With the early prototypes, I held the phone to my ear and my ear [would] dial the number. You have to detect all sorts of ear-shapes and chin shapes, skin colour and hairdo... that was one of just many examples where we really thought, perhaps this isn’t going to work.

To design something really new and innovative you have to reject reason.

In our quest to quickly make three-dimensional objects, we can miss out on the experience of making something that helps give us our first understandings of form and material, of the way a material behaves--'I press too hard here, and it breaks here' and so on. Some of the digital rendering tools are impressive, but it's important that people still really try and figure out a way of gaining direct experience with the materials.

We make and sell a very, very large number of (hopefully) beautiful, well-made things. Our success is a victory for purity, integrity - for giving a damn.

I think subconsciously people are remarkably discerning. I think that they can sense care.

We don't do focus groups - that is the job of the designer. It's unfair to ask people who don't have a sense of the opportunities of tomorrow from the context of today to design.

The quest for simplicity has to pervade every part of the process. It really is fundamental.