As Diego has written about on Metacool, Brain Witlin captures the spirit of the d.school as well as anyone we know. I first got to know Brian when he was a member of a student team in our Creating Infectious Action class that came up with a website called www.firefoxies.com, which led thousands of people to download the Firefox browser. Since Brian graduated from Stanford a couple years back, we have been lucky to have him as a coach in some of our d.school classes over the last couple years. But what has been astounding is all the different ways that Brian has been combining his design skill with his keen sense of what people want and think is cool. Earlier in the year, he was written-up in Wired for inventing a device called a "Lamitron" for the hip bag company, Timbku2, where Perry Klebhan is CEO. Here is how Wired put it
The goal here is to turn recyclables into chic laptop and messenger
bags. Witlin, 28, hatched the idea at Stanford’s Institute of Design
(where Klebahn doubles as a professor). By heating polyethylene bags
just enough to fuse them together, he creates a tough, flexible
material that he hopes will become a stand-in for Cordura or canvas.
Using specs from Timbuk2, he built a $100 machine to make 8-foot-long
sheets of the stuff, suitable for cutting and sewing. Lamitron 1.0 may
be crude, ugly, and potentially flammable, but it works. "Innovation is
not a clean sport," Klebahn says.
The finished totes look super cool, in a battered, Blade Runner sort of way.
Check out the prototype bag from the Lamitron — Timbuk2 is working with Brian’s company RootPhi to bring these precluded bags to market — above is one of the prototypes and you can read more here.
At the same time the Brian has been working on these other projects (including helping me a bit to spread the word about The No Asshole Rule), he has been coming up with all sorts of other ideas for other products and businesses — as Diego says, he is the ultimate "just do it" entrepreneur and designer. Perhaps the most promising of these ideas is product called "Golaces," which are these stretchy rubber sort of things that you use on our sneakers instead of laces — which look cool and turn your sneakers into slippers (which also allow you to get your shoes on and off fast — very hand for airport security screening lines — and help kids who want tie shoes now but, well, aren’t quite ready for them yet). Golaces has garnered a lot of interest from both major shoe companies and retailers, and is starting to appear in stores. But if you can’t wait find Golaces near you right now, or are just curious about this new product, check out www.golaces.com, which just launched.
I hope that Golaces are huge hit, and things sound like they are going great. But no matter what happens, Brian has so many ideas and acts on them so quickly, we will see A LOT more new products and cool business ideas from him in the coming years. Brian ‘s ability to do brainstorming and rapid prototyping — and to be a constructive part of a team — are among the keys to his success.
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