Interviews with Ruma Design

My experience as a designer, like the rest of the team at RUMA, has been very varied,

but mostly focused on car design. We have worked in large companies such as Seat,

Volkswagen Konzern or Ferrari; In countries like Sweden, Spain, Italy or even China.

I always dreamt about creating something different, to imagine new shapes and

volumes from the architecture to fine arts and applying all that to technology and cars

design.

Our style is clean, we try to shape the volumes with purity, seeking harmony, where

function is the most important. Being a designer is a multidisciplinary facet that mixes

art and science, aesthetics and technology, and in this sense our premise is that form

follows function.

Each project is different, it is like a song or a movie and you immerse yourself in it as if

you were living it from the inside, giving your design the expression you want to

transmit. Emotions can be very abstract, sometimes there is a conflict between

opposite feelings creating an internal war that is resolved through my creations.

A lot of people has influenced me along my professional career. It is important to

appreciate the good work of a chief designer or a colleague but it is also important to

learn from other people’s mistakes

Working at the Ferrari design centre in Maranello, Italy, was a crucial experience that

shaped me as a designer. But starting our own design studio, and becoming our own

bosses may in the long term become the most important step we ever took.

Starting our own design studio, and becoming our own bosses may in the long term

become the most important step we ever took. Our plan is to grow our team and be

pioneers in the hi-tech industry

You must remain constant, always try your best, be motivated and train your talent. It

may sound cliché but there are no shortcuts.

We are an up and coming company with incredible talent and experience and our hard

work is paying off in different ways. In RUMA we say, don’t fall in love with your

designs, there is always a way to improve it.

I start the day charging up my batteries with a couple of toasts with olive oil, tomato

and iberic ham and wash it down with freshly pressed orange juice; then I take my bike

and ride down to the studio, where I meet the rest of the team. After a long day of work,

I like to hit the gym to unwind. Once I’ve had supper I like to relax with a book before

sleep.

We feed our creativity with trendy design books, magazines, several on-line platforms

and design communities. The best designers create design trends, the rest of the world

follow those trends.

A good design is when you find a beautiful shape that follows and helps the function;

innovating in technology and materials, optimizing its complexity and adding new

values to the current market.

When all the technical aspects are objectively completed and our artistic criteria are

subjectively satisfied.

A luxury premium Swiss watch that will be launched among this 2020 where we mix a

beautiful balance between materials, technology and Swiss precision, with added

values like the accurate and innovative treatment of the surfaces never seen before.

There are some ‘genius’ like Daniel Simon, Luigi Colani, Sergio Pininfarina, M.C.

Escher, Zaha hadid and some others that inspired us for years

RUMA is a Spanish firm based in Madrid. The character of the people in this country is

known by everyone; the Mediterranean way of living, the passion people put in art and

design, from Picasso to Dali, From Gaudí to Calatrava, From Buñuel to Almodovar.

This country has given so much that is impossible not to be creative in this exciting

environment.

One of our best values is the flexibility with which we attend our customers. The

interaction is fully organic in order to create strong links of collaboration with clients and

partners seeking to get the best of the project.

Design is about rethinking life, about making things better, smarter and nicer. It is on us

to optimize the design of every single object that surrounds us, making them kinder and

more sustainable and helping people improve their lives. The RUMA team has hosted

open-door conferences as well as free events with students of several Universities,

meetings, interviews, etc. to help expand the philosophy of design and the importance

of sustainability

Winning A’ Design Award was a welcome new experience since it values us as a

studio and recognizes the quality of the project. We are proud of winning this

Award.

The Migma Hydrogen-powered Catamaran acts as the link between the rectilineal and fluid worlds. Many creatures in nature, most famously crustaceans and clams, utilize hard shells and exoskeletons in a myriad of ways to protect their bodies as they claim their place in the world, which is a source of inspiration for the catamaran’s structure.

The project has been conceived to pursue a new disruptive way to create open spaces within a luxury vessel, in order to evoke a constant flow of growing lines and curves, rendering complex surfaces that embrace the rationality of flat surfaces.

Migma is a visionary project for visionary businessmen and women who want the experience of harnessing the waves from the command center of a spacious, luxury vessel.

From conceptualization to completion it took about 5 months.

It was an initiative at Ruma Design. Our team has many years of experience in the car design industry; we wanted to apply all our know-how in advanced design to the yacht industry

It is not under production yet but we are seeking investors interested in the project for those purposes.

It was a natural interaction between our passion for design and our passion for sailing.

Migma is a project developed entirely by the Ruma design Team.

Migma Catamaran could be described as a niche product for a rather exclusive clientele. There’s no denying that this level of luxury, technology, and eye-candy targets a very specific market among which you can find yacht enthusiasts and visionary entrepreneurs.

The category of super-catamaran is an up and coming field where there’s still plenty of room for innovation and trendsetting, and with this project we wanted to add a very strong visual element. From the brutalist scope of its size to the sinuosity, elegance and fluidity to its bionic shapes.

We chose Migma, from the ancient Greek word μίγμα, which means mixture, as it encapsulates our desire to compound the rationality of technique with the fluidity of nature.

We use several tools, from hand sketching to Hi-quality 3D modeling and rendering software, we are a multidisciplinary team

It is a bionic and zero emissions Super-Catamaran, that’s rather unique, don’t you think?

We are a multi-skilled team specialized in advanced design, 3D shapes and volumes, technical solutions, and hydro-dynamics.

It is crucial, as its engine is powered by hydrogen cells, and uses flexible solar panels attached to the external shell.

We didn’t use analytical data but we conducted very deep levels of research before we came up with this design.

We encountered two great challenges. Firstly we needed to translate the abstract and sculptural shapes our creative team conceptualised, to the functional, hydrodynamic shapes typical of a catamaran, without losing the essence of the initial concept. The second challenge was to avoid that a vessel of such dimensions would come across as a cyclopean, unwieldy mass; that it would retain the levity, refinement, and fluidity of the original vision.

We really believe in this project and for that reason we wanted to showcase this concept to the wider design community and beyond. A’ design presented a great opportunity to do that.

In our line of work, we learn something new every day, with every project. Each challenge gives us the strength and motivation we need to extract the best of us.

Any good Project is the result of a great multidisciplinary team working together with eagerness for the same purpose and with a shared vision.

RUMA is a new and fresh design team founded by two industrial designers with wide experience in the industry, chiefly in the automotive field.

I always dreamed about creating something different, to come up with new shapes and volumes, from architecture to fine arts, and applying those ideas to technology and transportation design.

It was totally my decision

RUMA specialises in transportation and mobility design, with focus on high-tech and upscale products as well as a growing interest in the sustainability and wellbeing industries, which we are passionate about.

We are an up and coming company with incredible talent and experience and our hard work is paying off in different ways. But to become a legend, which is something we aspire to, you must remain constant, always try your best, be motivated and train your talent. It may sound cliché but there are no shortcuts.

A great designer thinks big and always goes beyond.

A great design is when you find a beautiful shape that follows and helps the function; innovating in the technology and materials and adding new values to the current market.

Just by having a look at the consequences of a bad design.

In RUMA we aim high. We want to be at the forefront of technology and lead the most ambitious projects that we come across. Things like Hyperloop or even spacecrafts are what really makes us tickle.

We have kept so busy this first two years we have not even had time to ask ourselves that.

Despite the risk of sounding cliché again, our secret is to always thing outside the box.

There are some ‘geniuses’ like Daniel Simon, Luigi Colani, Sergio Pininfarina, M.C. Escher, Zaha hadid and some others that have inspired us over the years.

It comes to my mind the Alfa Romeo 33 stradale designed by Franco Scaglione or the Lancia Stratos Zero by Marcello Gandini.

A luxury premium Swiss watch that will be launched ,if the little bug allows it, this 2020, where we create a beautiful merger of materials, technology and swiss precision, with added value such as a never-seen-before accuracy and innovative treatment of surfaces.

As I said before, you must be constant, do your best, be motivated and train your talent.

Oh! very disparate yet somewhat interconnected things, from psychology to architecture.

Making things better, smarter and nicer.

My parents have been my greatest allies, for which I feel thankful and privileged.

Greatness is a pursuit. Effort and motivation have helped us to get where we are, but greatness must always remain an aspiration.

Not having a clear path or enough information to get to my targets

With eagerness and self-awareness. Learning to land punches and overcoming obstacles, and looking at your accomplishments with prudent humility.

A smart healthcare product for clinical treatment.

Our ultimate goal is to help humanity advance and reach new horizons from the humility of our desks, knowing good design can push technology to the stars, quite literally. We would of course love it if our brand would get to be remembered in the future, for an iconic design that became ingrained in popular culture like those designs that we grew up loving.

People expect us to look at things differently and provide them with an ingenious solution.

Giving new solutions to emerging needs; helping people and making the world easier and nicer to live in.

Bringing together the newest technology and applying it to one of our exciting new projects.

A smart motorbike helmet concept showcased at the CES Las Vegas 2020 which we designed for a leading company.

I would like design in general to be more valued by sectors outside its own. To many people, good design remains an invisible aspect of why a good product is good. When in fact, oftentimes good design is the difference between a product that makes it, and one that fails.

Virtual Reality, 3D printing and user experiences.

It depends on the size of the project, and how many people are involved in the design team.

Sharing a coffee with the rest of the team at the office’s lounge and doing a brainstorming.

There is always a way to improve it.

The best designers create trends, the rest follow those trends.

It is crucial for our designs. The marriage of technology and design is responsible for the giant leaps our society has experienced over the last two decades.

As a multidisciplinary team, we use many kind of softwares, since hand sketches, to vectorial sotfware and high end quality 3D surface modeling

As crucial as the rest of the features. Particularly materials, which can be the most important part of a product.

We are passionate about our designs and can talk at length about any aspect. A good design, however, should be self-explanatory; what we call User Experience and User Interface. If feedback is not positive in every single aspect of the design, we would have to go back to the sketch board.

The first thing that comes to mind is something akin to; Wow! What a fantastic solution, how could I not think of that? We are happy to see great design becoming apparent in many industries and it inspires us to continue coming up with new ideas.

Working as a team is essential to make a good product, it is something we learned after working in the automotive industry for many years. A big project is an organic interaction between you, your partners and third parties. Co-design is our default as a team of two, and right now we are each other’s ideal design partners.

A lot of people have influenced me along my professional career. It is important to appreciate the good work of a chief designer or a colleague, but it is also important to learn from other people’s mistakes.

I couldn’t say which book had the deepest effect on my designs, but I read some good books related to design, and psychology of design which may have influenced me indeed, such The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero, Cosmic motors by Daniel Simon or Principles of Three-Dimensional Design by Lucius Wong.

Technical skills are of the most important things to grow day by day, and doing it so within some of the best design teams in the world has certainly helped a lot.

Luigi Colani would be remarkably interesting to meet

I would not say I am famous at all, but having received several awards is very motivational, and gives us even more strength to carry on working.

Red; Bolonia beach In Cadiz, Spain; Spring; cars, Bang & Olufsen

Once, on a crowdy day earlier this year, while attending the CES Exhibition in Las Vegas, I was dying for a coffee; but the queue of the cafeteria was such that I started a conversation with the man in front of me. After exchanging a few words, that man turned out to be the CEO of a big company who proposed my team to design their new star product.

Motivation is important, especially in our great team, but personally it helps me a lot to exercise every day; it clears my mind and keeps me focused on my goals.

Since I was a kid I always loved sketching and cars; and I wanted to do great things.

It is hard to say but we if we have not disappeared as a species yet, we will likely have become a post-scarcity civilisation by harnessing the power of our home star. What a vision! Dyson swarms, space lifts, interplanetary vessels… they will need designers, that is for sure!

In most cases, a good project is not the work of a single person or the lone child of a supernatural genius, but the result of a great multidisciplinary team working together eagerly for the same purpose.

Since I was a kid, I always loved drawing, sketching and cars; and I wanted to do

great things. Earlier last year I had the privilege of founding RUMA with a fellow

design artist that shares that vision and possesses extraordinary talent. We work with

great talents from different disciplines too, so, in a way, that dream has become a

reality.

RUMA is an international design studio born in early 2019 providing smart solutions

and using the highest quality standards from the automotive design industry. Founded

by two ex-Ferrari design team members with a wide experience in the advance design

field.

Design is about rethinking life, about making things better, smarter and nicer.

Hi-tech products; from lifestyle to wellbeing through sustainable mobility solutions

I am thinking that maybe in the Alfa Romeo 33 stradale designed by Franco

Scaglione, I love its proportions and the fluidity of its shapes, it perfectly projects the

sporty essence of the brand.

The RUMA team members have a broad experience worldwide but the company itself

started its path with the design of a disruptive premium Swiss watch.

We are directing our new projects to the area of VR and 3D printing

As with artists, and we do believe the best designers are artists at heart, inspiration is

a whimsical muse. But when it comes, if you have the privilege, like I do, of being

surrounded by a highly competent team that understands your vision, that’s when

creativity blossoms for me.

To think of a better way in which to implement the features and technology and

generate harmony over the whole shape.

Each project is different, it is like a song or a movie and you immerse yourself in it as if

you were living it from the inside, embedding your design with what you want to

express.

I feel great satisfaction from the work done. That is a universal sense, shared amongst

all professionals that take pride in their work.

A successful design is when you find a beautiful shape that follows and helps the

function; innovating in technology and materials and adding new value to society and

the needs of the market.

The first thing (but not the most important) is the aesthetics, the shapes, the beauty of

the design and then trying to understand that form and how it impacts its functionality.

It is important that we design the products which society will use in the short as well as

the long term, it is on us to optimize the design of every single object that surrounds

us, making them kinder to the users and their environment.

It is becoming increasingly essential. It brings together art and science. It is starting to

be the main factor to consider for many products.

Our last exhibition was this January 2020 at the CES in Las Vegas, Nevada, where we

presented a smart motorbike helmet which had a fantastic reception. We would have

had one by May, but it was cancelled, unfortunately we must wait until the end of this

pandemic crisis before planning any future exhibitions.

It all starts with profound research. We like to take references from nature. From

organic and bionic shapes to geometrical patterns that can be found in the natural

world.

At RUMA we design with volumes rather than lines, with clean, organic and minimalist

shapes, accentuating their character with tension lines which results in a hi-end

aesthetic value

RUMA has its main base in Madrid, Spain. The character of the people in this country

is known by everyone; the Mediterranean way of living, the passion people put in art

and design, from Picasso to Dali, From Gaudí to Calatrava, From Buñuel to

Almodovar. This country has given so much that is impossible not to be creative in this

exciting environment.

One of our best values is the personalised attention and flexibility with which we cater

to our clients. The interaction is fully organic in order to create fluid avenues of

collaboration to reach the best possible outcome.

At times, working within a large team can become tedious, but it is crucial to maintain

the morale of your designers as it has a direct relation with their creativity. They may

need more space to express themselves and it is important to relax the hierarchical

rigidity of yesteryear and understand the new social influxes to confront complex

projects in a more malleable way.

The way I see it, honesty as well as a deep level of commitment and dedication,

combined with talent and creativity, are the key factors when considering a great

designer.

We start with a market analysis and needs research, then we generate strategies,

creating 2D development concepts, applying know-how about UX & UI, making high

quality 3D modelling, and touching the project up with colour & trim proposals (with a

realistic visualization).

A Moka coffee maker

The Wassily chair

A Tizio Lamp

A pair of Hi-tech speakers with voice control

A one-piece steel knife

I start the day charging up my batteries with a couple of toasts with olive oil, tomato

and iberic ham and wash it down with freshly pressed orange juice; then I take my

bike and ride down to the studio, where I meet the rest of the team. After a long day of

work, I like to hit the gym to unwind. Once I’ve had supper I like to relax with a book

before sleep.

It may sound cliché, but you must work hard, be constant and train your skills without

leaving behind core values such as honesty and adaptability.

The most positive side to it is the creative one, which unfolds in unsuspected ways in

every aspect of your life. To feel that you are creating something that solves a problem

and, particularly, when it is something innovative that improves or enriches other

people’s lives.

The less positive aspect is the enormous sacrifice of time, in which you feel like you

must sometimes neglect or abandon other aspects of your personal life.

Every design must be smart and add value to the product and the user.

Talent, perseverance, work, honesty, proactivity and initiative

We use a variety of software, from sketching, vectoral, Hi-quality 3D modelling and

rendering software… we are a multidisciplinary team.

We also feed our creativity with trendy design books, magazines and several on-line

platforms as well as being attentive and open eyed to the natural world around us.

We also feed our creativity with trendy design books, magazines and several on-line platforms as well as being attentive and open eyed to the natural world around us.

I try to prioritize things in life, optimizing my time to get more with less.

It depends on the size of the project and how many people are involved in the design

team. I cannot give you a one-size-fits-all estimate.

How did that come into your mind?

Working at the Ferrari design centre in Maranello, Italy was a crucial experience for

which we feel privileged and thankful. But starting our own design studio, and

becoming our own bosses may in the long term become the most important step we

ever took.

We have developed projects all over the world in different areas of design for

prestigious companies such as mobility safety leaders Livall in Shenzhen, luxury

watchmakers Chronoswiss in Switzerland and many brilliant companies such as the

EDAG group Barcelona, Quantic Nanotech in Madrid, Accointing and Swissblock in

Zug, Switzerland, etc…

Our team is a specialist in transportation and mobility design, and yet, since RUMA

was born, we have undertaken many projects of other natures such as wellbeing and

luxury products and other high-tech solutions. We love these commissions because

they provide us with a wider, intersectional vision on what design is.

As a co-founder of RUMA, I have for leitmotiv to keep this company growing and

undertake increasingly challenging projects. Sky’s the limit!

We work as a team, and that’s RUMA’s greatest gift. United talent increases the

chance of success exponentially.

We have a couple of projects running right now, I can say they are remarkably

interesting but that’s all I can reveal from now.

You can enter RUMA-design.com to check some of our projects and head to the

contact section, or directly writing us to contact@ruma-design.com

I would like to conclude this interview sharing a though, in relation to the changes to

our lives that have become apparent, through this hard period of quarantine which has

led to a lot of introspection. The time we have available is precious and limited, and it is

crucial to find a balanced space in which personal and professional life can coexist in

order to extract the best of us. Something we suspected, and we have discussed at

lengths during this interview, has become crystal-clear to all of us, and hopefully this

will lead to improved working environments across all industries, where we take into

consideration how our physical and mental wellbeing is, for most people, the key to

increased performance and productivity. Hard work is essential, as is discipline, but the

rigidity of workplaces and the work-life imbalance is hindering our economies and our

societies at dramatic scales.