Interview with Tiago Russo

Tiago Russo ("TR") interviewed on Thursday, 19 October.

Could you please tell us about your experience as a designer, artist, architect or creator?

TR : I have dedicated my entire career to product design, from my academic years to the entirety of my professional path, I have been lucky enough to be able to always work within the design field for over 13 years now. My connotation and renowned status as a luxury designer come from my early days in London, back in 2015, where I started by working on the development of limited releases for The Macallan, and since then my journey came across circa 25 different spirits brands, high-end jewellery, cosmetics and automotive companies, always within the luxury world, culminating in the work developed, now exclusively for over the last 3 years, for The Craft Irish Whiskey Co.

How did you become a designer?

TR : I am the first ever designer in my family. My parents/grandparents’ background is in photography and fishing, and although not a direct link, my father’s work as a photographer and the measurement of light - the way that light and shadow influence the environment around you - represents an early inspiration and the basis of several of my design processes when designing spaces and lighting systems years later. But another, much more direct influence was also the fact that my father is a fan of everything motorsports, and since a very early age I would go with him to the local racetrack to watch the races, and consecutively draw cars, either from memory or by looking at pictures in the magazines, and immediately start to tweak them, to create an evolution of that model, of improving it. At the time, there was no real consciousness of becoming a designer, but I knew, probably since around 3-4 years old, that I wanted to draw new things, new creations.

What are your priorities, technique and style when designing?

TR : As an advocate for perfectionism and good design values, I can’t honestly say there is a specific aspect or detail I will focus more within the product. Everything I create, from the apparently simpler designs to the more complex ones, deserves all my dedication, effort and attention to each and every single detail, in order to ensure the best possible solution is always achieved, as that is the reason a product will become a success. Nothing is left to chance; nothing is seen as a lesser relevant detail on anything I create. For most projects, the methodology will be fairly similar, starting with research – one of the most important and often overlooked parts of design development – as you have to know everything that has already been made in order to truly create something that hasn’t. From there, I usually come on full analogue mode – paper sketches, doodles, increasingly exploring the features and functionalities I want to give to the product, culminating in 3D CAD exploration and full simulation of the new design.

Which emotions do you feel when designing?

TR : My emotions towards a design will highly depend on the product itself and its backstory. Depending on the envisioned look and feel, and on the mood or theme around a product, I will always work associating my processes with music as an aid to deploy certain emotions I want to feel when creating something new. My latest work for The Craft Irish Whiskey Co., is bound to whiskeys that have an incredibly strong sensorial connotation associated with storytelling, I tend to evoke, during my process, a range of emotions that will allow me to feel immersed with the products being designed, fulfilled by the experience and interaction with the creation at hand.

What particular aspects of your background shaped you as a designer?

TR : My father’s influence within photography and the automotive/motorsports world obviously played a huge influence on my vision of design while growing up. I was never too fond of other fine arts such as painting or sculpture, and always preferred a more technical, scientific-backed approach to anything I created over the years. I always sketch using pens only, as to force myself to not be able to do any mistakes, and I have been doing that for as far as I can remember. With the automotive industry influence, and also gaming, I started to discover different countries, cultures and products. We are talking about a child growing up in the early ’90s, so consoles and computers were getting more and more immersive on the cusp of the arrival of the World Wide Web, so whilst growing up, the shaping of an early teenager was surrounded by this overwhelming access to more global content, which started my passion for technological items and Japanese design in general, two factors that influence all of my work, still today.

What is your growth path? What are your future plans? What is your dream design project?

TR : At the moment, my goal is to help merging, reshaping and elevating the worlds or luxury, spirits, and collectable assets. It has been a great journey in the last few years to be able to reshape the perception of Irish Whiskey, to elevate it and completely redefine the way the world, brands and connoisseurs see whiskey and the perception of tasting whiskey of the story of the product itself, and I think in the near future the main objective is to perform that creative reshaping across more styles of sprits, completely redefining the industry for the years to come. As part of the development of new, innovative and state-of-the-art, immersive whiskey experiences, I have already been working on the next The Craft Irish Whiskey Co. releases that will arrive in the next couple of years. And the focus is exactly that, bringing new ways of making a whiskey tasting experience even more immersive, even more personal and meaningful. There are a lot of new technologies and methodologies at play, and I believe that in the next few months we will be able to showcase what will be a complete redefinition of whiskey, luxury, and immersive tasting experience standards.

What are your advices to designers who are at the beginning of their career?

TR : If there is one thing that I learned in my transition from academic degrees to real-world scenarios, is that reality hits very differently in one’s process and methodology, and no course can truly prepare anyone for that. More than listing degrees and accolades, focus completely on your portfolio and ensure a great presentation is associated with great curated visuals, because at the end of the day, someone in a company will only spend a few seconds to filter if there is inherent value in you, Therefore, everything in your portfolio, in your presentation, from layout to renders, has to be flawless and appealing from the first moment. Companies look for killer portfolios, for showcases of skillsets that can help the company grow, so my biggest suggestion is: be creative, and fully invest in your portfolio.

You are truly successful as a designer, what do you suggest to fellow designers, artists and architects?

TR : For a product to succeed, its purpose, presence, interaction and sensorial reach must be truly merged into something omniscient. It must reach the users through most if not all of their senses in a pleasing way that provokes the desire to be interacted with, and be manipulated into creating such immersion with the user that will provoke and enhance the bridging of a meaningful connection and interaction. A successful design must consider all details, all aspects of the interaction with the user, into making it a pleasurable, meaningful journey that will make the users feel positive emotions towards a specific product, that will fill their soul, that improves their day and ultimately their life, even if just the slightest.

What is your day to day look like?

TR : When designing something new, my daily tasks will shift slightly according to the specific stage of development, but I always try to have an early start and take care of any structural or core brief questions and constraints first. If not going through research or flickering through my personal design library searching for insight and inspiration, I like to spend time in front of the PC simulating and working out the method, the strategy not just to create something, but to design it in a feasible way, searching for the best manufacturing method for each and every single detail. Constant playlists are absolutely mandatory, and as I am used to work towards later hours in the night, as that is when I used to do some creative projects several years ago, I will usually brainstorm once again in the evening and use a certain creative boost to re-focus and develop new creative solutions towards late-night design stints.

How do you keep up with latest design trends? To what extent do design trends matter?

TR : I am a methodical perfectionist by nature. I do not believe in creativity as a momentaneous spark, but the product of great efforts in studying, researching, truly and completely diving into the world around us, in order to find everything that has already been created, so one can design something that never had. Knowledge is power, and you can only be truthfully innovative and creative if you study everything that is around you, not just similar designs or market research. Trends are important tools to understand the global market vision, taste, and influenced knowledge and awareness of the products surrounding us, and whilst it is a mandatory tool for a more retail, global mass production kind of product, to rely solely on trends that try to put everyone into airtight boxes within the market is an absolute fallacy and a mistake companies do too often. To read and to understand trends is always important, but a specific design should always represent its own language and try to focus on the specific targets/users that will make the most out of it, instead of a global or commercial one-size-fits-all approach.

How do you know if a product or project is well designed? How do you define good design?

TR : Purpose and interaction and always the two constraints and filters on top of my list. A design has to be truly meaningful; it must have a purpose and reasoning for its existence, otherwise it’s just a gimmick, it’s just noise added to the market. It can be a beautiful object, but if ultimately it doesn’t provide a solution, doesn’t fill a need, doesn’t have a strong meaning for its existence, aesthetics will mean very little in creating an immersive interaction between product and user. Its handling, operation, and interaction must be so well thought out that any user feels that object as an extension of themselves, as something that completes them, not as a barrier or a lock to total sensorial immersion.

How do you decide if your design is ready?

TR : I believe it’s the “problem” with many designs and designers, is to have the accurate notions or perceptions of when to say “stop”. And that is normal, that is okay. In most of my designs, I will constantly consider if that product has been developed enough to supply a great solution, if it’s lacking something or if it is getting overcomplicated for no reason. It’s absolutely fine for that to happen, it just shows that you care. Ultimately, I approach the ending of each project, of each product, as that desired “perfection” stage, by testing my design over and over again, by going back to the brief, the direction, and ensuring every box can be ticked, and the rest comes by with experience. The stronger the connection a designer has to the production and manufacturing side of things, the more aware that person will be as to which details are technically and technologically feasible, and what will make that product to actually work and serve its purpose in the real world. And once that status is perceived, then it’s time to move forward.

What is your biggest design work?

TR : I see my designs as a constant process to perfection, and therefore, psychologically, my favourite creation is the one yet to come. That said, in recent years, one of my absolute favourite projects has to be the design of The Devil’s Keep whiskey. It marked not just my inaugural design for The Craft Irish Whiskey Co., but the very first time a brand has put on me the full responsibility of creating a world-leading product, with a fully blank canvas of a brief where I had the freedom, and ultimate responsibility of creating something the world has never seen, where I could deploy my inspirations from Japanese design, combined with mythological connotations and culminating in a sought-after, recognised design that granted me my first history-defining Gold A’Design Award.

Who is your favourite designer?

TR : I tend to not idolatrize anything in my career. When it comes to the design world, I will always see designers (renowned or not) and their work as targets for me to eventually surpass. That said, Japanese culture and design, alongside the more geometric language associated with Bauhaus have always had an influence on me. Shiro Kuramata’s Miss Blanche chair has always been an inspirational design I often have in mind, due to its sensorial exploration and light/colour/aesthetic exploration. On another hand, Wilhelm Wagenfeld’s work, namely the WA24 lamp has always been a personal favourite, where the form follows function language meets full-on ruler and compass geometries, on a very technical approach.

Would you tell us a bit about your lifestyle and culture?

TR : Over the last 8 years, I have been living in London, where I had the chance to work alongside some of the greatest studios and brands around. It is an amazing city with such a varied, rich, broad range of cultures, influences and expressions, which ultimately allowed me to embrace a wide range of information, knowledge, and inspirational assets for my work, namely in the luxury and spirits businesses due to the central position London has to offer in relation to the rest of Europe. Obviously, my origins in Portugal, the UK and Ireland have a very strong influence on everything I do, and I believe it is of the utmost importance to keep travelling, to keep discovering new cultures and sources of inspiration as to keep evolving as a person and a designer.

Would you tell us more about your work culture and business philosophy?

TR : As one of the founding members of The Craft Irish Whiskey Co., I was approached by Jay Bradley after he saw my previous spirits and luxury designs, with the aim of joining him in creating a product (The Devil’s Keep) that would return to Ireland its original whiskey notoriety and heritage, whilst creating not just another whiskey to put on the market, but instead, to actually create the most luxurious, immersive and sensorial whiskey experience ever. And that is the premise, the aim and the mindset that this company works and creates new products, new designs and innovations. Our motto is “obsessive whiskey perfection”, and that is exactly what we do at The Craft Irish Whiskey Co. This brand has become a perfectionist designer’s dream. To constantly keep challenging, keep finding new ways of creating a meaningful interaction, of telling the whiskey’s story, not driven by the constant rush of putting new products onto the retail markets, but to perfect every single detail, from the liquid to the bottle, from the glasses to the way the user sees the box and interacts with it, every single element is developed and perfected with the utmost notion of creating the ultimate whiskey tasting experiences.

What are your philanthropic contributions to society as a designer, artist and architect?

TR : After 7 straight years in London, during 2021, my wife and I had the opportunity to grow The Craft Irish Whiskey Co.’s design department, and due to our roots, Portugal was the chosen destination, and therefore, in a real going back to origins mindset, we ended up settling in Cascais, Lisbon, where, in the meantime, our daughter Camila was born as well. The goal for that shift from the UK offices and methodology was precisely to try and bring back to Portugal some of the know-how, the skillset and the osmosis of culture and experience gained in all our work abroad, to be able to develop, even if just the slightest, the Design culture and work opportunities in Portugal, which were absolutely scarce, not to say non-existent, almost a decade ago. My goal would be to ultimately become an ambassador of Design, bringing my knowledge and the success of my work to the development of the industry, starting with schools, universities, and the overall perception of good design practices and the value of this trade to the world and its potential to bring solutions to many global questions and issues.

What positive experiences you had when you attend the A’ Design Award?

TR : Global, renowned design competitions such as the A’ Design Awards are, for me and many, many designers across the world, the fuel for everything we do. For over a decade I dreamt of one day creating a product so great, so unique that would be deserving of such an award. It’s a showcase like this that makes you want to become a better designer, to become better and better so that one day you can be up there with all the great names in the Design World, and for that, the A’ Design Awards have played a crucial role in elevating my perception and the quality of my work as a designer, with the goal of having products that are at the level that deserves this award. I believe these kind of awards and recognition are what helps, every year, more and more designs (and designers) to evolve, to elevate their creations and to be one step closer to design greatness. With my first Gold A’ Design award, I immediately felt the urge to improve, to create something even better, to immerse even more into each and every single detail, so much so that I ended up creating The Emerald Isle Collection, which led to the ultimate Platinum award. And that mentality kep going on the year after, with another Platinum for The Storyteller design. And even now, I already feel that urge to reinvent myself, to keep constantly improving my designs, my creations, and their interaction with any user, in the endless search for design perfection.

Tiago Russo Profile