BEN—To kick off, checking in. Rotenda, Where are you right now and what time is it?

ROTENDA—12:32pm in Munich, seating at a cafe. Autumn season is creeping in, but beautifully sunny today. 

Where are you and how’s it looking on your side? 

BEN—Actually just landed in NYC, it's 11:07am and a somewhat warm early fall day here.

Also, forgot to ask this on the last Extended Exchange, what's the most interesting thing you've seen in the past 30 days?

ROTENDA—Ohhh! I will have to go with a sunglasses case from a friend of mine. It had an amazing colored leather exterior, and a black vector illustration of eyes in the inside where you place your sunglasses. I thought that was cool! We probably didn’t speak on it cause I missed to snap a photo! [Chuckle]

Interested in hearing yours! We’ve had quite a dialogue on cars lately. 

BEN—Cars. Cars. Cars! All I ever think about. [Laughter] Actually, that’s a great prompt. I saw the Ferrari 12 Cilindri in-person in NYC a few back. I really struggle with Ferrari’s new design language as of late and thought the 12 Cilindri looked odd in photos…but in person! Completely flipped my view on it. It’s just incredible… Even in the weird satin black paint the one I saw was wearing.

(We'll cut this one into two pieces with the first half being Rotenda and myself chatting through the design phase and then bringing in Quinner and Dani of Caliper on the fabrication side of things.)

But! More importantly… Been waiting a while to do this Extended Exchange. Probably almost a year at this point... When BEAMS first asked me to do this, I think I called you to tell you about it while on a walk in NYC... I think to say I was excited would be an understatement. It felt like such a massive honor but also a really massive undertaking. What was your initial reaction to the project?

ROTENDA—You were definitely on a walk in NYC! I remember catching the call on the balcony pacing through it, I have to say it was the excitement. Pretty much the whole call we didn’t talk much or even at all about how we were going to design such a project, but more about size, weight and the cultural honour etc. You touched on it a little bit on the launch text, “how such an object means to us/those who have found themselves printing tees, skating etc…

Yourself as someone who is in those conversations and your love of printed has, how easy was it to accept the project?

BEN—It was an instant yes! [Laughter] Like, instant. 

And what’s interesting, if I remember correctly, it went from instant excitement and then took us a while to find an initial design direction. In a lot of ways it was a much slower process than usual - which can make me anxious if I’m honest. I feel like the moment it clicked was a specific image you shared from a factory floor you were passing through of a brightly colored scissor jack? Was that it? 

ROTENDA—That was it, yes! A mechanical, but not so mechanical looking lift, I believe it’s supported by some air pressure system, it just struck me when I walked past. [Laughter] In the photo you can see I was already walking away, but that was the moment I thought “send this to Ben”. From ladders, structural fittings, factory floors, to exterior images of The Centre Pompidou - we exchanged a bunch of references with this one.

BEN—Yes, the Centre Pompidou! Great reminder there. But yes, we became fascinated with creating a small rolling, portable, factory - both literally as well as philosophically. We even talked about this idea that it was almost as if we would cut a piece of factory out and place it into a gallery setting. 

ROTENDA—We might still need that gallery setting! Like we did with the 12345 gloves when visiting the MOMA! 

BEN—To this day I wish I’d captured a better image of you doing that at the MOMA. You were quite bold in that move…

While the design approach, the idea of celebrating factory design, the intense colors for safety, color-coding, and the overall kind of intensely brutal nature of factories is really compelling...what struck us the most was when we zoomed out and realized we were working on the tool that is a deeply important starting place for so many creatives in our world: The screen-printing press that is the birthplace of graphic tees. It's really where so many of us get our first design ideas out of our heads and out into the real world, moving around, etc. 

ROTENDA—Exactly that! It does feel like to go full circle and zoom back to connect with that would be a set of tees printed from it. Didn’t we at a point speak of printed tees with the word “orange” or an orange printed on the tee? Is this where we steered to paint it orange? I remember we had a session where we visualized it in a bunch of colours. Even the full white! 

BEN—We did…maybe we should print that at some point. And yes, actually going to add that multi-color study to the next Image Export. I think the use of orange for me is just the dictionary definition of a “serious” piece of factory equipment. And speaks to the intense nature of the whole thing. It’s like half-signaling danger/caution and half-signaling just general loudness. Which I’d say the final result is indeed a bit loud.

And actually, can you do a deep dive into the “X” side structures? Specifically, why they have open ends? This may seem simple, but I find it to be the most compelling design element of the entire piece. 

ROTENDA—I had to take some time on this, with the honest hope that I can do justice to a feature we held very highly and protected. 

The open ends were something we saw as “corner points” of engaging with the object itself. Some of the little details of the casted shadows, when light shines through, were charming, which further prompted us to the imagination of a tube painted in the inside and out. We must have landed at that from one of our calls talking about colored factory markings on raw steel tubes etc. Which just brings to mind; could you imagine having painted the interior of the “X” tube in Vanta Black? The openings would look like floating shapes/illustrations! 

BEN—That’s a truly wild idea. I think we have to explore that on the next one.

ROTENDA—All in all, having a flush joint of the tubes wouldn’t have been at all our go to, and in questioning what we would do differently, it was important that it wasn’t just for the sake of it, but do something that we feel adds to the way you experience the object as a whole — with the feature being the main visual contributor to its composition/assembly. Without over simplifying, a big of the open ends feature is us paying respect to manufacturing and fabrication processes. Great compliments to Quinner and team! 

BEN—Excellent segue... Quinner, it was - as always, such a pleasure to work with you on this. Your attention to detail is really so rare in this space. Can you explain a bit more about Caliper? And maybe how you’ve become the go-to partner for these often more abstract projects that lean more art than engineering? 

QUINNER—Ben, as you say - always a pleasure. 10 years now that we have been internet friends and so you’re probably one of the few that have seen the whole trajectory. To sum Caliper into a single sentence, I would say we’re the production partner with the design sensibility and cultural understanding to not only execute a set of drawings but guide the end product to be as good as it can be. 

BEN—Ten years!! That’s kind of wild to think. I have to ask. What was your initial reaction to the designs we initially sent over and then the result we landed at?

QUINNER—Viability is always at the forefront of the first pass; material, functionality and execution methods. Where we landed feels super linked to where we started, maybe just slightly more ergonomically considered.

BEN—One of my favorite specific details…I want to talk about the welds. We very specifically wanted them to be really visible. What makes working with you/Caliper so fantastic is that you “get” what that means - you understand nuance so well. But do the welders, fabricators, often wonder why we’re not cleaning them up a bit more?

QUINNER—At this point I think most of the regular suppliers kind of get it. These relationships obviously develop over time but the ones that do get it tend to be the ones we continue working with. 

BEN—Also, we mentioned it a bit above, can you talk about painting down into the openings of the X? Maybe it isn’t a big deal, but I remember working on a sculpture project with Rimowa and wanting to paint the inside of some aluminum tubes and getting a lot of push back on it. Actually, no one would do it. 

QUINNER—We actually had the painter paint it 3 times to get this detail right. As you say it's a typical push back point but it's the kind of favour that you can call on when you’ve been working with these guys for 5+ years. They did say that in their usual line of work, painting air conditioning ducting, it wasn’t a request that had ever come up…came up.

BEN—I had no idea there were three passes on the paint. Incredible. 

Maybe I should have started with this, but it’s important to note we did this entire thing virtually. Email, text messages, and video calls. I’ve still yet to see the final object in person myself. Rotenda in Munich, myself in Chicago and NYC, you guys producing it in Madrid, and then it landing in Tokyo. I personally love working this way, but curious if you prefer in-person or if you’ve fully leaned into the virtual way? Also, sorry I’ve still never come to visit you Madrid. [Laughter]

QUINNER—Weirdly its quite rare that we do get to work in-person. Maybe 5-10% of the work we do is for the local Spanish market and so virtual communication is effectively the norm. But yes, you do need to come and visit. 

BEN—I know. I’m quite ashamed I still haven’t. Sorry man. And actually, I never asked you… How much did the final product weigh?

QUINNER—Good question, we didn’t have scales big enough to weigh it! 

BEN—That is truly incredible that neither of us know the weight. I’m going to track it down from the DHL paperwork.

Lastly, if we had more time, budget, etc on this one… What changes would you have made? Any material or manufacturing process changes? I personally would have loved to make a custom wheel structure from scratch.

QUINNER—Custom wheels as you say would have been incredible, but honestly for me, it's all the subtle changes that we would make in doing the same project again but further improving the execution. Hinges, magnetic closures, sheet metal thickness etc etc. V1 to V1.1 flow. 

BEN—To close it out, per usual, Rotenda and Quinner, what song would you select to play along with this interview? I’m going with Eye in the Sky by Alan Parsons Project. A true Benjamin Edgar theme song.

ROTENDA—I’ll have to go with what I have playing right now doing this interview: Pot Belly by Lou Donaldson. [Laughter] Had me flowing. 

QUINNER—It's Friday afternoon and I’m signing out for the weekend so Lightah by Bakground.