(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Picture walking into a room full of engineers
on your first day.
Nobody knows what you do, nobody's worked with
someone like you before, and the first thing
someone asks you to do is pick a
colour.
I'm just here to pick the colour of
whatever material you're trying to use on the
prototype.
In this episode I sit down with Dan
Salisbury, someone who's spent over a decade at
some of the most respected design consultancies in
the country, then walked away from all of
it to become the only industrial designer inside
a startup building robotic lab systems.
Recruit really good people and then trust them
to do their job.
Systems that are currently being used to profile
cancer biopsies, accelerate drug discovery, and compress testing
timelines that used to take weeks down to
days.
There's like 100% intent, like this has
to launch, otherwise we collapse as a business
kind of thing.
That's design that isn't decorative, that's design that's
consequential.
He had to earn his place from day
one, not with a portfolio, not with a
pitch, just by doing the work and waiting
for people to get it.
Most of them didn't, until they did.
Yeah it was like, I can have it,
I can see the impact I can have
here, and I really believe in what the
product has the potential to do.
And before any of that, there's the story
of standing on a stage in front of
one of the most iconic figures in design
history, a project he'd rehearsed hundreds of times.
Did it go the way he planned?
Not quite.
But what came next is something he hasn't
forgotten.
This is a conversation about belief, impact, and
what it actually means to do design that
matters.
This is Y-Design.
Dan Salisbury, welcome to Y-Design.
Great to have you on the show.
So you've spent over a decade working in
consultancy at DCA and then Layer, before making
the move over to, I'm going to get
this wrong, automata or automator?
Yeah, I got it wrong as well when
I first joined.
It's automata, it comes from automaton, some sort
of Latin reference, I think.
Automata, right.
Okay, so I'm probably going to say that,
you know, five different ways throughout this interview,
but please do correct me.
So automata, you spent just over three years
there now.
Before we kind of dive into how you've
built out automata's hardware function from scratch, let's,
you know, go back to a moment where
everything shifted for you.
You know, ten years in consultancy to then
in-house.
Was there a moment where you realized, automata,
that this is going to be different from
consultancy life?
Yeah, I'd always had in the back of
my mind about going in-house at some
point.
I think it kind of just depended on
what it was that the company did, so
it had to be something that I'd be
interested in, that would excite me.
Obviously, being a consultancy, you get exposed a
lot to the ways of working with in
-house companies.
A lot of the clients with having consultancy
will often have their own design teams, but
they would tend to onboard agencies when they
didn't have the bandwidth or they wanted to
explore something about the kind of like red
tape of a bigger in-house company.
But I didn't want to be kind of
like a cog in the machine, you know,
just being part of a design team in
some sort of like mega corporation.
I think it was just timing, really, like
the automata job, I saw it on LinkedIn.
And the remit was, you know, we have
this hardware product, but we don't have any
industrial design.
So the early remit was to basically come
in, define a design language, define design principles,
and then implement that in the product and
get that product rolled out.
And it was very rapid, like automata was
a startup.
So I think like the opportunity to fit
impact was what attracted me.
So yeah, I was like about three years
into my time at Layer, and the job
came up, saw the description, reasonably, you know,
excited by it.
So I just went for it.
Because generally, I've always kind of followed my
gut, what feels right, and what excites me.
And it did.
But there was other opportunities I was exploring
there at the time that didn't quite feel
right.
So this one did.
So yeah, a long way around of saying
that's kind of, it just excited me when
I saw the job description, really.
We'll dive into that a little bit later,
because I have a terrible habit of going
completely off script after the first question.
So we'll dive into that.
But what did it feel like, you know,
joining automata and to be the only designer
in a deep tech lab surrounded by engineers
and roboticists?
Yeah, it was a bit, particularly from Layer,
where you're going from somewhere which the entire
team pretty much is industrial designers.
I was then put into an environment where
at the time when I joined, there was
maybe about 30 people in the hardware team,
kind of a mix of mechanical engineers, electronics,
like software people.
And they were all put in place to
develop what was automata's products at the time,
which is a robot arm.
So it was all very much like, get
this very complex, highly engineered thing into production.
And nobody had ever worked with an industrial
designer before.
So there was a bit of a task
in terms of people understanding what I did.
I remember being asked in my first week
to pick a color for something.
I was like, I'm not just here to
pick, you know, pick the color of whatever
material you're trying to use on the prototype.
So I feel like the bigger challenge really
is like, trying to work and collaborate with
people when they don't really understand what you've
been born to do.
I think really the only way you can
explain it, you can describe it, you can
run through your past experience, but the only
real way is to actually just demonstrate it.
So now three years in, like the engineers
who are still here from when I first
joined, you know, they get it now because
they've seen the impact from like a prototype,
which was very, you know, functional.
Through to now, like we're on the second
generation of what that's become.
So I think now they definitely see like
results of it.
But yeah, it's just kind of more like
demonstrate by doing.
You can't really explain industrial design.
It's hard to explain it.
People don't quite get it.
Yeah, it's coming from a consultancy background, especially
layer where you're surrounded by design.
You know, there's an assumption that people know
what it is by osmosis, but yeah, surrounded
by electronics and kind of engineers.
But some probably don't see the point, you
know, a lot of the time because, you
know, they're the stuff that's making the magic
happen.
But was that hard, you know, those early
days of kind of justifying your position?
I think what made it easier was the
design team.
You know, like my boss who brought me
in, who was the head of design, she's
from a digital background, but she was great
in terms of like, just bringing me in
and trusting me as an expert in it,
just let me hit the ground running.
And then there was also a few of
the UX designers and visual designer.
And even though they're slightly different discipline, you
know, they get it.
So at least like I had like the
like minded people around me.
So that definitely helped.
But it didn't really bother me in terms
of, I guess, like trying to help people
understand the role.
Because like I said, like, it's a very,
it's a start up, it's very fast paced.
I just did what I do.
And then the results kind of speak for
themselves.
And then people get it.
And also, like, I've kind of, I think
any industrial designers had this battle like their
whole career with even, you know, engineers, or
passing comments of like, I'll just make it
look pretty, like that kind of thing, which
always like gets under the skin of not
just industrial designers, I guess, under the skin
of the digital designers over with as well.
And I've always had that battle.
I had that battle at uni when there
was like a BSc side of the course,
which they would deride the BA side of
the course a lot saying it's just about
pretty pictures.
I even had it, you know, a DCA
from more of the engineering people, they just
saw design as like a beautification exercise rather
than anything else.
But if you get it, you get it.
That's fine.
And it's fine if you don't get it.
As long as you trust people to do
their job.
Slightly contentious one here.
But what do you say to people who
might refer to industrial designers as felt tip
fairies?
Because I've heard that kind of banded around
many times throughout my career.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, generally, I've always found like, if
someone holds that opinion, you can never really
change it.
And even if you demonstrate otherwise, you still
tend to get those, like sort of snippy
comments from time to time.
The way I always try and explain it,
like when people say, I'm making it look
pretty.
The way I talk about it is it's
giving something an identity.
You know, it's not arbitrary.
But it's not aesthetics for the sake of
aesthetics, which like something, you know, like art
would be, there's a meaning and a purpose
and a rationale behind it.
So, you know, I could talk for hours
on like, the design language and the design
strategy behind like automotive hardware and why everything
has been treated how it is.
And part of that design strategy is also
taking into account, you know, the market we're
in, differentiation from our competitors.
Where it's a lot of the space we're
in is like it's B2B and a lot
of B2B products just have no consideration for
like an end user and no consideration for
industrial design.
So those people working in those spaces to
then bring a little bit of joy, bring
a little bit of like, it's like higher
quality execution and thought to things just makes
their lives a bit better, even though they're
not the end customer.
And it also takes into account the manufacturing
process we have to use.
So like I've built a design language here,
which we are low volume.
So we're always driven down routes of like,
you know, a lot of it is just
anything you fabricate, CNC sheet or, you know,
five axis and a bit of, yeah, it's
basically the other, basically the two manufacturing processes
we can use.
And I've let into that for the design
language as well.
So that's kind of like the impact of
what industrial design does.
If it was felt it varies, it would
just be like, oh, here's like a pretty
picture of what a bench could be, but
no thought about how to actually make it
like on cost or deliver a good experience
for the person using it.
That's the added layer, isn't it?
That's the bit that adds impact and value.
It's the kind of the pretty bit, but
then the actual functional, what the why bit
and the how.
So fantastic.
Well, let's ask the podcast title question now.
As I said, we've flipped things around slightly
because we usually lead with this, but let's
dive into your origin story and kind of,
you know, why design?
What led you down this path of industrial
design in the first place?
Yeah, I was thinking about this this morning,
you know, with the podcast coming up and
I was trying to go back.
And I think it started, I remember in
year, probably year eight, like secondary school, I
don't know how old you are, like 12
or 13, did some sort of like questionnaire
about careers, you know, and I remember graphic
design being one of the results of that
questionnaire.
Wasn't really something I was aware of at
the time.
I think when you're 12 or 13, you
don't really think about the process behind that
goes into everyday things and objects around the
world.
But like graphic design was maybe a bit
more understandable.
You know, logos, posters, that kind of stuff.
So I kind of gravitate towards that initially.
I would say as well, it also suggested
like park ranger as one of the options
as well.
So I don't know how good this thing
was.
But at least I've seen the hat with
your beard, you know, strong look.
I don't know.
There's probably some question about working outdoors or
something.
Maybe I said I'd be slightly interested in
that.
I don't know.
That kind of planted the seed.
And then my secondary school offered graphic design
as a GCSE.
So I just took it generally at school.
I just took the subjects I was interested
in.
I didn't really think about it from like,
what I want to do and all that
point of view.
It's just that I enjoy doing design.
So out of like cooking and whatever the
DT curriculum was, graphic design was the most
prevalent one.
It was like textiles or cooking with either
options.
So I was doing that GCSE.
And then I just went to my local
state comprehensive.
But around that time, the school became a
specialist technology college, which I still don't really
know what it meant.
But I think fundamentally, they got a bit
more funding for design technology.
So they actually offered as an A-level
product design and technology, I think was the
title.
And this was before like UX and UI
designers hijacked product design as a job title
and job description.
But really that was about, it was an
industrial design GCSE and A-level essentially.
You got to pick something to design, you
run through that concept, you did a bit
of model making, you presented it, you did
a bit of design for manufacturing, cost analysis
essentially.
And my A-level teacher, again, I didn't
really realize this was a thing you can
do in the real world.
But my A-level teacher at the time,
Mr. Bird, he said, I think it was
just a chat one time.
I was good at it, I was getting
good results and good marks.
Then he said, you can go do this.
And he pushed me towards, he went to
Loughborough himself.
He said, yeah, Loughborough is one of the
best places.
I think at the time, we're talking 2007,
I think, around this time, 2007, 2008.
So Loughborough, Brunel, and Northumbria were probably the
three big universities at the time if you
were going into design.
I started going to open days.
But he was the one who really made
me realize that it was not just a
job you could go and do, but actually
something I was capable of going to do.
So for me, I just enjoyed it.
So I just followed it.
From that point, I followed it to graphic
design through to the design A-level, and
then through to going and doing industrial design
at Loughborough University.
And really, like I said, I just followed
what I enjoyed.
Yeah, I think he's probably been the most
impactful teaching figure, I guess, in my career
and that kind of thing, exactly what a
teacher should do.
And sadly, he passed away suddenly a few
years ago.
And a bit of trivia, his son is
Max Bird, who plays for Bristol City now.
He was in the Derby Academy.
So yeah, so his son's a championship footballer.
But yeah, like he was a great, great
source of, I guess, like helping me understand
and pushing me in the right direction, seeing
what I could do, I guess.
So that's why design.
And then from there, really, it's pretty, you
know, that focus is already narrowed.
And, you know, I went to go to
consultancy once I started to get towards the
end of the course, and just for that
breadth of product exposure, ended up chatting to
DCA folk at the degree show at Loughborough,
got the job at DCA, before I'd been
there for a couple of years and had
been there for seven years.
But I moved down to London and joined
Layer.
And then, yeah, now three years at Layer,
I hopped to Automata, where now I'm in
for another three years.
So yeah, it moved back.
I guess you would have been a year
or two behind Benjamin Hubert at Loughborough.
Yeah, I think then I remember seeing his
sketches for his final year project up around
what was the Bridgman Centre at the time.
That's not there anymore.
Yeah, he was probably, I think he graduated
in 2008, maybe.
I think he might graduate the year I
started potentially.
He's probably about 40 now.
So yeah, he'll be maybe four or five
years ahead of me.
But yeah, I guess I was like, kind
of aware of him from a very early
point.
And I'll be able to go to Loughborough
as well.
Did you work together at DCA or had
he left by that point?
No, he left before I started.
But again, he'd definitely left his mark at
DCA on some of the projects.
Yeah.
That's cool.
It's interesting how these things overlap.
I've got a friend who studied in the
same cohort as Benjamin and they've gone in
completely different paths.
Paul's gone down more of a manufacturing route
in the Midlands.
And then Benjamin's obviously doing this very exciting
projects down in London.
Let me pause here for a moment.
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At KODU, we help physical product teams make
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Let's talk before you commit.
When you look back, Dan, at your early
years at DCA, what kind of designer were
you then?
I'll be honest, I wasn't very good.
In terms of, I often joke, I did
a lot of recruitment.
Like a bit later on at DCA, I
did a lot of recruitment.
I did a lot of recruitment at Layer
as well.
So seeing lots of portfolios.
The bit I always took in the back
of my mind was I was dismissing portfolios
or rejecting them and stuff when they were
far better than what I was doing at
that age.
But I think also, I think the tool
sets changed and I think the bar has
just risen.
I think particularly, there was no real rendering
when I was around the time of graduation.
KeyShot didn't exist.
And I think that and some of the
CAD tools have gotten way easier to use.
So now you are seeing much more polished,
refined designs.
I think also where you can see inspiration
has changed.
There was no Pinterest and that kind of
stuff when I was doing this kind of
stuff.
But yeah, my portfolio was quite weak looking
back at what it was when I graduated.
But I think it was more from how
I was presenting the work and the things
I was talking about.
And also just my approach to styling.
I think I used to overcomplicate the way
I was approaching form and detailing.
It was too complex.
I think the hardest thing to do as
an illustrator is kind of restraint, but restraint
in a compelling way without it looking basic
or simple.
But I think there was enough there that
they saw, I guess, potential.
I did my placement year at Diageo.
So Umbrella Corporation, you were in lots, you
know, Smirnoff, Ginnett, Johnnie Walker.
So there was a lot of like primary
packaging and one-off like airport duty-free
type things I was working on there for
like Johnnie Walker and that kind of stuff.
So there was a bit of FMCG packaging.
So coming out of uni, I remember like
the packaging department at Seymour Powell, I interviewed
there.
They made it very clear that if you
join the packaging team, it's not a shortcut
to joining their like ID team because they
had different teams.
But then also GCA, you know, with their
clients, a lot of their clients being like
GSK and Reckitt Benckiser and a few of
the FMCG brands.
I think they saw that and were like,
okay, that could be useful.
And Tip Sharp was the head of design
at GCA at the time and he brought
me in.
I think like to answer your initial question,
I think I was probably not confident enough
to stick to what I felt comfortable with.
So I was trying to be the kind
of designer that I was seeing the other
designers at GCA being, which was like a
lot of, you know, everyone at GCA at
that time had a giant Wacom tablet.
So a lot of the work would be
in the early, like the first stages of
work would be really beautiful, like Wacom digital
sketches.
But I've never really been that strong at
sketching, not from a presentation point of view,
like I'll sketch rough and dirty.
But I've always been really strong and really
quick in CAD.
So I can visualize head very well in
3D.
And I would just like, now, I just
jump into CAD, I can mock something in
CAD and render it quicker than I could
like do layers and layers of sketching.
And I think the industry has now shifted
towards that.
But at the time, it was still a
bit more traditional focus where you would present
sketches in like a first phase.
And I was struggling with that.
And like the feedback I would get would
be like, yeah, I was on, I almost
didn't pass my probation period.
Oh, really?
Yeah, there was a bit of debate around
the time.
You know, again, I was showing promise, but
not quite enough.
And then I really hit the ground running
at DCA when I kind of ignored the
feedback around, don't go into CAD too early.
And all this kind of stuff.
So I decided, okay, I'm going to go
into CAD.
And then I'll sketch over it.
You know, I then just like use my
skill set to then help support the projects.
So that took a couple of years like
to kind of get to that level of
confidence.
But once I kind of embraced, like I
just played to my strengths.
I think eventually the feedback of like, oh,
Dan jumps into CAD too early and like
my performance reviews and stuff that stopped coming
because they realized that actually, that's like how
I work.
And then for the end of everyone, I
would have to take a layer, like the
first phases of, even towards the end of
DCA, like first phase presentations would be like
photo realistic renders of like the perfect detail
CAD and everything.
That's just like the way it's moved to
now.
So yeah, any advice I'd give to anyone
is just like stick to your strengths.
Don't try and be like other designers because
everyone's different and how they approach problems.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I've agonized over this over the
years when you're building teams and everyone's got
their own strengths, but as a consequence, they've
got gaps.
They've got weak areas that they're not so
strong in.
And when I was kind of a young
manager trying to train someone on something that
they weren't particularly good at all, probably weren't
that bothered about really.
They didn't see the point of it because
they were really good in other areas.
And as soon as I started, someone said
to me, why are you wasting so much
energy trying to force this person to be
someone that they don't want to be?
If I just make the most out of
what they're really good at, if they're good
for the business, and then you can find
other people or you can compensate in other
areas because you've got a good blend in
the team.
So as soon as I realized that, it
reduced a lot of stress for me personally
because it's like, well, that person is going
to be less annoyed because they're doing something
they don't enjoy that they're all good at
and they're going to be happy doing the
things that they're good at.
And I can turn my attention to encouraging
that and getting them better at the things
they're good at.
So yeah, I love that.
You mentioned that you met Dieter Rams.
Yes.
In your career as well.
How did meeting him kind of shape your
idea of what good design means?
Um, yeah, even now, it was like I
realized it's actually 10 years ago.
Yeah, it was 2015.
So there was something called, I can't remember
the order of these things, but I think
something that DCA worked quite good at was
if people had ideas, they'd let them explore
concepts.
And if those concepts were kind of like
compelling, they would fund like submissions to design
awards.
So, you know, I did get a couple
of IFs and red dots for concepts we
worked up.
And, you know, they're not cheap, but, you
know, DCA were good at investing in that.
And, you know, for me to go to
the awards ceremony sometimes and that kind of
thing.
But like, I think this one came about
was there's a guy called James May.
He's still at DCA now, and he predominantly
works in, like, I can't see, forgot.
It's like basically B2B, side of the business,
I think it's called now.
He had this idea to do a fuse
box.
I think his idea was, why can't the
fuse box be used to like actually monitor
your energy consumption?
I think that was kind of like the,
like I said, the light bulb, the light
bulb he had.
And when I heard this, it was one
of those ones where just the idea of
like how to do that almost just came
fully formed into my head.
Like I barely did any, you know, I'll
talk about jumping into CAD.
I pretty much like jumped into CAD.
I think I did two options and I
just went with one of them.
And that one was the one that I
visualized pulled together into like the submission.
And I think originally I was just pulling
it together to sort of submit to a
Red Dot concept or something.
And, you know, I went with James on
that and there was a couple of other
guys who supported from electronics point of view,
like some of the electronics engineers, a chap
called Charles Sparrow.
Worked it up.
And then I think at the time, I
just saw, you know, there was the Braun
Prize, 2015 Braun Prize.
I think the Braun Prize, they only do
it every three years, I think.
It's not like an annual thing.
And it's also, you don't pay to play,
you know, like Red Dot and IF, you
know, you pay to enter that you pay
even more if you win.
This one was, they pick just three, like
out of the submissions, they pick the top
three.
And then you get to go, you'd go
to Germany, go to the Braun HQ and
then present.
And then the audience then votes for gold,
silver, bronze, essentially.
And they have like, there's a professional category,
a student category and like a hobbyist enthusiast
category, something like that.
And the Braun Prize came active.
And the theme for that year was the
extra in the ordinary.
So ordinary objects, which maybe have become maligned,
not really thought about too much.
Like the fuse box was just like perfect
for it.
Like something that's never really been thought about
in terms of how it's designed.
So we submitted it, waited a few minutes
and then yeah, got an email, came through
saying like, you know, congratulations, you're in the
last three.
So I think it was something that has
like, there's maybe 3,000 submissions or something.
We've got the last three for the concept.
Um, so then yeah, we made a model
of it, did some animations to like take
to the show.
And then Dieter Rams was there, you know,
he was part of the audience, he was
part of the jury, not for the actual
deciding the last three, but he was there
to like vote on it on the last
day.
And he was like sat in front row.
And again, credit to DCA, you know, I
was 25 at the time, I was a
mid weight designer.
And Nick Bible, who's the director at DCA,
he let me present.
I think like, but the companies may be
like, you know, this, you know, the creative
director or someone senior or lead would then
take that responsibility.
But they let me present the project to,
you know, Dieter Rams and an auditorium of
around, I don't know, 200 odd people, which
was a very interesting experience.
It's probably the most practiced I've ever been.
Normally my presentation starts, I don't rehearse, I
don't script it, because then it feels forced.
But this one we ran through hundreds of
times before the show.
And yeah, when I did the presentation, we
came second.
The thing that won was a life jacket.
So I think like monitoring energy versus saving
someone's life, you know, that's always going to
win that kind of thing.
And then yeah, in the after party, I
think at the time Dieter would have been
maybe 85, something like that.
And he had this like really beautifully made
walking stick, which apparently people always ask him
where he got it, but apparently someone made
it for him.
And he was like joining in in the
party essentially, you know, he was stopping for
photos and there was lots of like students
there and younger designers all having photos with
him.
He shook my hand, he said congratulations.
We had a brief chat.
And yeah, it's one of those things where
it's just the end, even now it just
feels a bit surreal that I met him.
But also one of the jury was Benjamin
Hubert.
So that was my first exposure, like direct
exposure with him.
So I met him then.
So at least he was, when I did
actually approach Lair eventually, he was already aware
of me.
So it was quite a few years that
I actually made the move to Lair after
that.
But yeah, it was just, I still don't
think there's ever going to be something in
my career that would top that in terms
of when else do you ever get to
meet Dieter Rams.
It was like the point of it.
So yeah, it was, and you also presented
him.
So yeah, that was a really, really quite
amazing thing to do with Shaker.
So it just still feels bizarre.
Yeah.
I mean, it's a, it's a top recruiting
strategy from Benjamin as well, isn't it?
Set on a jury and then, you know,
just keep tabs on the top three.
But yeah, what a pivotal moment for you.
That's amazing.
So yeah, well, let's talk about the shift
then from consultancy to automata.
Told you I'd struggle with that.
So after spending over a decade in agency
and then jumping into automata, what was it
that kind of, that cemented that leap for
you?
You mentioned that the advert stood out.
You were clearly open to opportunities by the
kind of towards the end of your time
at Lair.
But what was it specific, specifically about automata
that really grabbed you?