evan neumann

I started in hotels and restaurants, working around central Europe and Northern California. My time in Europe was the most influential on my style. The classical beauty of European architecture and the anti-materialist sentiment of the populace was invigorating to the soul. Later I moved into tech and after a few years I moved towards aesthetic tech. I now consider myself to be a Luddite technologist. That is, I use technology to reinforce existing culture and move it forward in a way that stays firmly rooted in the past. Technology without historicity is degenerate.

Aslaen Vaugn is an offshoot of one of my other businesses, Orbiting Eden. Orbiting Eden is my sandbox and occasionally I spin a business out of it. Previous businesses were a theoretical space station that is self=assembling in situ. Other projects from Orbiting Eden are a web-based space simulator and a robotic avalanche safety device. Aslaen Vaugn was spun off specifically to make couture that is enabled by electronics.

I enjoy creating fundamentally new products. Something that has not been seen or even thought of before.

My favorite designs are in aircraft and architecture. In aircraft, the SR-71 blackbird and the Horten 229 are the pinnacle of design in my opinion. In both cases form followed function in a gorgeous way. They both have an organic feel that was derived from their function and they were respectively the best in their class for decades - perhaps even through today. In architecture Googie pieces like the LAX tower or some mid-century gas stations stand out. Of course, many of the classical churches are remarkable as well. Notre Dame, St. Chapelle, St. Peters Basicalla and Sagrada Familia are particularly noteworthy. The scale, ornamentation and detail makes these buildings so incredible. In modern times, the iPhone and Luminex comes to mind. It is unfortunate that no major fashion designers chose to work with that excellent material.

The first thing I ever designed for a company was a hotel remodel. Even thought that was in the mid 1990s, my inspiration was the same as it is now - to use modern technology to maintain the hotel's historical identity.

Light is my favorite medium. There are many ways to work with light and many illusions light can be used to create. My favorite technology right now is micro-controllers. They blend software and hardware so we can create radical new products that bring dreams to life.

I feel the most creative late at night. Late at night you can be alone with your own thoughts for several hours uninterrupted. These long stretches of uninterrupted time are essential to my creative process whether it is developing software, explosives, satellites or fashion.

I try to keep everything as minimalist as possible to achieve the goals of the design. I also try to hide the technology from the user and use design to "trick" the user into doing the right thing. It is often very complicated to make something easy to use!

Excitement, satisfaction, hope. Designing fulfills my soul. Even if I could not make money I would spend my free time designing new products. Having people willing to buy it and using it is a bonus.

Pride and fear. I am usually proud of my designs and if I am not, I don't release it to the public. Sadly, most of my designs end up in the garbage bin because I have high standards. There is always an element of fear of rejection. My designs are the essence of me and when they are loved, I feel loved. When they are rejected, I feel rejected. So, releasing a new product is always a little stressful.

There are two things needed for a design to be successful. First it needs to be used by people. You can have the best design in the world, but if nobody uses it, it is not successful. The second thing needed is beauty and advancing society. Many things are wildly successful, like Pepsi Cola or McDonalds, but neither of these things is particularly beautiful and they degenerate society rather than advance it. They are used because they are less expensive and more convenient.

The first thing I think of is beauty. Am I drawn to the design and does it speak to my soul. The second aspect, which is related to the first, is how well it does it's job. A handbag must be both attractive and carry your belongings. In our case, we add some additional utility like being able to charge phones that may have run out of power so late in the day.

Designers have a huge responsibility to society and somewhat less to the environment. This is because design has a great impact on society, and somewhat less of an impact on the environment. Design guides society forward. If we design inexpensive hamburgers, we lead society towards homogeneous and unhealthy foods and degrade culture. Whereas if we design unique dishes that reflect the native culture (like escargots in France, wurst in Germany, Carbonara in Italy and sushi in Japan) we advance culture. While our primary focus is on our responsibility to society, we do not ignore our environmental duty. For instance, we reuse our packaging for shipping and source our components as close to point of manufacture as feasibly possible. Not only does this reduce our carbon footprint for shipping, but first world nations typically use more sustainable practices.

My hope is to see a return to beauty. It has become fashionable to use older styles ironically and so to poke fun at our history. It is my hope that designers move back to trying hard to produce classically beautiful objects.

My last exhibition was in February of 2020 at the Coterie show in NYC. Due to the plague that has descended upon us I am not sure what exhibitions will look like in the future. We were scheduled to be in a small runway show in Paris and Moscow in March and April, and when these start happening again, I hope our company can attend.

I enjoy perusing old art. Mostly the classics, but some pieces up through mid-century modern also catch my fancy. Music can be very inspirational and I listen to a variety: classical, ambient electronica, dixieland, folk and some rock. Burning Man in the early 2000s was also very inspiring. The immense creativity involved was overwhelming. Since around 2006, it has become more of a party scene and is therefore less intriguing from an artistic standpoint.

My design style is to use technology to create experiences that seem magic or inexplicable. Technology should be used subtly in design. The technology should be a means to achieve an effect, not as an end unto itself.

My home is near San Francisco and it is a huge advantage when working with technology. When I go out for beers, I meet interesting new people and learn about their industry or art. That said, San Francisco regional design is quite limited and slickly modern. My time living in Europe had a large effect on my concept of style, culture and design. Europeans have an absolute aesthetic advantage over Americans in this way.

I generally don't. At most, I sell products or businesses to larger companies. I have always had difficulty working for others.

Look for unconventional solutions to problems presented in the interview or in reviewing their previous work. This is indicative of an unconventional thinker.

I spend a lot of time dreaming / thinking, especially in the early stages of a design. The later stages are filled with a lot of less-fun work involving making money.

I really like my steel wheelbarrow. It's blue. It has the Miller bent steel tubing frame to hold on the front wheel instead of the bumper bracket that always plows into the ground when going up or down hills. I leave the wheel at low pressure so that it is easier to bounce over obstacles. It's die hard.

Wake up in time to get myself and the kids fed. Head downstairs and check emails / do busywork / make phone calls. After lunch I generally do household work, then it is dinner for the family and after the kids go to sleep is when my real design work starts.

Your design is your own. You can listen to other's suggestions, but never accept that there are professionals who know more about what the public wants than you do. If they knew, they would have made the widget you created.

There are a few different ways to say it: Thinking outside of the box Stepping back Questioning assumptions Most problems are better solved by taking a step back and questioning the underlying assumptions.

Software: Javascript, Java, C++, PHP, Python, Arduino, HTML, CSS, Fusion360, GIMP, EagleCAD, Excel Hardware: lot's of hammers, Hakko tools, lots of solder, 3D printer, glue

When I am not parenting I spend most of my time uninterrupted working for days at a stretch.

A few minutes to a few decades. It depends on the scope of the design. Luminare has taken over a decade of refinement, with several year gaps.

"How did you come up with that?" It's a strange question though. Most ideas are the result of a lifetime of experiences, so the design usually has innumerable, difficult to trace inspirations.

General Manager of Hotel La Rose in Santa Rosa, California. It taught me how to run a business and gave me the confidence to do it.

Explosives and robots. That said, I am terrified of robotic warfare. Didn't any of these military types see Terminator, Matirx or the Borg?

Building out the business around Luminare. The Plague has been a serious dampener though.

I hope to have the time in the next year or two to make a handbag that looks bigger on the inside than the outside, like the Dr. Who TARDIS. The woman will appear to be carrying around a hole in the universe with another galaxy inside of it. Sort of like the pendant on that cat's leash in Men in Black (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7ojSW5pODk).

My goal in design is to make things appear to be magical. That is, to use technology in such a way that a layperson does not understand technology is even being used.

I was a volatile teenager and did not graduate high school. In lieu of college, I lived around central and Eastern Europe, learning the languages and culture, always living with and among locals. This was a very important life stage for me and opened my eyes to the enormous diversity in cultures and peoples. I lived in Dresden when it was still East Germany, Munich, vor Arlberg, Austria, Prague, Moscow and Kiev.

I am compelled to create things. Paid or unpaid, it is irrelevant.

It was an evolution. I don't think anyone is forced to become a designer. Creativity can't be forced.

I like designing fundamentally new concepts. Chemical self-assembling space stations, robotic avalanche control devices and internally lit handbags are my current favorites. Previously, I also designed hotel rooms and web applications.

Allow yourself to become fanatical and obsessive about your ideas and ignore the haters.

A great designer is in tune with the natural world. They use nature to solve man made problems.

Great design usually solves a problem with a novel and simple solution. Coincidentally, the smoothest solutions will be beautiful.

God and nature love beauty. Beauty brings us closer to God and brings us more at one with nature.

I have a design for a space station. The concept is to take a big blob of liquid plastic resin into space and deploy it on the shadowed side of the earth. A chip of ice in the center will sublimate, inflating the plastic resin as a bubble. In the microgravity of space, adhesion and surface tension will force the bubble into a sphere with homogeneous wall thickness. When the sphere orbits into the sunlight, the UV radiation cures the plastic resin and what is left is a 50 meter diameter transparent sphere that can be used as a space station. A 4 mil layer of gold on the exterior applied using sputter technology will make it appear from the exterior like a sometimes transparent rose-gold marble while protecting it from the sun's radiation. From the inside, it would be a giant window with no supports or walls. A sphere is also the strongest shape and holds the largest volume of air while using the least material.

day-dreaming. I spend a lot of time just sitting and thinking, sometimes with ambient electronica or classical in the background, but more often just silent contemplation.

Ferdinand Porsche, Nikola Tesla, Elon Musk, Faberge, Horten Brothers, Kelly Johnson and Werner von Braun.

The Horten 229 is probably my favorite design. It was built on a shoestring budget and is elegant and beautiful beyond words. On top of that it used plant based fuels and was more efficient at it's purpose than any plane made before or after. Moreover, form followed function. When aluminum was scarce wartime commodity in an age of aluminum monococques, it was a wood frame stealth bomber and they used carbon dust in the laminate of the wood to scatter radar and thereby made the world's first stealth bomber. On top of that it was both the fastest jet plane built to date and the most maneuverable, it could out-dogfight the best fighter despite being a bomber. The pilot sat all the way in the front with the jet engine intakes a few feet away on either side and excellent forward and upward visibility. It must have been thrilling to pilot. I also like Victorian era clockwork devices like Jaquet Droz automata. The Antikytheria Device and the pyramids of Egypt are also mind-blowing because we have no idea how these things came to be.

Honestly, the Luminare handbag is my best so far. I believe it has achieved what no digital fashion to date has achieved, namely a design that is beautiful with strong ties to the past and bringing the past into the future. It complies with my overall ideology of being a Luddite technologist.

There was always a large gap between my dreams and what I brought to reality. Doing the little work in between has always been the hardest for me and the most necessary. Also, I had to learn about focusing on the details. I used to just throw any old button onto a device to control it. Understanding that the look and feel of the button was as important as it's function was a leap forward in my designs.

I did it. I have had many careers. General Manager of a boutique hotel was fun. Hard science like satellites and robotic avalanche control are very fun too.

May family. Some close friends have also helped with both engineering issues and financial support.