12: Che-Wei Wang & Taylor Levy (CW&T) - Iterating Together with Time
Dialectic
Innovation Through Collaboration
This chapter explores the continuous improvement of the speakers as they learn from collaboration and new technologies in their studio practices. It discusses the balance between innovation and practical optimization, underscoring the importance of teamwork with skilled individuals while navigating product development challenges.
Che-Wei Wang and Taylor Levy are the founders of CW&T (Website, Instagram, X, TikTok), a Brooklyn-based studio creating products that exist somewhere between art, design, and engineering.
The husband-and-wife team met at NYU ITP and shares a background across industrial design, architecture, computer science, film, including time at Pratt Institute and MIT. They won the 2022 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Product Design. They design and manufacture everyday objects including clocks, pens, tools, and other strange objects that challenge our relationship with time, attention, and materiality. Their most recognizable products include the Pen Type-A, Pen Type-C (my favorite), Time Since Launch (a one-time-use, 100-year timekeeper), and Solid State Watch, a remix of the classic Casio F-91W.
Our conversation explores their fascination with time, their commitment to creating heirloom-quality objects in a disposable world, and how they've built a sustainable creative practice on their own terms. We discuss their prototyping-centered approach, the tension between digital and physical creation, and how they navigate collaboration as partners in life and work.
Throughout, Che-Wei and Taylor reveal a philosophy that treats making as its own reward—they create what fascinates them first, trusting that others will connect with their vision. In a world increasingly dominated by disposable products and digital experiences, CW&T offers a refreshing counterpoint: a workshop where physical objects are thoughtfully conceived, meticulously crafted, and built to accompany us through life's journeys. Their work invites us to reconsider our relationship with the objects we use daily and the passage of time itself, offering a refreshing counterpoint to our increasingly digital, ephemeral world.
Full transcript with all links and references.
Timestamps
- (00:00): Time: a pattern across CW&T’s careers
- (11:21): Time Since Launch: the idea of counting up instead of down, and creating personal epochs
- (14:11): "Good design is long-lasting,” Durability of Electric Objects
- (19:31): Balancing art, product, and design: CW&T's approach to creating strange (but useful) things
- (23:51): First Word vs. Last Word Art: Michael Naimark's essay on innovation
- (28:01): Death by consensus: Why Che-Wei left architecture, and the joy of creative collaboration
- (32:52): Inspiration, Theory, and Self-Evidence
- (38:40): Tools: iPhone world, what makes a great tool, and design that optimizes for joy
- (44:21): The Hi-Tec-C pen cartridge and remixing what has come before
- (48:01): Making physical objects: a case for prototyping and against rendering
- (55:41): CW&T’s beloved products
- (53:27): ITP, Electrified Objects, Software in Objects
- (56:49): Dream Stem: Generative design, openness to new tools, AI's impact on the creative process, and intuition
- (01:07:11): The value of friction, and what's lost and gained in the pursuit of efficiency
- (01:09:46): CW&T the brand, contemplating CW&T's legacy and purpose
- (01:15:24): Kickstarter, owning your audience, and what it would look like to start today
- (01:19:35): Partners in life and work, the tension between merging identities and maintaining individuality
- (01:25:02): Growth, explore vs. exploit, and learning, dream collaborators, and more resources
- (1:33:56): Lighting round: great teachers, New York City focus & serendipity, creative inspirations, CW&T book, nature and green things, morphology and architecture, “form and force,” a gift for children or grandchildren, what to hang onto,
- (01:52:07): Timelessness
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