We, as the Designer Interviews ("DI") had the distinct pleasure and opportunity to interview award-winning, most creative and innovative Leafer Circular Design ("LCD").
Leafer Circular Design is a Taiwan-based design and consulting firm. With a focus on circular economy, they assist clients in creating profitable and sustainable solutions. They provide strategy consulting, resource optimization, and design of user-centered products and services. Leafer strives to increase value creation with a positive influence on the environment and society. They have already helped countless small and medium-sized enterprises become circular businesses.
Leafer Circular Design Designs
We are pleased to share with you original and innovative design work by Leafer Circular Design.
Leafer Circular Design Design - Leakage Awareness Consulting Workshop
Leafer Circular Design Design - Diax Project Showcase Exhibition
Designer Interview of Leafer Circular Design:
DI: Could you please tell us more about your art and design background? What made you become an artist/designer? Have you always wanted to be a designer?
LCD : Leafer’s co-founders met at the National Cheng Kung University Institute of Creative Industries Design (NCKU ICID). One was an industrial designer exploring service design for the circular economy. The other was a communications researcher exploring user experience and web development. They united under the mission of helping small and medium-sized enterprises become circular businesses through system thinking, a focus on users, and maximizing material value.
DI: Can you tell us more about your company / design studio?
LCD : Leafer is an interdisciplinary design company focused on helping clients join the circular economy. This means we help them with strategic planning and business consulting before any sort of design execution.
DI: What is "design" for you?
LCD : Design is envisioning the result, and planning the process. It is about communicating a tangible solution to address the needs of a target client or user, and then clarifying the steps needed to achieve that.
DI: What kinds of works do you like designing most?
LCD : We design from goals, rather than objects. We like projects when the client is willing to work with us to re-clarify their needs. This allows us to work back from their initial request (e.g., a new product) and define the best solution to their actual need (e.g., perhaps an upgrade service to an old product will create more value for both the client and users).
DI: What is your most favorite design, could you please tell more about it?
LCD : Our favorite designs are the ones in which the client was willing to work with us on rethinking their original inquiry. Rather than being a product-driven design team, we’re driven by the goal of helping the client achieve greater value through strategic reevaluation and efficient resource allocation.
DI: What was the first thing you designed for a company?
LCD : We have a long history of working with client companies on design, but a memorable one was the creation of a new product line using a client’s production byproducts. Essentially creating value out of thin air, while maximizing the use of their existing resources.
DI: What is your favorite material / platform / technology?
LCD : We like to get our hands dirty (experimenting with new materials, platforms, and technology). For example, based on our experience optimizing an earth-based plaster ratio, we feel that clay has a lot of potential in replacing cement. As far as platform/technology, we use Figma in most projects we do to communicate ideas.
DI: When do you feel the most creative?
LCD : We feel the most creative when the client is eager to communicate and willing to reposition themselves and their business.
DI: Which aspects of a design do you focus more during designing?
LCD : Circular design is about maximizing the value of resources. For us, this means rethinking what products are created, how they are produced, and who will be using them.
DI: What kind of emotions do you feel when you design?
LCD : We love the sense of achievement that comes from first, identifying the root issue of a situation, and later, developing a solution that creates value for all involved.
DI: What kind of emotions do you feel when your designs are realized?
LCD : Of course we’re elated when we see the results of our designs, but as designers, we’re also invigorated by the challenge of possibly optimizing it further.
DI: What makes a design successful?
LCD : A successful design helps the target audience envision a better outcome and includes tangible steps to make that happen. It’s system-driven, user-centric, and maximizes use of resources.
DI: When judging a design as good or bad, which aspects do you consider first?
LCD : As circular designers, we consider whether the value of the resources used are maximized. Yes, agricultural waste can be combined with plastic trash to create new products, but surely this is costly, creates relatively low new value, and will be harder to separate in the future! A better design might take a step back to identify why this plastic ended up as trash, find ways to efficiently extract value of each individual part before being “waste”, and involve a design that keeps future separation (value) in mind.
DI: From your point of view, what are the responsibilities of a designer for society and environment?
LCD : It’s commonly quoted that the design stage is responsible for 80% of a product’s environmental impact. We as designers have the privilege of working with key business decision makers, and the responsibility of helping them consider sustainability.
DI: How do you think the "design field" is evolving? What is the future of design?
LCD : We agree with IDEO CEO Tim Brown’s statement, “The next big thing in design is circular.” More and more businesses are realizing how unsustainable their business models are to themselves and the planet. Circular economy is a practical approach to becoming sustainable, with design at the core of making it possible.
DI: When was your last exhibition and where was it? And when do you want to hold your next exhibition?
LCD : We helped a long-time client create a low-waste exhibition to showcase the accumulation of nearly a decade of experience and design cooperation. It was a celebration and sharing of the possibilities of a new material product they have, created from the reforming of discards from their current production. We look forward to helping them and similar others showcase the potential of new products and business models.
DI: Where does the design inspiration for your works come from? How do you feed your creativity? What are your sources of inspirations?
LCD : We are inspired by the world around us. From the work of other designers, from nature, from the unspoken systems that our society has created.
DI: How would you describe your design style? What made you explore more this style and what are the main characteristics of your style? What's your approach to design?
LCD : Our approach to design is to find the most efficient way to effectively help the client accomplish their mission.
DI: Where do you live? Do you feel the cultural heritage of your country affects your designs? What are the pros and cons during designing as a result of living in your country?
LCD : We’re based in Taiwan, a small island which has seen many different eras from aboriginal pasts to colonization by both the West and East to military dictatorship to modern democracy silently fighting for independence. As a small country with few natural resources, economic survival has been about finding niches and creating services between raw suppliers and buyers - often meaning design gets squeezed out of the business equation. We're excited that design in Taiwan is experiencing a design rebirth, as businesses realize design's ability in differentiation and revitalizing products and services.
DI: How do you work with companies?
LCD : We always begin by working with clients to discover the true needs behind their initial inquiry, a clarification of the mission of the design. After that, we provide several rounds of proposals on how to achieve that mission until they are satisfied.
DI: What are your suggestions to companies for working with a designer? How can companies select a good designer?
LCD : We hope companies will be open to letting designers work with them on higher-level projects, considering strategy and business model. A good designer can identify a company’s advantages, the value of its used resources, and create business models to make efficient use of resources to satisfy the needs of their users.
DI: Can you talk a little about your design process?
LCD : Our design process starts from exploration and clarification. Following that we propose and revise based on the client’s feedback. Lastly, we execute our ideas, creating something that we’ll all be satisfied with.
DI: What are 5 of your favorite design items at home?
LCD : One design item we’re a fan of is Gogoro’s battery swap network. The design of this business model has successfully allowed their electronic scooters to infiltrate the local long-established gas-powered motorcycle market, and now they’re expanding into other international markets.
DI: Can you describe a day in your life?
LCD : Work hard, eat well, and communicate a lot.
DI: Could you please share some pearls of wisdom for young designers? What are your suggestions to young, up and coming designers?
LCD : To design is to learn how to observe something, to replicate, and to improve it.
DI: From your perspective, what would you say are some positives and negatives of being a designer?
LCD : Designers have both the blessing and curse of knowing that the world around us has been designed. We live in a world of our own creation, and a designer can only do so much to change that.
DI: What is your "golden rule" in design?
LCD : Users are central to any design. A design without their needs and situations in mind is useless.
DI: What skills are most important for a designer?
LCD : Designers need to be able to zoom in and out of the challenge at hand. This allows them to think outside the box, while also creating fine-tuned solutions to meet the challenges presented.
DI: Which tools do you use during design? What is inside your toolbox? Such as software, application, hardware, books, sources of inspiration etc.?
LCD : We use all the common tools: Adobe Creative Cloud, Google Cloud, Figma, Pinterest, etc.
DI: Designing can sometimes be a really time consuming task, how do you manage your time?
LCD : We manage our time by subdividing tasks into subtasks and arranging by priority and need for communication.
DI: How long does it take to design an object from beginning to end?
LCD : Object design can take anywhere from a few months to a full year.
DI: What is the most frequently asked question to you, as a designer?
LCD : Most new clients are unfamiliar with design, thinking it’s only about making objects attractive. Due to that, we often hear the innocent question of “can you give me a quote for a _ product?” This greatly underestimates the value design can bring beyond object exteriors, whether it be creating a new experience for existing products, creating new services based on identified user needs, or even creating new business opportunities.
DI: What was your most important job experience?
LCD : Early on, we were approached by an activism group asking for unpaid proposals to a large enterprise’s goal of reducing plastic waste. We figured why not, and approached the project like we do with any other case: taking a step back to identify the reason behind this plastic becoming “waste” in their system, and creating a solution tailored to address that issue and that creates value for all involved. When we heard the proposals from the other groups and their feedback, we knew they had no real desire to change their business model, and just wanted a shiny new product package for the sake of greenwashing. This solidified our desire to focus on helping small and medium-sized enterprises since it’s relatively easier for them to make changes, any change can easily have a big impact, and they feel stronger economic pressure.
DI: Who are some of your clients?
LCD : We focus on working with small and medium-sized companies. They’re the backbone of our economy and often the most interested yet hesitant to use new business models in line with the circular economy.
DI: What type of design work do you enjoy the most and why?
LCD : We think high-level difficult projects are the most rewarding. The more a client is willing to rethink strategy and business models, the more we’re eager to help them achieve their mission.
DI: What are your future plans? What is next for you?
LCD : In the future, we hope to create a system for connecting Taiwan’s small and medium-sized enterprises to a network of circular designers. To achieve this, we are working on training designers and gathering momentum as a design company.
DI: Do you work as a team, or do you develop your designs yourself?
LCD : We’re an interdisciplinary startup, so most of our work is done in-house as a team. That said, we’re always happy to find new freelancers to work with on a long-term case-by-case basis.
DI: Do you have any works-in-progress being designed that you would like to talk about?
LCD : We’re currently working on a workshop to help designers lead businesses to reconsider their resource use and business models. We believe this can help more companies employ designers in higher-level design projects, ultimately creating more circular economy businesses.
DI: How can people contact you?
LCD : We are Leafer Circular Design on most social media platforms. Business inquiries can be emailed to hello@leaferdesign.com
DI: Any other things you would like to cover that have not been covered in these questions?
LCD : We’d be happy to answer any questions you have or details you’d like to hear!