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Dried paint was becoming a problem for Billie Asmus. An entrepreneur who was running a small furniture refinishing company from her basement studio, she kept having to toss out paint trays that were caked with dried paint. I looked over at my garbage can and it was just filled with plastic paint dry liners. And I was like, oh my gosh, there seriously has to be a better way. Something that’s more sustainable, something with a lid, something that’s reusable, she says. It was 2021. She searched in all the typical places online for a product that could cut down her modest business’s immodest waste stream. Nothing showed up, she says. That sent me down this huge rabbit hole of seeing if anything was even out there, or how I could make something like this exist. Billie Asmus [Photo: Repaint Studios] And that’s how Asmus created a silicone-based paint tray system that is endlessly reusable, capable of keeping paint fresh for weeks, and cleanable by simply peeling off pain after it’s dried. The Repaint Tray is a clever reinvention of a utilitarian tool. It could be the last paint tray some painters ever need to buy. The idea for the tray was spurred by a speed bump Asmus hit while renovating her home. She was painting over an unfortunate orange color scheme in the bathroom and trying to get the new shade as close to the shower’s edge as possible. Her clean paint job was foiled by a line of silicone caulking. Paint would not adhere to it no matter how much you tried, she says.The experience stuck in her mind, and jumped out when she was looking at just how many paint trays she was going through in her furniture refinishing work. Silicone, she figured, could be the basis for a better, reusable tray. With $50 worth of medical grade silicone and some foam board she bought at a dollar store, she made her first mockup. The concept worked, and she saw the inkling of a business. [Photo: Repaint Studios] Asmus then enrolled in an entrepreneurship course, and spent a year interviewing DIYers, manufacturers, and business people to better understand the market. She also refined her prototype to a familiar metal paint tray, a bright green silicone liner that fits snugly inside it, and a matching lid that creates and airtight seal over the top. By January 2023, she had enough momentum and a solid enough design to approach manufacturers. That fall she had a preproduction model in hand that is capable of being used with water-, acrylic, and latex-based paints, but not oil-based paints or varnishes. [Photo: Repaint Studios] That was enough to get her accepted into a product pitch competition run by the home improvement chain Lowe’s. Her reusable paint tray concept won the competition’s paint category, and she got her first official order from the national retailer. We launched February 1 of 2024, and I ordered the minimum amount of trays I could possibly get, which was 5,000 units, she says. I ended up selling out within four months. A year later, more that 10,000 Repaint Trays have been sold, including in more than 400 Lowe’s stores, as well as through Asmus’s website. DIYers are the main market for the tray system, but Asmus says a fair number of commercial painters are also using it. Their experience reusing the tray over and over again has been validating, she says. It may also be opening a door for her business to expand. The biggest thing I hear from them that they want something bigger, she says. We are already working on developing new products.
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E-Commerce
The Doomsday Clock is perhaps the most sobering graphic symbol ever created: a quarter of a clock with four big dots to mark the countdown to midnight, an euphemism for the end of world You might think that the significance of a clock that counts down the moments until humanitys annihilation cant be understated, yet its physical form has always been lightweight compared to its intent. For 78 years, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have presented a new tic-tock of doom in a press conference, informing the public of the latest doom countdown based on the events of the past year. Each year, they accompanied the news with a physical representation of the clock that is not much of a clock at all. Rather, it’s a flimsy panel with paper hands and dots stuck to it. The occasion needed a much stronger visual, one that would attract the attention of photo editors everywhere. That happened last week, when a new clock appeared one tic closer to apocalypse: It is 89 seconds to midnight. [Image: courtesy Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists] The physical clock that they were using was basically like a whiteboard, says Juan Noguera, Assistant Professor of Industrial Design at the Rochester Institute of Technology. They would unveil it by pulling this black cloth and it was just a wobbly setup, with stuff almost falling off it. Together with Tom Weiss, Associate Department Head at the Rhode Island School of Design and founder of Altimeter Design Group, Noguera redesigned the physical clock in 2024. It came at the request of Rachel Bronson, then the President and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Bronson wanted something more iconic; something that would capture the gravity of the clock’s message. The physical clock had to be as powerful as the symbol it represents; it need to command the attention of photographers and journalists who could echo the message of this timepiece of doom. The bulletins June 1947 cover page [Image: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists] Tic-toc to apocalypse American artist Martyl Suzanne Langsdorf conceived of the very first Doomsday Clock back in 1947. It followed the aesthetic of public clocks of that era. It featured a minimalistic large face with smaller dots and a white minute hand that was much thinner than the black hour hand, which was anchored at 12. That design served as a stark reminder of nuclear danger for nearly 80 years, becoming a universally recognized symbol of existential threat. The clock’s hand has moved closer to and further from midnight over the years, reflecting the changing global landscape of nuclear risk and climate change. As things got really grim during the worst years of the Cold War, the clock design went from showing only the second half hour of a face to showing just the quarter, Noguera says. It never went back past the 45 minute mark again. The 2017 iteration [Image: Pentagram] In 2017, design studio Pentagram updated the Doomsday Clock’s graphic symbol, modernizing its look while maintaining its iconic essence. I believe [Pentagram] hastily produced a physical version of it that had been used by the bulletin in events since then, Noguera says. The Pentagram symbol was strong then and now, however, and it served as the foundation for Noguera and Weiss’s design of the physical clock from the very beginning of the process. Noguera and Weiss started with traditional sketches, which were then brought to life using a generative AI tool called Vizcom that lets designers add color, texture, and lighting to their sketches. The front of the physical clock is a flat surface that features the graphic symbol designed by Pentagram. Under it, Noguera and Weis introduced two lines of text that spell out the time in English. According to Noguera, this element turned out to be a big success, as most of the photographers focused on it during the presentation. The typography on the clock face uses the Bulletin’s specific Helvetica subvariant, ensuring consistency with their brand identity. On the back of the clock theres the logo of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set over a gently curved surface that gets thinner towards the top. Their design also included a pedestal. At the beginning they played with the idea of making the entire thing a large monolith but ultimately decided to separate the two pieces. Leaving the face as its own object meant Bulletin could more easily bring the two parts around the world to different events. It also allowed for a unique aesthetic. We wanted that dichotomy of the handmade traditional and the 3D printed object, Noguera says. A deliberate juxtaposition of modern technology and traditional craftsmanship. [Image: courtesy Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists] A star is born Once they locked this design, they created CAD models for manufacturing. The clock was 3D printed in a single piece that’s 33 inches tall. Embedded within the clock face are close to 100 magnets that hold the hands and the interchangeable numbers and text, which allows the date and text to be easily updated. This clock rests on a handcrafted wooden pedestal. The pedestal for the clock itself is completely handmade, intentionally, very traditionally, Noguera says. The legs of the pedestal were hand-turned, and the walls were steam-bent. The entire piece is an imposing 6.5 feet tall. The new Doomsday Clock made its debut at the Bulletin’s 2025 press conference on January 28, where it was the star. Its striking design and prominent display ensured that the clock’s message was front and center in media coverage, Noguera told me with satisfaction: Instead of seeing some people talking on the photos like every other year before, now you see the clock featured in every single shot.
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E-Commerce
Adapted from Nonlinear: Navigating Design With Curiosity and Conviction (MIT Press, February 4, 2025). When I open my smartphone in the morning, every social media app is full of advertisements marketing something to me. I feel like Im trapped in a circuitous loop from ads and information coming through my devices: Buy this, buy that! Were all stuck in this loop. Can we fix it? John Maeda (vice president of engineering, computational design, and AI at Microsoft) once created a computational artwork of an infinity loop that he often uses in his keynotes. We talked about my interpretation of his visual during a video livestream together back in 2020. I likened it to the accelerating paradigm of marketers marketing and consumers consuming. I often think about the harm of such paradigms accelerating and impinging on society and our planet. How might we envision actually showing up for people when and where they need us the most? What are the vectors that will lead us to that place? Instead of being encouraged to buy things people dont need, how can we creatively and intuitively deliver what they do need? We can imagine a wide range of answers to that question. In my own work at dreams design + life, I pay particular attention to those opportunities that potentially foster a better way of showing up for people and communities. I try to prioritize our time for those projects that meet people where they are versus feeding into unsustainable cycles of consumption. In my mind, there are a couple qualities I tend to lean on that illuminate how brands might show up. Utility When we design something new that captures someones attention, what path of new utility are we actually creating for them? What are we making thats actually useful for their needs? How are we helping them complete a step thats naturally part of the journey they want to fulfill? Can that step be accomplished faster, better, and more meaningfully than the things they are already doing today? One of my first client partners was a biotech venture called Invoy, founded by Lubna Ahmad. Invoy helps people lose and maintain weight without depending on food journals, bathroom scales, or single diet solutions. Instead, Invoy uses breath technology and expert coaching to generate high engagement and a positive member experience, leading to sustainable weight loss and weight management. Stepping on an outdated bathroom scale [Image: courtesy MIT Press] With Invoy, I wake up every morning and exhale into the breath device for a few seconds. Using the Invoy app, I answer a series of questions, reflecting on my behaviors over the past 24 hours, after which I allow the breath device to finish analyzing my breath sample. The app reveals a breath score at the end of the analysis (which takes no more than two minutes to finish). Later in the day, you can engage your Invoy program analyst through the chat feature in the app, and they will help you interpret your results and give you actionable recommendations that cut across diet, exercise, and many forms of habits. By breathing into the device every morning, I found myself empowered with a level of agency that I didnt have before. Information Relevance To understand any new form of utility we can bring to someones journey, we also have to understand the full context of paradigms and realities they are experiencing. In the digital age, they likely have information impinging upon them in a million different directions. To give someone confidence that your new solution is appropriate for them, they need relevant information (benefits, reviews, ratings, feedback, etc.) that shows this utility is specifically for them and their needs. If we think back to Invoy and its focus on the morning moment of truth, the new utility of a breath device requires enveloping that within a delicate orchestration of information that would give someone confidence that its worthwhile to breathe into the device every morning. The Invoy team could easily overwhelm their members with all the data that was at their disposal from every breath test. Instead, Invoys platform outputs a very simple breath score (on a scale of 0.0 to 15.0) that gives you a sense of whether youre burning fat, staying neutral, or storing fat. If the resulting breath score falls below 3.0, that means you are probably using different energy stores (e.g., glucose from carbohydrates) other than fat. That may or may not be fine, but at least you know whats exactly happening if you notice your weight trending up due to the likely storage of fat. If the breath score falls between 4.0 and 15.0, then you are surely using fat as an energy source and you should expect the fat composition in your body to decrease. Maslows hierarchy of needs [Image: courtesy MIT Press] Emotional Resonance Assuming that we create a new utility that proves itself beneficial, thats great. To give someone confidence that the new utility is for them, we need relevant and succinct information that would provide them necessary context about the solutions fit for their needs. We have to earn their respect and trust that our brand deserves the right to belong within their preferred journey. How we show up matters. With Invoy, eliciting a conversation with someone about their weight raises all types of stigmas and emotions. Every one of us can probably identify a life stage in which we had difficulty managing our weight. In those moments, we probably felt like failures. The reality is that we were probably working with outdated tools, such as the bathroom scale or food journal. When we look at that number on the scale, we feel judged and insecure. In reality, our weight challenges are not necessarily our fault as much as we are led to believe. Deep down (and many members have said this), members recognize thir need for structure and an objective coach, who can be a bit more data-driven than a cheerleadernot someone that will blame them for their missteps and make them feel worse. Program analysts must be objective with the data, providing clear facts about whats happening in each of their members bodies, but they also need to be compassionate in the delivery of key insights and behavioral recommendations. A good coach never beats up someone who falls off track. They must affirm and encourage a member when that member is doing something right, and they must offer constructive guidance whenever theres a deviation. Add a healthy dose of empathy and compassion to be helpful, and that has garnered Invoy program analysts success in building emotional resonance with Invoys members over the long run. * * * Finding opportunities to break out of the infinity loop is not easy. Serendipity, proactiveness, and market timing may be the variables manifesting together that allow an innovation to succeed. These are vectors we have to sense, spot, and anticipate in the forest of ambiguity. We have to anticipate which technologies and key differentiators are potentially ready for prime time and cultivated by the right team. I find myself constantly scanning for potential client partners who I feel are playing the long game in what they invest in for their future customer experiences, thinking beyond their short-term goals. Bullishly, I want to find those companies that are putting in the hard work to build differentiated capabilities and intellectual property that could be meaningfully leveraged in the future to inform a new experience. Kevin Bethune [Photo: Harrison Boyce/courtesy MIT Press] The vectors that lead to these opportunities are out there, but they will not find you: you have to put yourself in the forest and move about to increase the chances of finding them. Ideally, you talk with people in the know, scan market movements, and find vectors that will lead you to new signals. Signals lead to incredible opportunities if you keep scanning, exploring, and experimenting proactively.
Category:
E-Commerce
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