A designer and artist of all sorts.  More accurately, a modern day renaissance man.  Designer Charlie Pyott took some time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions about his art, design, and more.

UI: Many artists accept the phrase as makers but you’re literally like a modern day Leonardo Da Vinci in your field as many of your concepts come to life and must have major functionality.  Where do you find your inspiration for these projects you create?

CP: First off, that is one of the best compliment/questions I have ever gotten so thanks for that one.  On the inspiration side of things, most of my concepts are focused on revisiting classic designs but reevaluating them from the ground up for a niche market or task.  The ski project and the Linos turntable are good examples of this sort of thing.

Many of the objects around us in day to day life have a massive design legacy behind them that we tend to get locked into.  In the case of a ski there are hundreds and hundreds of years of evolution that is based off of a design that was created with the materials available at the time, in this case wood and leather straps.  Although there has been endless innovation of the ski in camber, metal edges, bindings, fiberglass and laminate construction, side cut, etc. the basic form of a modern ski is similar to the oldest wood designs.

What I love about the industrial design field is that you have an opportunity to explore what is possible if you eliminated the most basic legacies of a design and create something that is for a very specific use and end up with a concept that is really unique.  The Linos has similar characteristics to this as well where instead of developing a record player for the traditional goal of highest possible sound quality it was made to celebrate physical media (records) in a small and portable package. By eliminating the large platter and boxy form of a normal turntable you can end up with something a little different from your run of the mill player. There was also a lot of leeway in the styling of the Linos so much of the form was lifted from the cut lines you find in an aircraft wing (lots of filleted symmetrical edges) to reinforce the mobility aspect of the product.

CP: Well, my background is kind of a strange one.  I have a lot of memories of taking stuff apart to see how it worked as a kid (usually not being able to put it back together of course) so the wanting to know how things worked thing was always there.  But building slightly bizarre stuff was always a big interest to me too.  I did a lot of interface things like building controllers, virtual reality helmets and rewiring Power Gloves in the early 90's and managed to hack together a hovercraft out of plywood, PVC tube and a leaf blower which I crashed into my parents car when I was in my really early teens...so yeah, pretty standard stuff I guess?

As far as education goes it's about as lacking as you can get. I always liked reading about history, mathematics, physics and sociology but ended up dropping out of high school and working in the computer animation field for a number of years.  I was really attracted to the fact that you could express complex ideas through animation but the commercial/TV/film side never excited me that much.  Fortunately I randomly heard about Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and ended up in their Product Design program which suited me perfectly (I don't think they ever caught on to the whole "high school dropout" thing either. Score.) So yeah, ACCD gave me a whole new set of toys to play with in rapid prototyping, styling and manufacturing so I could combine my interest in mechanical interactive stuff with design and I never looked back.

CP: Timelines for a project are always pretty tricky and really depend on how far you are going to take a concept.  If something is just an idea that you want to explore through sketches and 3D renderings it can be as quick as a day or two but to make a working model that is ready for production is where things can stretch to months and beyond.

The devil is always in the details with product design so rattling out concepts that could work goes quick but getting the necessary components to fit inside the design with the correct wall thicknesses on the parts, working through how the thing will assemble and making sure the mechanics actually function is where things always slow down.  That, at least in my opinion, is the most difficult part of design, the step between taking a great concept and making a great final product that still carries over the intent of the initial concept.

CP: Actually the project that I am most proud of working on is a wheelchair design that came out of a joint CalTech/Landívar Univirsity/Art Center class and eventually became the non-profit Intelligent Mobility International. The basic idea was to reconfigure mountain bikes into low cost appropriate wheelchairs for developing nations.  By using mountain bike parts we were able to make a durable chair that was easily repairable and built locally in the starting place of our pilot program in Guatemala.

The great part of the program was seeing how the chair developed from an initial concept prototype to a really effective final product with the help of designers from Landívar and our partner shop in Guatemala, Transitions.  We actually received the Popular Mechanics Design Innovation Award in 2008 as well so it's tough to not be proud of all the great work everyone has put in. It also lets me sidestep the whole "best of my work" question because it simply wouldn't have been possible without everyone involved.