaard: project took on more and more people in different departments at some stages. And when it was like the biggest, then it was like about 150 people
[00:05:30] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: working across all departments, basically in the company to sort of get this ready and tested and marketed
[00:05:37] Mads Svanegaard: and everything. Huge effort really, and it was a team effort.
[00:05:41] Mads Svanegaard: I think that's
[00:05:41] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: something that you don't really learn about that much, at least in the education that
[00:05:45] Mads Svanegaard: I had. It's such a big effort to pull together to get it right at the very end.
[00:05:51] Fraser Greenfield: It's not one man behind the curtain. It's an
[00:05:53] Mads Svanegaard: army. Definitely is. Yeah. I think that's very true, especially within medical device development.[00:06:00]
[00:06:00] Fraser Greenfield: I certainly know how you feel. My time in medical, I felt like we did more paperwork than actual development. Lot of documentation. Cause every little thing had to have a FDA approval form, the stickers, the bolts,
[00:06:11] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: every fixture. But also like almost every stage
[00:06:14] Mads Svanegaard: of your development concept, you have to sort of like argue why you chose that direction of one another.
[00:06:20] Mads Svanegaard: And that has to be documented as well, so people can understand the reasoning behind it. If they want to go back and look into why it was developed like it was. As well as
[00:06:28] Fraser Greenfield: to minimize risk, product risk, and I wouldn't say deflect responsibility, but ensure that responsibility is taken if something goes wrong,
[00:06:36] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: if.
[00:06:37] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: Oh, those
[00:06:38] Mads Svanegaard: risk sessions, have you ever tried that?
[00:06:39] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: That's an incredible time where you sit down
[00:06:43] Mads Svanegaard: with engineers and risk assessment specialists and they just like throw questions at you that you have to try and answer, and it's all like, well, what happens if they do this? Well, they wouldn't do that. Well, of course if they can, then they do it.
[00:06:54] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: And then you like have to think about everything that can go wrong and a lot can go wrong with medical devices. [00:07:00]
[00:07:00] Mads Svanegaard: You always
[00:07:00] Fraser Greenfield: gotta take into account Murphy's Law. Yes, true. Whatever can happen will happen. Yeah. Would you say that there were any key design principles or philosophies that you took out of this that still guide your work to this day?
[00:07:13] Fraser Greenfield: Are you doing an army load of paperwork for every plant pot that you ever designed? I.
[00:07:16] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: No, no, but not that bit. But definitely this thing
[00:07:19] Mads Svanegaard: about being structured, I think something that stuck
[00:07:22] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: with me,
[00:07:22] Mads Svanegaard: and maybe that's also because I started out as an engineer, so that the structure kind of has already been part of that.
[00:07:28] Mads Svanegaard: I also think that in terms of design principles and philosophies, the work that we did and developed at Coloplast, the products we developed there, Coloplast, the design language that were developed and that I helped. Make products with during my time there. And we also developed the D N A further while we developed products.
[00:07:47] Mads Svanegaard: So that was an interesting
[00:07:49] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: thing to sort of
[00:07:50] Mads Svanegaard: like help shape the design language of PL from an
[00:07:53] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: IT point of view.
[00:07:54] Mads Svanegaard: And then
[00:07:55] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: those philosophies around being human and being approachable and also being [00:08:00] very like
[00:08:00] Mads Svanegaard: aware of what context your products are being used in being more discreet. Be more subtle, but also
[00:08:07] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: being there when you need it the most.
[00:08:09] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: You have to like, if you want to engage with it, you know, you have
[00:08:12] Mads Svanegaard: to know exactly which touch points to interact with and stuff like that. Those things are definitely principles that I try to use today in my design. Would an
[00:08:21] Fraser Greenfield: example of that be with hearing aids? They're often, you know, skin toned, invisible from a distance, noticeable up close, but they work and they do the job and they try not to get in the way.
[00:08:32] Mads Svanegaard: Yeah, that's a very good point to, and a good way to put it. But also this thing about how do you put in, if you have like a behind the ear, some hearing aids are sitting inside the ear and some of the sitting behind the ear. The form factor is whether behind the ear, they often have a small wire or a tube going into your ear to a mold that fits your ear, or an open ended design, which sort of looks like
[00:08:53] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: a new but.
[00:08:53] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: How do you then put that in your ear? It's so tiny.
[00:08:56] Mads Svanegaard: And how do you control where your hearing aid is positioned at the same [00:09:00] time? There's a lot of things there where you have to learn stuff while
[00:09:04] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: you actually get used to having an hearing aid, like how do you handle it? But
[00:09:07] Mads Svanegaard: if we can make it a little bit easier with maybe a touchpoint or grab a finger area where it's easier to hold onto thinking about those things as well.
[00:09:16] Mads Svanegaard: Like how would the user actually interact with it? It's very important as well. And it has to be discreet because it's so visible for a lot of people when they
[00:09:25] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: wear it. So that's why also a lot of hearing aids are either
[00:09:27] Mads Svanegaard: skin toned or hair colors, basically, cuz that just fits in. And then you have the bold color choices, which is definitely a visual, very eye candy like
[00:09:38] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: for
[00:09:38] Mads Svanegaard: marketing materials and also for kids most times.
[00:09:41] Mads Svanegaard: I think that's actually great that kids are not so scared about hearing aids. They have
[00:09:45] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: it on and they like to choose whatever color they want. My kid has a hearing aid and
[00:09:49] Mads Svanegaard: she's chosen a very bright pink for hers, and it's super cool, but I
[00:09:54] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: wouldn't have chosen it myself necessarily,
[00:09:56] Mads Svanegaard: but it's nice to see that she's so open
[00:09:58] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: about it.
[00:09:59] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: You would've [00:10:00] gone for more of a blue. I don't know which color I would've joked. Like piano black.
[00:10:04] Fraser Greenfield: Oh no, you gotta, you gotta go. Something that can put racing stripes on or flames
[00:10:08] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: on the side. A lightning implement. Actually, I probably would've preferred some kind of
[00:10:12] Mads Svanegaard: olive green or something. That would be quite nice.
[00:10:15] Mads Svanegaard: Yes. Thank you. Green's my favorite color. Yes,
[00:10:18] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: mine too. At the moment. This is
[00:10:21] Mads Svanegaard: Mass Re is Mass sre. This is S. And you're listening. And you're listening and you listen. And two, and two and, and dated. Dated.
[00:10:32] Mads Svanegaard: Could you
[00:10:32] Fraser Greenfield: go a little bit into some of the consumer products you work with? I believe you also worked at Jabra, which is a pretty prominently known
[00:10:39] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: audio brand. I worked at
[00:10:40] Mads Svanegaard: GN Hearing, which was a part of the company. The mother
[00:10:43] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: company is gn, and then you have Jabra and you have GN hearing basically, and it's like the audio side and the hearing aid side.
[00:10:51] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: And I worked
[00:10:52] Mads Svanegaard: on a product that was the first over-the-counter product that we were going to market as the first over-the-counter product. Basically as a [00:11:00] response to legislation that were coming out.
[00:11:02] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: At that time, it wasn't there
[00:11:03] Mads Svanegaard: yet,
[00:11:03] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: but in the US they were allowing people to buy
[00:11:07] Mads Svanegaard: hearing aids and fit them themselves at home.
[00:11:09] Mads Svanegaard: So you could go into a Costco, for instance, and then buy a hearing aid and then go back and have fitted just by using an app on your phone. I was a part of that
[00:11:17] and
[00:11:17] Mads Svanegaard: we helped develop the case and the earbud. We choose a style that was more like an earbud form factor, so it sits in the ear and it doesn't look discreet, but it doesn't stand out because there's so many people with stuff in their ears anyway, so it's probably for the younger, at least that was the idea that it was more for the younger segment.
[00:11:38] Mads Svanegaard: But anyway, that product and that project ended up being branded as Jabra because we felt that the company felt like it was the right, they had the sales channels, they had everything like lined up. So it was easy for us to move that. And also we had designed the product that it actually easily could fit into their product line up.
[00:11:57] Mads Svanegaard: That design language was already [00:12:00] very much aligned with what we were going to take, gene hearings design in the future. So, We had sort of an alignment between the two companies in terms of Id design language. That was a natural thing to do. It turned out to be a commercial product for Gira that I designed, but or helped design, but definitely started out as the hearing
[00:12:19] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: aid project.
[00:12:21] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: It's
[00:12:21] Fraser Greenfield: an interesting line cuz like was there any sort of like positive feedback loop between the consumer side of that business, Jabra headphones and the hearing aid side of the business? Is that something we could look forward to in the future? In other medical devices where consumer devices have technological advancements that pickle down into medical
[00:12:38] Mads Svanegaard: devices?
[00:12:39] Mads Svanegaard: That's one of the reasons why I really think that GN hearing and jra is such a great match to have two companies in. One, because they change ideas. Exchange technologies help each other out, and that's also why Jra
[00:12:51] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: can keep focusing on making their devices
[00:12:54] Mads Svanegaard: smaller because we have such great integrated technologies in the hearing aid business already, where we [00:13:00] developed small and smaller devices.
[00:13:02] Mads Svanegaard: And also if you're looking at it, the strength of it, the longevity rigorously, you're testing it to make
[00:13:08] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: sure that it's sturdy enough
[00:13:09] Fraser Greenfield: quality testing and
[00:13:10] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: endurance. This thing about endurance
[00:13:13] Mads Svanegaard: and longevity and how long things should last. The sturdiness of a product, we definitely have helped each other out because there were demands from users in terms of hearing aids that were requirements in terms of how much sweat and how much ear wax you have to be able to handle as a product before it clocks up or anything.
[00:13:33] Mads Svanegaard: And on the other side, there were like sports and
[00:13:35] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: activity and you know, running and jumping and everything that
[00:13:38] Mads Svanegaard: you have to do when you're. Actively using your headphones or earbuds. Again, we talk together, we learn from each other, and that makes both products better.
[00:13:48] Fraser Greenfield: That sounds like real positive news for the hearing impaired in general.
[00:13:51] Fraser Greenfield: When my old man first got into hearing aids, I was really disappointed on how archaic, I mean, his first set definitely were not the one you designed in the fact that [00:14:00] like, I'd just gotten some nothing earphones after deciding I needed a spare set from my Apple ones and like the case, the rechargeability, the noise canceling, it was just like what he was rocking was like from a different century.
[00:14:12] Fraser Greenfield: And yet fundamentally, at least from an engineering perspective, there wasn't a great deal of difference in terms of what
[00:14:18] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: they did.
[00:14:19] Mads Svanegaard: No, and that's why I think this legislation is actually interesting because it's gonna push the hearing aid industry to try and create products that are more commercially acceptable.
[00:14:28] Mads Svanegaard: There will be features that will come into hearing aids. Of course, we've had Bluetooth
[00:14:32] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: hearing aids for a while and they already connect to your phone, and there's an app where you can control
[00:14:36] Mads Svanegaard: settings and stuff like that. But this whole thing, for instance, about how you create a soundscape that can be tweaked a lot more cuz that's also what basically your AirPods are doing.
[00:14:47] Mads Svanegaard: They just tweak your surroundings and adapt the sound to that. They kind loud something and they boost something else. Those features would be great to see
[00:14:56] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: coming into hearing aids
[00:14:58] Mads Svanegaard: in the future, and I think there's a [00:15:00] lot more momentum for this change to happen at the moment. You're giving me comfort.
[00:15:05] Mads Svanegaard: You're gonna see more designed products and less of these
[00:15:10] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: bulk key
[00:15:11] Mads Svanegaard: big things that you just have to have on in the future because there's more aesthetics involved in the future because of this whole towards over the counter devices. We'll be both
[00:15:22] Fraser Greenfield: looking good and we'll be able to hear that favorite record of ours like it was the first time we heard
[00:15:26] it.
[00:15:27] Mads Svanegaard: Hopefully.
[00:15:27] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: Yeah.
[00:15:34] Fraser Greenfield: So what was the catalyst for striking out on your own, and how did you manage the transition from being an in-house designer to a freelancer? The
[00:15:42] Mads Svanegaard: catalyst I think was in short time felt right, but there was three things that made it more or less the right time. The move to Furin was one of them. Uh, we moved here to be more closer to our family, grandparents and such.
[00:15:54] Mads Svanegaard: And then there was this thing about Covid, which was making us working from home. And [00:16:00] I learned
[00:16:00] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: that working from home was not a problem for me. I enjoyed a lot and, you know, talked to my plans.
[00:16:05] Mads Svanegaard: It's very natural for me to just work and then I can be alone for a long time. So that's not a problem. And then the last thing was my own company that I had on the side started to get more projects
[00:16:15] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: coming in.
[00:16:15] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: There was a bigger demand for
[00:16:17] Mads Svanegaard: my work, and at some point I could see down the line that in a month or two I would not have time to fulfill my full-time job. So I had to sort of like say, now we need to make a change here and let's do something. And that transition was actually a gradual one. So I started out saying, let's do a three months transition where I start out with four days a week and three days a week, and then two days, and then, you
[00:16:40] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: know, goodbye.
[00:16:41] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: It ended up being four months instead because they wanted me to have a little longer if that was okay. And I was like, yeah, sure it's fine. And then, you know, I could just had a little bit more
[00:16:48] Mads Svanegaard: time to ramp up
[00:16:50] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: the projects that I had in my own company.
[00:16:52] Fraser Greenfield: Correct me if I'm wrong, but the interpretation is your side hustle grew to the point that it could take over from the decline in hours that you had [00:17:00] during a certain global situation.
[00:17:02] Fraser Greenfield: Yeah. Did you plan for that at all, or it was just all the right pieces Were at the right time.
[00:17:07] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: I
[00:17:07] Mads Svanegaard: already had a company
[00:17:08] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: and I think for the longest time since I graduated from engineering, I sort of felt like I wanted to be my own man at some point.
[00:17:17] Mads Svanegaard: So it's something that I've sort of been working towards, at least for the last 15 years.
[00:17:21] Mads Svanegaard: Now is
[00:17:21] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: the right time. And what were some of those
[00:17:24] Fraser Greenfield: baby steps you took 15 years ago to prepare you for that
[00:17:26] Mads Svanegaard: moment? I think the first thing was actually I had my own company back then already as a consultant. I worked for the company that I interned with as a part of my school education, and when I graduated I was there working full-time for half a year as an engineer before I got the job at a hearing aid company.
[00:17:44] Mads Svanegaard: I got some experiences with working
[00:17:46] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: on my own and coming in and treating them as a client, even though I knew
[00:17:50] Mads Svanegaard: them before in a different capacity. I think that worked fine and I sort of really enjoyed
[00:17:56] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: that bit. Of going in and helping them out and then
[00:17:59] Mads Svanegaard: be able [00:18:00] to go back and work on something else as
[00:18:01] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: well.
[00:18:02] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: Do you mind if we
[00:18:03] Fraser Greenfield: dive a little into the nitty gritty? How do you decide how much to charge and how would you recommend setting out that line of value?
[00:18:11] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: Initially I had this massive struggle with figuring out what am I worth. I
[00:18:15] Mads Svanegaard: think everybody else probably struggles with the same thing when they start out, but one thing I did was I asked around in my network, I have friends that are working with 3D visualization and I have contacts that work with industrial designers, a consultancy, and I asked them, what do you think this type of work is worth?
[00:18:33] Mads Svanegaard: How should I price it? And they taught me a lot about what does hourly rates, and then there's project rates, and then maybe there is a different third
[00:18:41] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: option that you can maybe do a bit of both, or you can do
[00:18:44] Mads Svanegaard: the first projects. Maybe you need to have that at the lower price, like a discount because that's the first client.
[00:18:50] Mads Svanegaard: And then you say the next project already is gonna be different pricing. And so you sort of have to think a lot about, for instance, how badly do you want that client? That was one of the [00:19:00] things that they said to me like, can you see a long term relationship developing with this client or not? If you're a little bit uncertain, then make sure that you can renegotiate the salary after the first project, and also make sure that you're not doing another project with this client before you have the money from the first project.
[00:19:17] Mads Svanegaard: That's also like one thing to make sure, at least that was some of the things that I learned from talking to them and also by experience
[00:19:23] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: afterwards. Even though you hope you do don't have to
[00:19:26] Mads Svanegaard: make those experiences yourself, you still end up doing some of this stuff. Pricing is a very diverse thing for
[00:19:32] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: me.
[00:19:32] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: When I
[00:19:33] Mads Svanegaard: go out and I ask people about, okay, this, is this a rendering project or is it an animation project? For instance, if it's like within visualization, if it's industrial designers say, are we looking to create an idea catalog or are we doing final design tweaks? Or where are we in the development phase?
[00:19:49] Mads Svanegaard: And then based on that I can assess, is it very, very difficult for me based on the tools that I know I'm familiar with? Or is it like an easy walk in the park? And then I probably do a little bit of [00:20:00] tweaking, depending on, at least in terms of how many hours I estimate a project will take. That's the
[00:20:04] Fraser Greenfield: thing, like if you're billing hourly and you know the project is harder, it's gonna take longer.
[00:20:08] Fraser Greenfield: So would you reduce your weight for the harder project and then raise it for the easy
[00:20:12] Mads Svanegaard: one? For instance, in terms of industrial design work, I typically say that if it's in the earlier phases that I'm developing, I take maybe a higher price because it's a lot more about coming up with the right
[00:20:25] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: solutions.
[00:20:26] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: And
[00:20:26] Mads Svanegaard: then at the later stages where it's more about executing set ideas or concepts into something that looks nice. I might take a little bit less, and then maybe it'll raise again if it's final visualizations and renderings or animations of that interaction with that concept. I think I see it as a project start to finish.
[00:20:46] Mads Svanegaard: Where am I going to work in it and how easy it is for me to do that bit of work. And then I set the price after that. And is it like
[00:20:54] Fraser Greenfield: a macro view as well? Like you set a total number for the year and then divide it by the amount of projects you [00:21:00] think you'll get through the year? Or do you just play it by what the market says is the
[00:21:03] Mads Svanegaard: going rate?
[00:21:04] Mads Svanegaard: I think I probably do the last, like everybody else, I have mortgages and
[00:21:08] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: stuff like that I have to pay, so I have like a base line that I need to make sure
[00:21:12] Mads Svanegaard: I get every month. That's also why it's good to have a diverse set of clients because some of them will come back almost every month and others will not.
[00:21:19] Mads Svanegaard: But if it's like a large medical device project that I'm working on, I know that I'll be there for a while. The price can be the same, like maybe it's a thousand Danish Kronos an hour is maybe two high on a three month project. So of course I have to adjust that. The maximum I've made for a month has been maybe 250,000 Danish growers, which is quite a high number.
[00:21:41] Mads Svanegaard: About
[00:21:42] Fraser Greenfield: 145 US dollars is a thousand Corona.
[00:21:45] Mads Svanegaard: That's a pretty high number for a month of work, right? But it's not the average at all. It's probably closer to maybe 40,000 Danish Coronas a month. And that's what I'm making right now. And I have this vision. You have to have some sort of vision when you start out on your own.
[00:21:59] Mads Svanegaard: [00:22:00] And I think one of them is that this is not a sprint for me. I'm not in this just
[00:22:04] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: to win a lot of money. Quickly
[00:22:06] Mads Svanegaard: and become a superstar at this. I'm in it for the long game. I wanna build up good base of clientele. I wanna build up good relationships that are longstanding with companies that enjoy working with me and that I enjoy for different reasons.
[00:22:20] Mads Svanegaard: Working with, with
[00:22:22] Fraser Greenfield: this diverse clientele. You live a bit away from Copenhagen. In doing it, how do your clients find you? Or rather, how do you find your
[00:22:30] Mads Svanegaard: clients? It's a bit of combination of things. Of course, I have 15 years experience now, so I have quite a big group of
[00:22:36] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: people in my network. They typically know what I'm doing and I'm trying
[00:22:40] Mads Svanegaard: to be active both on LinkedIn and Instagram is my main two social channels.
[00:22:46] Mads Svanegaard: And I try to be active there because then I'll be in their minds when it comes to design or visualization, right? And then I reach out to people from time to time, I reach out and just have a conversation with them online, like about, you know, how's it [00:23:00] going, what's happening? How are you doing? Last time we saw each other, we did this, that was fun, blah, blah blah.
[00:23:05] Mads Svanegaard: Just creating connections and keeping the connections. Both because it's a good idea in terms of work, but it's also a great idea because they're just nice people that I, I've met during the many years I've worked. So that's one of the things. And the other thing is go back to Instagram and say, people find me on Instagram from all over the world and they write to me about project work.
[00:23:26] Mads Svanegaard: Can you help us out with a specific design? Or we have this range of products in mind. Can you help us with that? Or can you do these renders or this animation and stuff like that. So it's quite. Big, broad type of projects that I get from Instagram. That's how they find me.
[00:23:42] Fraser Greenfield: I imagine it's very aesthetic driven.
[00:23:44] Fraser Greenfield: That'd be very different to my work, which is literally one step away from engineering half
[00:23:48] the
[00:23:48] Mads Svanegaard: time. Yeah, it is
[00:23:49] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: probably more in the other end now. Earlier on, it would've been a lot more
[00:23:53] Mads Svanegaard: engineering driven too, but I've sort of like moved gradually away from that, and then more towards the [00:24:00] visual side of it and the aesthetics and the shapes.
[00:24:02] Mads Svanegaard: I think it's something that I knew I had to do. So I actually, when I started out on Instagram, which was back in 2016, I shared a lot of my process work, and then gradually I moved towards 3D modeling and rendering, and then I moved into animations, sort of setting a direction of where I want my work to be happening in what area I want my work to be happening in.
[00:24:25] Mads Svanegaard: So right now I'm posting a lot of visualization work because I would like some more visualization work, but then I also post. Industrial design concepts because I
[00:24:35] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: know that getting great ideas and then showing
[00:24:37] Mads Svanegaard: people that you're able to create great ideas is also a way of letting people know that, oh, we can do this type of thing as well.
[00:24:44] Mads Svanegaard: You can sort of build out where you want your clientele to wrap
[00:24:48] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: ahold of you, if you know what I mean.
[00:24:50] Fraser Greenfield: Would you say that your technical background has still come in handy with these recent
[00:24:54] Mads Svanegaard: projects? Yeah. Every industrial design project I have had, I have used [00:25:00] something
[00:25:00] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: from my
[00:25:01] Mads Svanegaard: background as an engineer.
[00:25:02] Mads Svanegaard: It could be molding issues with a plastic part or assembly processes, but you cannot ask me to do a tolerance chain. I wouldn't be able to do that, just like off the, off the top of my head anymore. I had to look into my books.
[00:25:18] Fraser Greenfield: All right. I know you got some material tables somewhere. Yeah, I do.
[00:25:22] Mads Svanegaard: Being something of a
[00:25:23] Fraser Greenfield: homebody, how do you keep track of your billables and your projects?
[00:25:27] Fraser Greenfield: I know when I started working for home, that was my biggest struggle. I no longer had someone else calling me up on, where's the project at? I had to do it all. What's your
[00:25:35] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: secret? That's my secret. I have to do it all. I have an app. Everybody has an app, but I have an app that that helps me keep track of my projects.
[00:25:43] Mads Svanegaard: Also, my clients basically. And then I use Miro strangely enough to manage the company's longer term goals and also, Potential clients
[00:25:55] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: and I sort of
[00:25:55] Mads Svanegaard: like have a small schedule or scheme where I put in people and [00:26:00] also
[00:26:00] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: companies
[00:26:00] Mads Svanegaard: or ideas for pictures, if that's something that I would like to do. At some point, Miro is sort of like a big board of ideas and contacts
[00:26:09] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: and info and stuff.
[00:26:10] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: Or you
[00:26:11] Mads Svanegaard: can check Mark next to people that you've contacted or that you want to contact.
[00:26:14] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: Again, that's keeping me organized
[00:26:17] Mads Svanegaard: a bit there. And then of course, this app that just tracks the hours.
[00:26:22] Fraser Greenfield: That makes me feel very old school cuz I have a calendar for every client or major project. I have a small, a five notebook.
[00:26:30] Fraser Greenfield: Maybe I need to get onto the apps. It's probably better for the environment
[00:26:34] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: maybe. Maybe,
[00:26:35] Mads Svanegaard: yeah, there's a server somewhere crunching data.
[00:26:40] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: That's the funny part about these things. You think, oh, this is less, and then you realize that
[00:26:44] Mads Svanegaard: the backend is such a big machine itself, that it actually sometimes uses more than what you did with the notes.
[00:26:49] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: It's always good to have notes. Yeah, I have a lot of notebooks too
[00:26:52] Mads Svanegaard: in my office and I use them a not, but it's basically just for sketching out ideas. At the moment,
[00:26:58] Fraser Greenfield: you make me feel very anxious. [00:27:00] Now,
[00:27:01] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: she should not be anxious.
[00:27:04] Fraser Greenfield: Maybe I need to go all digital. Maybe it's the way of the future. I just read somewhere that all digital media can only last 10 years and paper can last hundreds and vellum can last thousands.
[00:27:14] Fraser Greenfield: Maybe we all just need to record
[00:27:15] Mads Svanegaard: on vellum. At least it's for longevity. It's the way of the future. This is mass rain, mass mass. And you're listening and you're listen. And your listen. Listen. And your, and your listen. Your two dated, dated, dated.
[00:27:33] Fraser Greenfield: What would you say your biggest struggles are being a freelancer since you've transitioned to working
[00:27:38] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: on your own? Going back
[00:27:39] Mads Svanegaard: to reaching out, it's so important, but I'm a sort of introvert. As a person, it's always a bit of a struggle to actually reach out to people and
[00:27:48] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: be open. That's why I think for me, that
[00:27:50] Mads Svanegaard: building out a relationship makes it so much easier to reach out because you already have a
[00:27:56] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: connection.
[00:27:56] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: You're not supposed to
[00:27:57] Mads Svanegaard: cold canvas people and do the [00:28:00] elevator pitch, and then do you have work for me? Sort of thing. It's
[00:28:02] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: not working for me, so
[00:28:04] Mads Svanegaard: it's one of my struggles being a freelancer. And then we've talked about this previously, the pricing stuff was a big challenge, especially in the beginning
[00:28:12] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: and then doing your own taxes.
[00:28:15] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: Oh no. Horrible. I had to hire an accountant. I have an accountant, but I haven't seen much of him, so I don't know what he's doing.
[00:28:22] Fraser Greenfield: You don't want to get in debt to the king tell you that. So
[00:28:25] Mads Svanegaard: true.
[00:28:25] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: I don't. I don't either.
[00:28:28] Fraser Greenfield: But does that mean you've had work on your extroversion? Ask the Mrs. Like, can you come to my TED Talk?
[00:28:33] Fraser Greenfield: I need an audience to practice Too
[00:28:35] Mads Svanegaard: true. I reach out to my wife. She's excellent. She works with communication, so she's very, very extrovert match
[00:28:41] Fraser Greenfield: made in heaven.
[00:28:43] Mads Svanegaard: So it's great that we can have these conversations
[00:28:45] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: together once I'm
[00:28:47] Mads Svanegaard: comfortable. It's not a big issue at all to be. Open and extrovert, but I tend to be on the introvert side.
[00:28:57] Mads Svanegaard: I charge up better when I'm
[00:28:58] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: alone, [00:29:00] get ideas when
[00:29:00] Mads Svanegaard: I'm alone more of the time than I do when I'm with other
[00:29:03] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: people. Not that I can't participate in ideation sessions
[00:29:07] Mads Svanegaard: and everything. That's super cool to get ideas there, but typically when I have to sort of think of something myself
[00:29:13] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: just comes more natural when I'm alone.
[00:29:15] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: How would you deal
[00:29:16] Fraser Greenfield: with a sticky client situation if you are more of an introverted personality type? Is there any advice you'd pass on to someone who is a natural talker?
[00:29:24] Mads Svanegaard: If you're okay on your side, reach out. If you don't like taking the phone, start with an email. Start with a text message or whatever you are
[00:29:32] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: communicating with.
[00:29:33] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: And then if that's not enough and they sort of
[00:29:36] Mads Svanegaard: like bounce off, call them and then get it over with. Set yourself a deadline. One o'clock I have to do this and it has to be done. And then you know, you, you can stretch out, you can do procrastination all along to 1130, but then I had
[00:29:48] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: to do it cuz it's in your book.
[00:29:50] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: And at least that's how my mind works. And if you're
[00:29:53] Fraser Greenfield: on the phone at home, no one can see you drinking red wine while you do it.
[00:29:58] Mads Svanegaard: We dated. We dated, we dated. [00:30:00] We dated. We dated. We dated.
[00:30:01] Fraser Greenfield: How did you find your design aesthetic? You're definitely known for having a very specific style, and some might say it's Scandinavian, some might say it's something unique, but how did
[00:30:10] Mads Svanegaard: you find that?
[00:30:12] Mads Svanegaard: Yeah, PR. I can't say this enough. A lot of people think that design is something that just comes to you. I don't know how they think it comes, but it's not something that just comes to you. You have to actually work a lot on getting somewhere with
[00:30:25] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: it. And it's interesting that you
[00:30:27] Mads Svanegaard: say that maybe I have a specific style.
[00:30:28] Mads Svanegaard: I think I'm becoming
[00:30:29] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: more and more aware of it now that I actually
[00:30:31] Mads Svanegaard: have sort of a design style. But initially I was just like, I don't have a style. I don't know how to get one. But I just did a lot of sketching, a lot of design concepts, development, and I still do actually. Every time I practice a little bit of different things and it sort of helps me figuring out what I like and what I think works.
[00:30:51] Mads Svanegaard: Practice is my main way of getting there in terms of developing a style and then reflecting on it afterwards. Obviously you have to do [00:31:00] that, not just just run through to the next one, but I think a little bit about what worked, what didn't work, why did it work, and then sort of like use that to the next.
[00:31:08] Mads Svanegaard: Project to see if it also works there. It's a testing, testing sort
[00:31:12] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: of thing. And now that you have found
[00:31:15] Fraser Greenfield: your style, how do you balance your styled form and the function in your designs? And what are the considerations you have to take into account when you balance
[00:31:24] Mads Svanegaard: these two factors? How do I balance it is more like I have different approaches.
[00:31:29] Mads Svanegaard: One of them is the more aesthetic one, where you typically do some research, you go out and you observe things or desk research where you research online on different shapes or aesthetics or C M F options, and you sort of map that out and. From there on, you start building your own shapes for this product or service.
[00:31:48] Mads Svanegaard: And then the other approach is the more solution based approach where you observe, again, you go out and you do that, and then you figure out what is not happening here and what are the key issues. So you start mapping out
[00:31:59] all
[00:31:59] Mads Svanegaard: that. So it's [00:32:00] more like a man mapping situation.
[00:32:01] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: And then from there on
[00:32:02] Mads Svanegaard: you try and say, well, how would I solve that specific problem?
[00:32:06] Mads Svanegaard: Or how would that solution might look like? And then you start focusing more on solutions rather than aesthetics. And then because of the experience I have now, I sort of naturally get that shape exploration that I've already tested out on a lot of other unrelated stuff. I use that in a specific project so that way I build on my experience and get that specific shape or form.
[00:32:28] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: And I can do that quite
[00:32:29] Mads Svanegaard: easily because I've tested a lot of different design languages or styles. And then you can just do a lot of different concepts. And if, of course, you have to balance out, okay, what is the company that you're making the project for? What are their values? How do they approach and.
[00:32:44] Mads Svanegaard: What is their production methods currently in use and stuff like that. So you have to think about that as well. Typically, I build out a concept range that has a little bit of everything in it, and then stronger on
[00:32:56] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: one area maybe. And then with the clients,
[00:32:59] Mads Svanegaard: you work [00:33:00] together with them and you. Present the work you've done and highlight where it's good or where it's rather strong maybe, and then have a discussion with them and
[00:33:07] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: then new ideas come up based
[00:33:09] Mads Svanegaard: on that discussion.
[00:33:10] Mads Svanegaard: And you can go in again and tweak or redo or
[00:33:13] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: make new ones. If I understand
[00:33:15] Fraser Greenfield: this correctly, you build like a mental library of all these previous forms and design features. Based upon your experience, would you ever say that there was a situation where being ignorant and not having this library might have actually opened you up to better ideas?
[00:33:29] Fraser Greenfield: Your experience turned out to be a handicap as opposed to a help.
[00:33:32] Mads Svanegaard: I've heard a lot of people commenting on that. I had an engineering background and they were like worried that I might already, you know, have deselected a bunch of stuff because of that. But that's where the good thing is that I'm a very positive and open-minded guy,
[00:33:46] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: which also means that sometimes I'm also very naive, so I can ask all sorts of weird
[00:33:50] Mads Svanegaard: questions
[00:33:51] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: and it's part of my training also, or my education as a designer is being open and asking the
[00:33:57] Mads Svanegaard: whys and figuring out.
[00:33:59] Mads Svanegaard: [00:34:00] Exploration and play is a big part of how I come up with solutions or designs because I have that experience. It's more in terms of my skillset as a designer and how I approach the designing part of it, like the actual doing it, whereas the what's behind it and how I come to that design is much more open-minded and playful.
[00:34:23] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: And that could be getting inspired by nature or getting inspired
[00:34:27] Mads Svanegaard: by kids or getting inspired by tons of other stuff that is not related to where we are. So I end up having pretty broad range of concepts. Some of them is taking out some of them more where they probably would've expected it to be, and then some that are maybe a little more conservative in the design.
[00:34:45] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: Was that
[00:34:46] Fraser Greenfield: a process that you had to work on initially? Coming from an engineering background, people often do deselect stuff or go that's too expensive. I can still remember having a very long winded conversation with an engineering manager cause he didn't want to use $200 coster [00:35:00] wheels. But those wheels were safer.
[00:35:02] Fraser Greenfield: That's why I picked them. It wasn't cuz they looked better. Is that something you've had to work on and have a discipline process to get you to where you are today?
[00:35:10] Mads Svanegaard: Yes, I have worked a lot on trying to figure out how can I let go of all the knowledge that I have from the engineering side of things.
[00:35:20] Mads Svanegaard: That's why I play so much. That's why I'm just open and exploring products. But tech products in general, I love tech, so I'm playing around with a lot of different types of products at home to figure out how that works and what is the interaction with an app or with an interface, or if there's buttons and stuff.
[00:35:36] Mads Svanegaard: And then that's all open-ended. It's not related to anything, but then it just showed me that, Being that playful and open-minded person helps me let go of all that other knowledge that I have, and then I can pull it up when I need it. That's a learning process. You have to do with a lot to let go of that.
[00:35:54] Mads Svanegaard: And then once you let go, you of course need to figure out how to then at the right point, [00:36:00] use your knowledge again. And that's only by practicing and making actual products and projects for companies.
[00:36:09] Fraser Greenfield: I just have an image of my head of just you suppressing all this forbidden engineering law, so it doesn't corrupt what your workflow
[00:36:15] Mads Svanegaard: is.
[00:36:16] Mads Svanegaard: I have a tenfold header put on, and then you know.
[00:36:22] Mads Svanegaard: This is mass. Mass. And you're listening. And you're listening. 2, 2, 2. Dated, dated, dated, dated, dated, dated, dated.
[00:36:33] Fraser Greenfield: Your company is called Designers fan. Fan is Danish for Spawn. Yes. Yeah. Is there a specific Scandinavian approach that you believe is unique to both yourself and other designers from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, that does really set you guys apart from the rest of the world, and what is it A
[00:36:51] Mads Svanegaard: lot of people say, oh yeah, Scandinavian design, but it's a design philosophy that is very much revolving around furniture design because we have had a lot of [00:37:00] great furniture designers in Denmark.
[00:37:02] Mads Svanegaard: Not so much industrial design where I'm sitting. It's not that I don't take cues from furniture design and all those great examples we have. I have a few in my home, of course, cuz they're really nice and they look good and they're also pretty good to sit in. Most of them. I wouldn't say it's a style that I've cultivated myself as such.
[00:37:23] Mads Svanegaard: Probably because I think the world is shrinking and becoming smaller because of social media, especially within different types of work. For instance, industrial design or design in general. There's a lot of groups that you can connect into that are very international. You share ideas, you share design there, and you build up a collective understanding of what good design is or what Scandinavian design is.
[00:37:48] Mads Svanegaard: I don't think I have a specific Scandinavian approach. I have an approach that is very similar to other designers. Research ideation, concept development, detailing almost always in that [00:38:00] order, much like everybody else I think in the business tend to do. Maybe it's because we're so aligned, we're inspired by maybe some of the same designers, like Detail Arms.
[00:38:10] Mads Svanegaard: Almost every industrial designer has heard about him, or Ray Eames or all sorts of other designers that are out there. We have this idea in our head about design, and I think that we are aligning across that. Do you think
[00:38:25] Fraser Greenfield: that's a bad thing? The fact we look up to all these designers that are all common might be a bit of a homogenizing force.
[00:38:32] Mads Svanegaard: It's not something that I think is bad as such, but it's something that you have to be aware of because if you look at countries with a different culture or a different history, if you end up designing what you think is a good design
[00:38:45] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: for.
[00:38:46] Mads Svanegaard: Maybe a European, but you're actually working on something that is for an
[00:38:50] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: Asian culture,
[00:38:50] Mads Svanegaard: or in India or Malaysia, whatever.
[00:38:53] Mads Svanegaard: They might not see this as the best option. So you have to get more knowledge around what is that [00:39:00] culture, how do they work? There was a product that we did in continence product also first over the counter device, and we had some detailing on it where there were like going to be different dots on the design at that point.
[00:39:13] Mads Svanegaard: And we're looking at marketing this in Japan and they had some different ideas about what lucky number is or what is a number that signifies specific things. So we couldn't use, I think the number four was bad. We had to look into that culture and figure out what do they think or see when they look at this design, and then try and change your design to fit to that cultural aesthetics or expectations.
[00:39:39] Mads Svanegaard: That's something you have to be aware of when you design. Do you ever think
[00:39:42] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: that there
[00:39:42] Fraser Greenfield: was maybe a Scandinavian style, not in furniture, but industrial design as a whole, and it's just disappeared? Or was it always just a dream that was Scandinavian design? You could only whisper it anything more than a whisper and it
[00:39:55] Mads Svanegaard: would vanish.
[00:39:56] Mads Svanegaard: I think you're touching on something there that's really interesting because [00:40:00] industrial design to me has always been focused a lot on the physical thing and the production things that you have to live up to, to be able to manufacture in mass quantities, of course, but at least in Europe, it's been very closely related to, not art, but something that you might call intangible.
[00:40:18] Mads Svanegaard: The aesthetics is a little bit elusive. We have long summer nights, so maybe there's something, you see the way that the color changes over time from six to nine and it's like very elusive experience and the clouds turn a different color and shade. That's maybe how I see the industrial design bit that is not focused on the physical aspects, but more that feeling that you're trying to get, that experience that you want to give it sort of should give you that innate pleasure that comes from looking at it.
[00:40:50] Mads Svanegaard: But it's not something that you can put your finger on and say. That's the thing I like about it. It's more like it's a feeling that is being invoked when you look at it.
[00:40:58] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: Would that be
[00:40:58] Fraser Greenfield: something you [00:41:00] might be able to say is distilled in Scandinavian design culture? This idea of cozy, comfortable being in indoors during this very long winter nights and maybe in being encouraged to go outdoors in those long summer days.
[00:41:13] Mads Svanegaard: Yeah, some of it. But again, in furniture design, there's been a tradition to have these choices of materials, which is wood and then leather or some sort of material that feels very warm to the touch because it's so cold half the time of the year here in Denmark, and it's raining a lot in Denmark. So
[00:41:32] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: it's really, really like you come into your house, you want to be able to
[00:41:35] Mads Svanegaard: get warm really fast, and you
[00:41:37] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: snuck it into your nice chair and put on a blanket and just, you know, sit there and
[00:41:42] Mads Svanegaard: get warm.
[00:41:43] Mads Svanegaard: Maybe by a fire place if you have that, but this sort of warm and ness, or you
[00:41:48] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: can say that you wanna be embraced in some way.
[00:41:52] Mads Svanegaard: That could be something that is maybe more seen in Danish design. But then on the other hand, you have [00:42:00] these very sharp, great lines. There's a company called Hi I think,
[00:42:03] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: or
[00:42:04] Mads Svanegaard: hey, depending on how you pronounce it, they're Danish designed to, and they also have very soft.
[00:42:10] Mads Svanegaard: Designs, but they also have very stringent and straight lines in a lot of their designs. This clean and simplicity I think is very strong in Danish design in general.
[00:42:21] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: And would
[00:42:21] Fraser Greenfield: you say some of that comes from maybe influence from further south, like France, Germany, perhaps even the Soviet Union? Once upon a time?
[00:42:28] Fraser Greenfield: I'm
[00:42:28] Mads Svanegaard: not that well versed in the history of design, but I think the whole Bauhaus movement definitely influenced a lot of Danish designers. And that was German. So I think that this movement towards functionalism has been a long process. And then of course, being very much influenced about what is possible with production methods in the heyday.
[00:42:51] Mads Svanegaard: And then today, right when you have a lot more options in terms of material choices and moldability or treatments of different materials afterwards, [00:43:00] the best designs actually utilize current development process technologies to their limit. They can do that and they still work really well. You have something that is unique and probably also very iconic.
[00:43:12] Mads Svanegaard: I've seen that specifically in a lot of furniture designs, but also with some of the products that I have been involved working with. We've also tried to push everything we could in terms of moldability, and we've definitely challenged engineering departments and mold experts and stuff like that to the limit to see if we could
[00:43:31] Fraser Greenfield: make it work.
[00:43:33] Fraser Greenfield: So you are the reason why every good toolmaker I know is bold. One of the reasons
[00:43:41] Mads Svanegaard: we're dated, we're dated, we're dated, we're dated, we're dated, we're dated, we're
[00:43:45] Fraser Greenfield: dated. What would you say is your biggest failure to date, and what lesson did you learn from it? I think I
[00:43:51] Mads Svanegaard: have had a lot of failures, smaller ones, bigger ones from an economical point of view, and I think that's actually a really important thing to get through to, especially [00:44:00] young designers that worry that they might make a colossal mistake that would cost a lot of money to the company.
[00:44:05] Mads Svanegaard: And I've done that when I was an engineer. I had a project I worked on at a hearing aid company where I. Designed to develop a battery door for a hearing aid and construct that one. And I took over that part from another engineer and he was like halfway through and I just worked on that for a couple of months and tried to get it ready for production and talked to the tooling guys, and we had all these things cleared out.
[00:44:30] Mads Svanegaard: The tool was made eight weeks or 12 or whatever. And then we got the tool, we got the first outer tool samples. I was really happy. It looked really nice and then tried to put it in the base shell of the hearing aid that it was supposed to fit into and it didn't fit. And I was like, what is going on here and why is it?
[00:44:49] Mads Svanegaard: And I measured it, and it was 0.2 millimeters too wide to fit in. Mm. I went back and I looked, there must be an error, looked at my file that I sent to the two [00:45:00] makers, and that was the same dimensions as I had just measured, so I made a mistake. I didn't check the other guy's work because this width was already defined by him.
[00:45:12] Mads Svanegaard: My learning from that one is it's a hundred thousand dollars tool learning. We had to make a new one. We had to wait 12 weeks until that came and it fit obviously cuz it was the only thing that was wrong with it.
[00:45:24] Fraser Greenfield: They couldn't tack weld on the tool and just
[00:45:26] Mads Svanegaard: bore it back out? No, because it was too wide, so we had already taken too much material off the tool.
[00:45:32] Mads Svanegaard: We had to put up material on. That's not possible because it's so small. The width was 18 millimeters or something like it's really, really tiny, tiny product. And tiny, tiny tool. And you use very, very high quality. Very high tolerance. Yeah, very high tolerances. And then just head subscribe it and then go and do it again with the correct dimensions.
[00:45:54] Mads Svanegaard: I worried when that happened. You know, what
[00:45:56] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: are my bosses gonna say? But they were like, yeah,
[00:45:58] Mads Svanegaard: that was bad. [00:46:00] And then that was it. And they were like, yeah, we'll make a new one. It might have been because it was a medical device company, and at that time there were plenty of money around, so it wasn't that big of an problem.
[00:46:12] Mads Svanegaard: But I think the key takeaway for me was that yes, it can happen to everybody. Check your work before you push it out to to makers. Just another time, just to make sure you have the overall dimensions right, because especially if it has to fit to somebody in the end, you can save a lot of money by just double checking stuff.
[00:46:31] Mads Svanegaard: So double check.
[00:46:35] Fraser Greenfield: You heard it here first. Double check your work. Make sure no one changed the critical dimension before you ship out a part to tooling. Definitely. Oof. Don't think I've made mistake that big before. Well, any other advice you'd give to aspiring designers just starting out? Um,
[00:46:52] Mads Svanegaard: Yeah, I mentioned it before, but reach out to your network.
[00:46:55] Mads Svanegaard: Get some coffee dates. Start building up your network, and if you don't feel like you have a [00:47:00] big network already, then start reaching out to people outside your network. Look online, look for areas that you are interested in, and then figure out who is already prominently featured in that area, and then reach up.
[00:47:15] Mads Svanegaard: Lot of designers that I know and that I've had the pleasure of talking with over the years has always been very open and somebody reaches out. They just like, they would like to help if they can and if they have the time. That can lead to relationships, like friendships. It could also lead to business opportunities down the line or jobs.
[00:47:33] Mads Svanegaard: But again, reach out. That's the first step. And it's really, really hard when you're introvert, but then there's some email and that's a good way to start. What does that process
[00:47:42] Fraser Greenfield: look like? Are you just going on LinkedIn or emailing companies?
[00:47:46] Mads Svanegaard: All of the above. Doesn't really matter how you do it, but if you, for instance, are at a conference or you're at a talk, you look for morning meetings at your local design agency or something like a, typically, here in Denmark, we have a few [00:48:00] consultancies and they sometimes do morning meetings,
[00:48:02] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: and if you can get, you know, just
[00:48:04] Mads Svanegaard: your.
[00:48:04] Mads Svanegaard: Right. I would outlet to attend just cuz I'm curious and I would like to join some design can definitely get in. So get in there, start looking and asking and just being open-minded and engaged with people. Or it's a big conference. Go there and sometimes there's like an after party or something. Then then be there and have fun and engage.
[00:48:27] Fraser Greenfield: Be an extrovert for just a night.
[00:48:29] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: Yeah, work
[00:48:29] Mads Svanegaard: on your extrovert skills is definitely important and fun. But also practice your skills. That's also a very, very important thing to think about, especially the skills that you're interested in already. Like if there's something that you lean towards or tend to want to do, then try and build out those skills.
[00:48:45] Mads Svanegaard: Because if you have good skills in that area, you probably end up doing something along those lines. And last advice is not a sprint. You're not necessarily going to be an overnight success. So look at it from the long range perspective that you [00:49:00] have a lot of years. That you're going to work with this field.
[00:49:03] Mads Svanegaard: So think about that and be open-minded and that can lead to new opportunities along the way.
[00:49:09] Fraser Greenfield: Some real good advice out there. It's a marathon in the end, and the tortoise usually wins.
[00:49:15] Mads Svanegaard: There's a night book that just, I think it came out not too long ago where it says, after all, there's no finish line. I think that's a fitting phrase.
[00:49:23] Mads Svanegaard: Also, in design, everything
[00:49:26] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: can evolve and will be evolve
[00:49:28] Mads Svanegaard: also, in terms of a design. When you start using that, you get new needs based on that, and then you have to solve those issues maybe, and then there's a new product that has iteration or something completely new, but there's no finish line. That could be a product that you set.
[00:49:43] Mads Svanegaard: This is the line in the sand, but the sand, it's a desert, so you just have to keep walking and setting a new line somewhere.
[00:49:50] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: The adventure never ends.
[00:49:52] Mads Svanegaard: Dated. We dated. We dated. Dated. We're dated.
[00:49:55] Fraser Greenfield: Thanks. Mess for crumbing on the show today. We really appreciate you joining us and sharing your story. It's been [00:50:00] really
[00:50:00] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: quite enlightening.
[00:50:01] Inro-Outro-Sweeper: Thank you guys
[00:50:02] Mads Svanegaard: for having me. It's been a real pleasure. Super cool to get to know you a little bit more. I definitely enjoyed
[00:50:07] Fraser Greenfield: it and I hope the audience brought to. For those of you listening in, don't forget to check the show notes for any relevant links that we've mentioned, where to follow the show and feel free to contact us.
[00:50:15] Fraser Greenfield: Thank you for listening, and until next time, you'll be listening to.
[00:50:24] Mads Svanegaard: The number you have dialed has not been recognized. Please check and try again the number you have dialed.