Josh Nissenboim, co-founder of Fuzzco:

This might get weird for a minute: some couples don’t go to the bathroom together. [Helen laughs] And that blows my mind! How have you never gone to the bathroom with that other person in the room? What I’m saying is, I believe you need to have an incredibly open and comfortable relationship if you’re going to go into business together.

Fuzzco’s other co-founder, Helen Rice:

Exactly. You have to be vulnerable and feel like the other person is truly your partner. You need to be aware of avoiding power struggles and making sure each person has their own, defined role. That’s the best way to work together.

Josh:

And when you’re in the bathroom together, you can get some shit done.

Having long admired Fuzzco’s work, it was a delight to read this husband-and-wife team’s TGD interview.

Radical Candor is one of the most impactful articles I read last year. It’s one I foresee revisiting frequently. Here are several of my key takeaways:

Focus on guidance.

The single most important thing a boss can do, Scott has learned, is focus on guidance: giving it, receiving it, and encouraging it. Guidance, which is fundamentally just praise and criticism, is usually called “feedback,” but feedback is screechy and makes us want to put our hands over our ears. Guidance is something most of us long for.

Aim for radical candor.

Picture a basic graph divided into four quadrants. If the vertical axis is caring personally and the horizontal axis is challenging directly, you want your feedback to fall in the upper right-hand quadrant. That’s where radical candor lies.

Avoid ruinous empathy.

The vast majority of management mistakes happen in the quadrant that I call ruinous empathy

Being critical is a moral obligation.

Challenging others is difficult for many people; saying anything short of positive feels impolite. But once you become a boss, it’s your job to do be equally clear about what’s going wrong, and what’s going right. […] I would argue that criticizing your employees when they screw up is not just your job, it’s actually your moral obligation.

HHIPP!

HHIPP: “Radical candor is humble, it’s helpful, it’s immediate, it’s in person — in private if it’s criticism and in public if it’s praise — and it doesn’t personalize.” That last P makes a key distinction: “My boss didn’t say, ‘You’re stupid.’ She said, ‘You sounded stupid when you said um.’ There’s a big difference between the two.”

​Care personally, but be willing to piss people off.

Caring personally makes it much easier to do the next thing you have to do as a good boss, which is being willing to piss people off.

​

A gem from 2014 that illustrates the difference between:

“Design” is a tall ivory tower.

versus

Ideas are cheap; execution and results are everything.

Props to Julie Zhuo.

​

Some helpful links for living small:

Inspiration

• Less stuff, more happiness — 5-minute TED talk by Graham Hill
• Shoebox Dwelling — One of my favorite blogs: “finding comfort, style & dignity in small spaces.” Mostly products, but some spaces.
• Tiny House Swoon — Small space inspiration.

Furniture

• Milano Smart Living — purchased a wall bed from here
• Resource Furniture — where Graham Hill sourced furniture for his Life-Edited apartment

Spaces

• Space-saving studio in Milan
• LifeEdited2

Last month, my evening bicycle commute up 8th avenue was interrupted by the face of Pope Francis emerging from the whitewashed side of a building. I pulled to the curb, snapped a picture with my iPhone, and continued home. I repeated this ritual four times the following week, thus documenting the painting of a wall mural advertising the Pope’s visit to the USA.

Why did I stop and take notice? Years ago, before living in New York, I watched the short film Up There, which offers a behind-the-scenes look at the rare individuals who hand paint walls for a living. It fascinated me. The opportunity to see many hand-painted walls – and their progress – first-hand is one of the unique joys of living in New York.

Before this week, I had assumed that the Nelson Marshmallow Sofa and the Nelson Ball Clock were designed by their eponym, George Nelson.¹ This is untrue, as I learned in an epitaph written by Michael Bierut this week:

RIP Irving Harper, quiet designer behind George Nelson’s iconic products

Irving Harper, the designer responsible for these objects, passed away last week at the age of 99. An obituary in the New York Times describes his role working with Nelson:

Mr. Harper was famously obscure, working as an industrial designer from 1947 to 1963 for George Nelson, who was often credited with the company’s creations for the Herman Miller furniture line.

Researching Harper’s career reveals a body of work that is as diverse as it is inspiring. For example, he designed the iconic Herman Miller “M” logo, without necessarily intending to do so. DWR’s profile of Harper describes the circumstances:

One of his early projects for Nelson was Herman Miller’s first-ever ad. There was not yet any photography of the furniture, so Harper instead rendered a large “M” – for “Miller” – which is essentially the same logo design that the company uses today. “There was no project to do a logo,” he says. “It was probably the cheapest logo campaign in advertising history.”

Harper described himself as a generalist and executed an impressive body of graphic design work in addition to his industrial design work. Perhaps even more astounding is the world of sculptures Harper created within his home over the span of 40 years. These works are incredible and prompted both a gallery exhibition and a book. However, this was never Harper’s intention. His sculptures were private works created as an antidote to the stressful projects he worked on during the day. He initially considered knitting, but the medium of paper proved a more natural fit for his hands. In a video made for the exhibition, he describes the effects of his work:

Many of the things I do require repetitive behavior, and then they build up to something else. The reason I like the repetition is that I found it relieves stress, and it was very soothing. (5:12)

He didn’t think of himself as an artist:

I never thought in terms of being an artist. I never envisioned myself as an artist. I just made them as they occurred to me and then I went on to the next after it was all done until I ran out of space and I stopped. (6:12)

And he never stopped to think of the commercial value of his creations, as quoted in Herman Miller’s WHY:

“I never sold any of my pieces,” Harper says today. “I had all the money I wanted. Then I would have lost my sculptures and just had more money. I just wanted to have them around.”

If Harper was born of this generation, I can’t imagine him ever tweeting or Instagramming his work. I don’t think it would have occurred to him. In a world where over-sharing is the norm and every creative act is seemingly purposed to exhibit, sell, or self-promote, not only is Harper’s incredible body of work inspiring, but his quiet approach is a fresh breath of air.

Also, be sure to read Sam Grawe’s personal remembrances of Harper in the last years of his life. Taken together with Herman Miller’s video, it offers a heartwarming glimpse into Harper’s home and life.

Some friends recently purchased a Chemex coffee maker, prompting me to remember that it was created in the 1940s (1941 to be exact). Details from the story of the design and its designer, Dr. Peter Schlumbohm, are fascinating and include:

• Its design was influenced by Bauhaus principles: “A table must be a table; a chair must be a chair; a bed must be a bed. … A coffee maker must make coffee.”
• Ironically, Macy’s initially rejected it because it did not look like a coffee maker.
• President Roosevelt played a hand in the success of the Chemex. He granted access to production materials during wartime, after being personally persuaded by a Latin pun written by Schlumbohm.

These details are not to be found on the History page of Chemex’s website. Instead, they’re found in One Hundred Great Product Designs (1970) by Jay Doblin. Doblin corresponded with Schlumbohm to get the full story. As the book is out of print, I scanned the relevant pages. View the PDF.