Philippe Guichard on the new future of industrial design
In this episode of New Future, we speak to Melbourne-based Philippe Guichard. He is an award-winning international industrial designer and TEDx speaker. Philippe owns an industrial design company in Melbourne called D2. He’s launched a number successful products and has helped his clients generate over $200 million in revenue.
As a self-described holistic designer, Philippe believes in making a positive difference to the world through his work, which is why he is very passionate about the circular economy and the triple bottom line, which encompasses profit as well as environmental and social responsibility.
Transcript
KRG (Kate Raynes-Goldie)
Welcome to the New Future podcast, where we talk to business leaders, researchers and visionary thinkers about what happens next. I’m Kate Raynes-Goldie.
KR (Kate Razzivina)
And I’m Kate Razzivina.
KRG
On this week’s episode, we’re talking to Philippe Guichard. He is an award-winning international industrial designer and TEDx speaker. Philippe owns an industrial design company in Melbourne called D2 Design and Development. He has launched a bunch of successful products and has helped his clients generate over $200 million in revenue. As a self described ‘holistic designer’, Philippe believes in making a positive difference in the world through his work, which is why he’s very passionate about the circular economy and the triple bottom line, which encompasses profit as well as environmental and social responsibility. Philippe, welcome to the New Future!
PG (Philippe Guichard)
Thank you. I’m very excited to be here with you today.
KRG
And we’re excited to have you. So can you tell us a bit more about what you’re currently working on?
PG
I’m working with a number of clients, mostly founders and startup entrepreneurs, and in different industries. So I’m not really bound by an industry, I am bound by values when I choose a product, when a client wants to work with me. I have a project in the caravan industry, one in a DIY industry, one in a household accessory, one in a desk accessory. So yeah, it’s all a bit – not really all over the place – but in different segments, which I find very exciting!
KRG
And so the circular economy is very important to your work. Can you speak a bit more about what that is?
PG
In my understanding the principle of the circular economy is to move away from the linear way of manufacturing – using and disposing things – that we’ve been under for the last, you know, 200 years. What’s been happening is kind of this. The first step to extract material from the earth, process that, turn that into a product. This product has a lifespan. And after this lifespan we dispose of that product, which means that we put that generally in landfill. And what is in landfill, unfortunately, also ends up in the ocean. So this linear process is really hurting everything. It’s hurting the economy now, and it’s hurting the planet, and people, and animals, and ecosystems and everything. So the circular economy is about trying to find loops. You may still extract materials from the earth. But then when you design a product or the service in a circular economy, then you make sure that at the end of the lifecycle, the product or the material will reintegrate the circle. So limited waste, as much as possible. And the best case scenario is – there’s no more waste, it’s just coming back into the loop. And then the extraction of material doesn’t end in landfill, it ends as a new product or new system after it’s been used the first time.
KR
Philip, we can see in the news – there’s so much discussion happening around countries now becoming more self sufficient, which often means bringing manufacturing back home. And new technologies like 3D printing can make manufacturing much more viable again – economically – rather than having so many goods manufactured in places like China, for example. What’s your view on this, particularly for Australia? And is 3D printing actually environmentally sustainable? Is it good for the planet?
PG
Okay, so there’s a lot in that question already. I’ll try to answer bit by bit, and please feel free to remind me if I forget something. I think 3D printing has its place in the manufacturing process. If you manufacture millions and tens of millions of parts – maybe 3D printing is not quite the answer to this date. So I think we need to imagine that 3D printing is still very much in its infancy, which means that the speed and the quality that we have is still very kind of rough. And I know that we were very big – 2-3 years ago – saying that you know, everyone, every household should have a 3D printer. But there were two things in my mind that would make that not quite happening. One is the the barrier to entry for everyone is not the 3D printer itself. It’s how do you generate a 3D model by yourself? And we don’t quite have the technology for that. It’s quite hard to do a bit of CAD for, you know, anyone. Stuff like a Word document – with just type writing – it’s a bit more complex than that. So that’s one barrier to entry and the second is it’s too slow and it doesn’t quite do the things that you really want it to do. So in many ways, it was still very limited. But now we have new technologies coming, where you can 3D print several materials in one part at the same time. Which is very exciting because it means that you can have, let’s say, some mechanical constraint for a part and then some electronics inside and all that can be 3D printed in one go. So that’s in my mind, that’s quite fantastic. And the way I get really excited with 3D printing is not in the actual delivery today. I think it’s still a bit slow and clunky. But I imagine that in a few years – maybe three, five or seven, I don’t know, we’re going to have 3D printers that will go like 100 times the speed of the current ones. And that’s when things are going to get really exciting because then manufacturing can really come back to, you know, local manufacturing. But still, in my mind, I think 3D printing has its place in medium-scale manufacturing, low-scale – it is already working. So you have an airplane company that do low-scale 3D printing, and that’s very, very effective. With the progress in technology that’s going move to medium and reasonably high scale 3D printing, 3D printing farms and everything. So that’s the first part of the answer. As for the second part – sustainability one, that’s a super tough answer. Meaning, it’s very hard to have a complete lifecycle of every system. So if you take a system like CNC which is like a computer, you know, programming – you take a block of material and then you get rid of some of this material to make a part. 3D printing doesn’t work this way. It works by adding a bit of material in layers, usually. And then that creates a part. So you would think that the 3D printer by nature is a bit more sustainable than the other one. But again, you need to look really deeper because how do you reuse or recycle the 3D printing parts and everything? And that’s a very difficult discussion. For example, I have a 3D printer in my office to do prototypes and parts for my clients. And they use PLA, which is supposed to be recyclable, but it’s recyclable in idustrial compost only. And that’s not what we have, you know, usually, and I think we have only two industrial compost facilities in Australia. So I’m not quite sure that the claims are, you know, as accurate as they should be. So, as you can tell, I don’t really have a clear answer when it comes to sustainability. Depends on the volumes of production. It depends on a lot of things. And I haven’t seen a very comprehensive and clear picture of the lifecycle analysis to really make a decision today.
KRG
There’s a company here in Western Australia called Greenbatch. They do plastic recycling and they actually turn the plastic into the plastic that can be used in, I guess, some kinds of 3D printing. So I guess solves part of the problem, but it’s not really a closed loop is it?
PG
Yeah. I think if we make that a closed loop – that’s so much better, but you need to be realistic today. We don’t quite have the infrastructure for that. And you can look at it both ways – you can say this is very sad and everything, but actually, there’s a huge business opportunity here. There are countries in Northern Europe that do this very well and they are quite good at reusing and recycling their materials and sometimes incineration – so burning everything – but but they really get rid of like 98% of the waste they generate or something. You know – reuse, recycle, or burn them. So it’s a pretty good system.
KR
Amazing. That’s very high.
KRG
Yeah. I think in Australia, we actually did, or continue to – I’m not sure what’s happened given the current climate – but shipped a lot of our recycling to China.
PG
I know. And then to other third world countries, which is, yeah. That’s why I’m very keen to speak about the triple bottom line, because that’s, you know, the social impact of that is really bad.
KRG
Yeah, I mean, I think that’s a good segue to that, because I’m curious about how, as an industrial designer, the circular economy and the triple bottom line fit into guiding your process, as being distinct from someone who’s just working in the old model.
PG
Well, I think the key element for me is – I’m not sure exactly where I should start there, but I always had an interest in sustainability. Even when I was a kid, I was fascinated by nature and I was born in the 70s. And already I knew even when I was a kid, because you could read that in the newspapers, that there were sustainability issues. There were already people talking about climate change when I was even younger than 10. So for me, there’s nothing new when people talk about climate change and sustainability and all that stuff – it’s been around for a long, long, long, long time. We haven’t done much I guess, or not enough at least, to address that. So from my perspective, when I work with a client, one part of my work is I would say education. A lot of people want to design a product that is successful financially, but they don’t really realize that the product has an environmental impact and a social impact. And sometimes just by talking about it, you can make different decisions. And the big question for me is why would you make decisions and why would a designer ask those questions? And the answer is – because 80% of the impact of a product is set at the design stage. So I think that designers have a huge responsibility when it comes to designing and making choices. And I’m not saying those choices are easy, but it’s better to make those choices with some awareness of what’s happening than, you know, turning a blind eye and pretending it doesn’t exist. So my position was always – indicating. And I can maybe share a story of when I was 23. I was one year in my design studio at the time, and I was working for a client, and we designed a product for him. And everything was going quite well. And I said to the client: “Now we are at that stage where we’re going to do the first prototype and things are looking quite good. Would you mind if we look at the environmental impact now?” And the client turned to me and said: “Well, I’m here to make money. I’m not here, you know, for the planet or anything”. And I said: “Okay, fair enough”. And two weeks later, he came to me and asked to have a quick meeting. In a nutshell, he said: “Okay, well, I have two kids. So if I’m trashing the planet, what kind of father am I for my kid and for other kids on this planet? So can we resume the conversation and see if we can find something.” And the time the product was extremely technical, and there were very, very high technical constraints. And we couldn’t find alternate, like really great alternatives to the material that we chose at the time. But we could close the loop. And we knew the facilities that would recycle the material we were using. So that was already part of the conversation, and it was over 25 years ago.
KRG
Wow. Very inspiring story.
KR
And it’s interesting as a parent, I can say as well – I’ve got a six year old and he is now at an age where he’s asking the questions about the planet. Why is this bad? And why is this good for the planet? And it is very hard to explain. He’s asking those tough questions. Why are the people trashing the planet? The oceans? Why are we making the ocean bad for the dolphins? It’s a tough question to answer as an adult. So it does – I think for many people it does change the way you actually make decisions in your work life and your business life.
PG
Yeah, I agree. I have a seven year old and he’s also asking questions and he doesn’t understand what we do to animals and the planet and how we treat the environment. And I think to some extent, he found it quite shocking the way we behave. So we don’t really have an answer. But what we say is that, well, we’re here, you know, we’re here for change. Keep that in your heart. And when you grow up, try to find solutions and help and see how you can contribute. And there are so many ways to contribute. You don’t need to be designer to contribute, you just need to be interested and involved.
KR
I agree, yes, my son is exactly the same. I really have this hope that our generation, the next generation will really make a difference. They’re asking the questions, they’re really thinking about it. So we’ve got hope, I think, in the next generation!
PG
Would you mind if I jump into what I think could be next from the circular economy?
KRG
Oh, that was our next question. So we are thinking the same thing!
PG
Well, maybe I’ll jump right in then. So from my perspective, I think the circular economy is a great concept and it’s a concept that should or could have been used maybe 50 or 60 years ago in order to probably avoid the kind of chaos that we’re in right now, and the issues that we are facing right now. I think the next phase, I call that ‘regenerative design’, which is beyond some of the principles of circular economy. I don’t have a very clear framework at this stage, I’m still in the thinking process. But the way I compare that is, let’s say that the Earth as a planet and you know, as a social system, is a body and the body temperature is around 37 degrees normally, and for the last 200 years we’ve been increasing, with the Industrial Age and we had a fever and now we are a bit sick, we’re at like 39 degrees. We’re not super sick, but we are sick enough to see that there’s something a bit off. And circular economy will say – okay, we need to limit the input and the output and we can even things out. Which in my mind means that we’re going to remain at 39 degrees, being a bit sick for quite some time. And, the principle of ‘regenerative design’ will say – okay, we are sick, we need to go back to health, which is 37 degrees. Which means that every product and system and service that we design from their own should be given more than they take. So it’s not even about carbon balance. It’s about carbon gift. It’s about capturing more than you take. It’s about capturing more methane that you take, it’s about capturing more toxins in the air, all that stuff. And I’m not sure how to do that. I’ll be very blunt and honest with you. I’m not too sure how to do that. But that’s fine. This idea is very interesting and I’ve been exploring it and talking about it with clients, and I hope I can I can have a framework in the next few months and start putting stuff out there, so to speak.
KR
And do you feel that coronavirus has had an impact on what people are doing in this space – in terms of how we design?
PG
Definitely. There is a push for what they call the green economy. That is something that I haven’t seen as strong before. There were still people pushing. I was reading a post from the United Nations. And they had six points for the future. And I think three of them speak about green growth. So it’s very clear that we need to shift our paradigm and our models and this COVID-19 state or intermediary state or pause that we have, is moving things a bit quicker than before.
KRG
Are you seeing any other kind of unexpected or surprising impacts in the industrial design space or circular economy, because of COVID, that will have a long term impact?
PG
I’m not I’m not a futurist. So it’s very hard for me to project that far but I think this will have an impact on people’s mind. And it’s going to be really hard to go back to what people call ‘normal’ because ‘normal’ wasn’t normal in the first place. I’ll give you a couple of examples. One – if you’ve been living in some cities in China and you’re 30 – because of COVID, for the first time, you’ve seen that there are mountains around the city, and you’ve never seen that before. And there’s a quote somewhere, I don’t have it right there with me, but once the mind has expanded, it just cannot go back to its previous state. Which means that all those people that have been seeing that – now they have an aspiration to live in the city where they have clear sky, where they can see nature, where they can be part of nature and do their work at the same time. I’m not sure they want to go back to high levels of pollution and business as usual in three months’, I very much doubt that. I think the impact on their mind is deeper than most, you know, economical people would say. The other thing is in India, for example, because of the lower level of pollution, people can now see the whole Himalayan mountain range, and again, it has the same impact. Suddenly, you leave with nature, not against it. And I think that will impact behaviors, maybe in a subtle way. So, I’m hoping that all those elements close to a different conversation that people have today with sustainability and the different proofs from you know, different, green proposition for the future. I think the whole package will push to a new system that will be more balanced with nature.
KR
And to wrap things up a little bit, Philippe, what do you think are the top three things we all need to know about the new future following this global pandemic? Particularly, I guess, if we’re hopeful and if people are thinking about starting new businesses or getting new jobs, or maybe designing new products, people maybe had some ideas, and they want to develop new products? What are the top three things people should have in mind?
PG
Again, that’s a very deep question. I think one of the things that is very obvious to a lot of people today is interdependence. So what you do here has an impact over there. One man in China has an impact on the whole world. Nobody is protected – there’s no ‘rich and poor’ thing versus COVID or you know, other viruses, which means that we’re not quite all equal, as there were those statements – people do have very different conditions, and I appreciate that. But it also means that people have this level of awareness that if you do something here, it’s going to have an impact somewhere else. So if you want to design a product today, maybe choosing a local manufacturer with lean manufacturing versus buying bulk from other countries, that could be an option that is maybe more sustainable, actually, and probably better for the planet and everything. But again, it depends so much on the product and the business models that go with it. It’s super hard to give a very clear cut answer. But I think every product and service that will try to do good and try to really limit their impact – that will be the future. And there is a big awareness – e.g. if you talk to the millenials today, or – I was having a lunch with some CEOs a couple of months ago, they were in their late 50s or 60s. And suddenly they discovered that, you know, there is sustainability and there is social impact and their decisions are having an impact. It’s not all about money all the time. And those CEOs want to do good now, like they really want to say, “Okay, well I have another 10-15 or 20 years before me. So what can I do now to help learn from what I did? And maybe that was a mistake or you know, you can label that however you want, but they obviously have a lot of business experience and they want to leverage that now for the good. So we’re going to have a very interesting few years ahead of us.
KRG
Thank you so much, Philippe, I think that was some much needed hopeful insight and stories around things that can keep us hopeful for the future! How can people find you if they want to get in touch with you?
PG
I think the best will be to find me on LinkedIn, and to connect with me on LinkedIn. It has my email address and pretty much everything you need to go. And I have this TEDx talk I did last year, just a year ago. And this talk is all about impact. And the intention beyond this talk was to empower absolutely everyone, and everyone can have an impact. It’s not, you know, society’s not something out there. It’s not the other – this group or that group – it’s us. And us as individuals, we have some power, and we need to use this power. And I think it’s a good opportunity today to use that for good.
KRG
That is a great message. I totally agree with that. So we’ll make sure to include the link to your LinkedIn and your TEDx talk in the show notes. Thank you so much for being on the show.
PG
Thank you.
KRG
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