Interview with Evan Neumann

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 would like to design a smartphone for my kids.

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.

Design is the aestheticization of function.

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

Support from friends and family is a big element. Faith in ones own work. Being able to accept criticism and incorporate the parts that are valid is invaluable in the evolution of design.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

For design, I modify this to say:
God, grant me the humility to accept constructive criticism, courage to reject jealousy disguised as criticism, and wisdom to know the difference.

Truly unique ideas usually face a lot of push back and hate from the existing industry. Finding people within your industry who support your concepts makes things easier. It can be especially hard to keep up your momentum in the presence of people who denounce your work.

Proudly and publicly. You need to get your work in front of a large enough audience that the public judges your work before the critics with a vested interest in your failure have an opportunity to undermine it.

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 is inside of it. Sort of like the pendant on that cat's leash in Men in Black (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7ojSW5pODk).

To build Xanadu, an enormous spherical space station with an interior volume about the size of the Empire State Building. It is self-assembling using chemistry and physics. It is completely transparent on all sides except for a small entry port. The sphere rotates to provide 1G of gravity at the outer rim, which consists of a sea used for water recycling and recreation. When swimmers look down, they see the universe spinning below them. As the levels get closer to the center, gravity is reduced and the middle 50% is open air, with 200 foot diameter windows looking out to space on either side and directly overhead is the other side of the ground. Gravity at this innermost level would be about 1/4 earth's gravity and it would be possible to run and jump to fly around. Running against the spin at about 15 mph would make you weightless. With some simple angel wings that are operated by flapping your arms, you should be able to fly around. In the middle is a large compartment with zero G used for Ender's Games and scientific experimentation. Also in the middle is a port to the outside for docking spaceships, solar panel arrays for power and heat dissipators for environmental control.

Sci Fi and magic brought to life.

Beauty. Designers should bring beauty by following the function and how nature best accomplishes the function on it's own.

Due to the plague we have been forced to change our marketing strategy and I am excited about what we are putting together. Our website is my current project and the videos and photos needed for this is fun.

The design projects that are best accepted by society are the most enjoyable for me. In that vein, the hotel remodel I did while General Manager of Hotel La Rose in Santa Rosa, California was very satisfying because it increased our occupancy, average daily rate and thereby the resale value of the hotel itself. The appraised value when I began was about $1 million. After 5 years the hotel sold for about $5 million. The renovations cost about $400,000.

The other very satisfying design was a web application I built for managing hotels. After several years, it was purchased by Best Western and is currently being deployed to every Best Western throughout the world as their primary software for management and reservations distribution.

These are not necessarily my best designs, but they are the most satisfying because they are the ones that society gave me the most credit for.

I would like to see design become more serious with more genuine efforts at beauty and craftsmanship. So much of design recently has been geared towards efficiency and profitability at the cost of beauty and longevity. Luminare is extremely durable and intended to last a lifetime. Planned obsolescence is of the devil.

Here is a link to a video of Aslaen and Vaugn trying to destroy a Luminare handbag. https://vimeo.com/410796771

My hope is that due to the Plague design becomes more regional and differentiated. Ideally, this will bring some pride back to local manufacturers and planned obsolescence will be left in the dustbin of history.

Designs intended for production take me years. Designs for personal use may take hours to weeks.

Daydreaming. It takes a lot of daydreaming to come up with a new design. I then use hand tools and spare parts from around my workshop. I have several rooms filled with disassembled electronics and salvaged spare parts. I use files and hand tools to carefully craft my first versions without any drawings and then do the engineering after the basic design is built and I have an opportunity to discover the weak points of the design. Last is the drawings so that it can be mass produced.

KISS Keep it simple stupid. I really like this. That said, Roccocco, Baroque and Art Nouveau (including similar designs like Gaudi) are some of my favorite styles.

Ideally designs set trends, but too often trends dictate design.

Technology is merely an enabler of designs. Too often designers try to highlight a technology. This is the case in those gaudy bags with blinking LEDs or the EL shirts. A good implementation of technology in fashion was Luminex. Luminex was understated and did not highlight the technology.

I use a lot of raw code in my work. Hence there is a lot of things like Java, C++, Javascript, Python, PHP, HTML, etc. Of course, standards like MS Word, GIMP, Blender, Camtasia and Excel are fundamental to design work and entrepreneurship.

For hardware tools I use a lot of hand tools, especially hammers and wedges. I like to hand bend metal and heat form plastic by hand for first drafts of designs. Solder and breadboards are also critical and a shop full of knick-knacks and spare parts that I like.

Materials often dictate the level of luxury. Exotic leathers are best for luxury designs, cow leather is best for upscale and silk or other cloths are best for mid scale. I am not particularly a fan of plastics unless they are needed for some specific function. For instance, the internals of the Luminare are a specific type of plastic that is flexible enough to be used in a bag, but rigid enough to safely hold the electronic components.

Metal, fiberglass and carbon fiber can be used for any level of luxury.

Color has multiple uses. First, it allows the purchaser some control over the look and gives some choices. Second, it can convey a feeling, dark with gold is luxurious, while bright colors are fun and casual. Lastly, color must be coordinated within the product. Palettes are key to this, though I am not a fan of the seasonal updates of color palettes. It seems to me a form of planned obsolescence.

Ambient is probably the most important component of the three. Subtlety in design is a prerequisite for broad acceptance of a design. Some prototypes can be loud, but should be toned down when brought to market. A notable exception is something like the Tesla Cybertruck which is a bold design by an eccentric entrepreneur.

How does it work. I really like designing things where it is not obvious how it works. People should always have a sense of wonder when looking at one of my designs and I like the aha moment when they learn the details.

How does it work. I want to know the underlying technology. There are some designs though that are not rooted in high technology, like the Belgian Waffle at 2006 Burning Man. It was a huge organic shape that served as a music hall. It was built using hundreds of thousands 1 inch by 1 inch by 4 foot pieces of wood nailed together in a haphazard way. It was truly unique and made all the better because it only survived for one week before it was intentionally destroyed by fire. Brilliant.

My mind doesn't work very well with others. Despite this, I have had a few friends I have worked with to refine designs - mostly because they had expertise that I did not.

So, the ideal design partner has strengths where I have weaknesses. Giovanni Bevini was an ideal partner for Luminare because he is excellent at designing and manufacturing leather handbags, something I have no experience nor talent with.

Giovanni and Matteo Bevini had the most influence on Luminare. It really could not have been brought to market at this level without their contributions.

Greg Staples and Matthew Thompson also helped with some more technical aspects of the internal plastic case and microcontroller programming. My family, my ex included, helped a lot with moral support. Artists tend to be have big emotional swings and when I am feeling the most negative I rely on family and friends to raise my spirits and give me renewed faith in my concepts.

I really like books that have cutaways of cars, planes, ships and motorcycles. Biographies about Nikola Tesla have also been inspirational. Sci Fi in general is very inspiring: Asimov, Dune, Ender's Game, Necronomicon. Astrophysics non-fiction is also inspiring. Day dreaming about how the universe looks from different perspectives is enormously influential in my designs. I really enjoy trying to make seemingly impossible things possible.

It has been a lifetime evolution. I tend to just follow my interests in hobbies and when I come across something that many people like I try to bring it to market.

Several Greeks like Plato, Socrates and Aristotle. Sargon of Akkad, Amenhotep, Genghis Khan, Jesus Christ, Buddha, Confucius, Van Gogh, da Vinci, Hugo Boss, the Horten Brothers, Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Queen Victoria, Nikola Tesla, Werner von Braun, Elon Musk and Kelly Johnson.

I don't consider myself to be famous, though the awards have been welcome and affirming.

I like the richness of purple, but my favorite color is green because it is so emblematic of a healthy environment.

Most of my enjoyment of designing comes from the process itself. It is also nice to see a completed, functioning design, but the motivation to complete a design comes mostly from the idea of providing for my family.

Strangely, it is also motivating to watch old TV series like Dukes of Hazzard, Beverly Hillbillies and Star Trek.

No, more than anything when I was little I enjoyed taking things apart or building things like bombs and flamethrowers.

Right now I am pretty pessimistic about the future. There are many modern values that are dysgenic. We should praise our ancestors and focus on creating a better world for our descendants. So many people today focus on the immediate future and their personal wealth and hedonism.

In early adulthood I never liked JFKs, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." Now that I have had some life experience, I appreciate this more and more. We work better in nation-state societies. It fosters welfare within the group and diversity and competition between groups. In my younger years I tried to live by John Lennon's, "Imagine all the people living for today." Today I understand better why this generation was referred to as the "me" generation. Self absorption and living for the moment leaves nothing for our children.

I understand my ideals are not yet widely accepted, but without a change in our ideals, American food will be McDonalds, Mexican food will be Taco Bell, Italian food will be Olive Garden and Chinese food will be Panda Express. Shopping will all be through international conglomerates and the middle class, where culture lies, will be annihilated.

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.

Design is the aestheticization of function.

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.

KISS, keep it simple stupid.

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.

I have customers, not clients.

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 work alone.

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).

evan@asalenvaugn.com is the best way to contact me.

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.