small japanese shop interior design by nezu aymo
hello everyone. i'm kota nezu from znug design. before i begin my talk, i'd like to show you something; zecoo, electric motorcycle. this is zecoo, electric motorcycle, and this is mr. nakamura of auto staff suehiro, who created it. now i'd like to begin. today i'll talk to you
about bringing together excitement. i also had the opportunity to have a workshop about excitement this morning. i believe, making something that isn't exciting is a crime! that's an exaggeration. we create things, but we don't think much of sending things out into the world that don't excite us. another point. when i spoke with tedxseeds staff,
they asked me to go rough today. and i kind of understood what they meant. so i'll be going rough today, so it would be great if you could listen in the same way. as a product designer, i design industrial goods. this is a sketch. this kind of sketch becomes this kind of product. after many years,
it came in its second generation available. it's not as if i'm asking you to buy it, but please buy it. things like this are out in the world now. recently, i call myself a creative communicator. i define this as working to make meetings fun. in essence, meetings are fun, but everyone has the perception in their minds that meetings are boring.
that's not true. because a variety of talents gather there, meetings should be the best and most creative moments. ideas reside inside others' minds. i often make these kind of bizarre drawings. it's important to bring ideas out of others' minds. i bring ideas out of them, and others bring ideas out of my mind. that's what i do.
and i work to maximize the power of a team. this is a summery of what meeting members said and what i thought during a meeting, when i worked for a company called afternoon tea. after i went back to the office, we made this with computer graphics, and this is the finished product. i used to work at toyota. i wasn't going to talk about it,
but i was asked to definitely talk about it, so i'll do it right now. this is me working in toyota with my hair dyed blonde. i have had my hair dyed even before i quit that job: this is me before i quit it. this car is called i-unit, which was released by toyota at expo 2005 aichi japan. i worked my hardest on this. my life-long focus is to maximize output throughout my life.
of course, even though you work hard in the company, you generate output. but, at that time, i thought quitting is the best way to maximize my output. i think a little differently now, though. it was my answer after all then: connecting freely with interesting people increases my output. that's what i thought.
so what happens when you connect with interesting people? i've wanted to achieve a childhood dream: "i will make exciting electric motorcycles." some say "are you an elementary school student?" i've often called it teenage silliness. but now i think that it is even more childish than that. i made this with computer graphics in 2005, just after quitting toyota. at that time, i had no resource to make a real motorcycle,
except this graphic design. then i realized you can't make excitement a reality by one person, and decided to form an excitement team. you've already heard me repeating"excitement" many times now. but if you don't speak out for it, it won't come. for me, it was mr. nakamura, who've come up here on stage in the beginning. when i told him "i want to make an electric motorcycle", "okay", mr. nakamura said,
"but, first, you gotta do what i wanna do." and i said to myself "oh, if i don't listen now, i won't have anywhere to go from here." this vehicle is so-called reverse tricycle, with two wheels in the front and one in the back. mr. nakamura and i made this together. we made it in a small factory. this is the first thing we made together. it's now also a tomica product.
it's actually on sale all out in this very venue. up till now, i've just been asking you to buy things, but if you buy it and come find me, i'll sign it for sure. well, from here on out, i'll talk about what excites me. it's zecoo, this electric motorcycle. excitement has to start from you. if you aren't excited, you can't get other people excited, can you?
when i drew this sketch here, i got really excited right off the bat. i thought "this is awesome. we have to make a real thing now." if i were in toyota, i would have to draw a sketch more in detail to convince others. but i thought "this is great! this is it! gotta see mr. nakamura." this is my real sketch during the conversation with mr. nakamura at his auto staff suehiro. this sketch is so messy that i thought i shouldn't show at tedxseeds,
but that kind of occasions bring about creations. we carry on discussions like "it is about this big." and i started considering it a little more seriously. to bring together excitement, i use words, pictures, and everything. by doing that, i think your excitement will definitely come across. i sometimes start creating the parts relatively less important to get myself fired up.
that's how i drew the frame and such. i get excited especially when i get to around this point. i think this is when design skills come along. to me, communication is the most important. and design is a tool to make its progress smooth. that's how i define design skills. to put it in simple words, we have the result of all of our ideas incorporated. as a graphic, it's complete.
we made a system-chart-looking thing. if you look carefully, you will find lots of parts to criticize. this was what i really wanted, which was this email saying "mr. nezu, how cool!" oh, it didn't mean that i'm cool. they meant the graphics i've shown you before. why no laughter? it's a funny joke! it goes "that's the future! exciting! let's keep it up! give me the dimensions later."
this kind of atmosphere is so important. thank you. this was the moment when our excitement came together. i was really happy. once excitement comes together, there's no need to explain details. this motorcycle will be displayed in this venue so that you can look at it closely. this is when we made it with lathes.
then they cut and weld it. this is how the vehicle gets made. i designed this part. but when i looked at it, the head of this nail was also neatly shaved down, which i didn't specify. this kind of jobs are made when excitement comes across. this is the factory where we actually made it. it seems disorderly,
but mr. nakamura said, "this picture looks great!" i said a bit that excitement influences details. because people put their passion into many parts in the process, those parts are filled with that passion. when i took this picture, i was so happy that i almost passed out. sorry that the faces are cut off. i think it was on purpose.
the result of that excitement was that we released this at tokyo designer week last year. we finished it that morning and photographed it then. these pictures were taken by a professional. professional photographs look really good. there are so many parts we trimmed up and perfected that i cannot fit all of them in 18 minutes. so i would talk about that another time. i'll move to another point.
you might think we made it because we are a small company. may be so. but question is, can you really not do it in a big company? i don't think so. i quit toyota and connected with them again. we collaborated with them and developed a small car that excites both parents and kids. this is that car. this is my illustration, and this is the real thing.
that reaction is really good. thank you. we released it at a toy show, not an auto show. that was our new experiment. children can drive it too. i live for pictures like this. here is a group of a little bigger friends. here's someone even bigger. he's enjoying it, so it's okay. i wouldn't go so far as to say
that quitting toyota was good. but connecting with interesting people from toyota was the most important. this is mr. tsuji from toyota. without him, that car was not made. i heard that he pressured the vice president into signing off on it. this is him with our kanai. they doodle on the door. in big companies, i think,
you wouldn't have this kind of atmosphere. we were a very guerrilla-style team and we had fun. i hope you get a sense of these things with those pictures. we also bring together excitement out of toyota. for this project which we had quite short time, i asked all of my friends and best partners to work together. this is mr. ishiura from tgb design
and mr. ken takano, who does interior design like designing booths in expositions. mr. ishiura made a video for us. how can i put this in words? it's sounds bad if i call it as mixing business and private matters, but i think it's just fine for me. we had fun, and we're a great team. what matters is people, not companies. that's what everyone says, and i really agree.
it is exciting to connect with interesting people, right? all it takes is how much you can share your own excitement with interesting people. these pictures show we are having fun. let's get back to talking about zecoo. it's so hard to commercialize it. although it's tough to make prototypes, you get through it anyhow. but, it's even harder to sell it.
that's what we're working our hardest on now. we got it photographed in tv stations. mr. tezuka took this picture. it ran at a high speed. i was really moved when it did as the first time. i thought i could die happy, but now i don't want to. "impressive mr. nakamura!", i thought. we even got a licence plate.
you see it on the vehicle today. i really wonder what was done to get it. our overindulgent project is now out on the public streets. i am truly thankful to mr. nakamura. i'll talk about excitement connection to turn the vehicle into production. this motorcycle is electric. but mr. nakamura is professional in gasoline vehicles, not in electric ones. so we brought in people who do electric.
two people in the bottom left designed the boots i wear now. they were designed to match zecoo. they are the people who made these together. how about exciting people from big companies? this was a really small project, but surprisingly it interested people from big companies. i think that's interesting too. a small company brought in large ones. i wish that this would keep happening.
so what do you do with excitement? it's to connect excitement of your neighborhood factory with the world. the first step is dubai! you might wonder "dubai, the first step?" this is their venue. i was terrified. but there's nothing to do but go. we'll be going in january, 2013. we'll release a dubai special version of the vehicle. oh, there seems to be a problem with the slide.
it's pretty blurry. my apologies. it was supposed to be in focus. we'll release it there. we're really running out of time, so we'll start preparations tomorrow this is the end of the slides. i am thinking of today at tedxseeds as the day of starting excitement together.
i think people here are amazing. you didn't come for nothing. to be honest, i think we are all strange. so why don't you connect with each other and share your own excitement. some business may even start from here. i'll go out on a limb and say it. business. just share that sense of speed and that excitement, and start something here.
i want you to make today that kind of moments. well, we've got to put this vehicle off the stage, so let's call mr. nakamura out again. on three, and i'm going to say "mr. nakamura!" and call him out all together. one, two, three. mr. nakamura! you came out too soon! all right, we'll be selling this vehicle hard in dubai,
so please wish us luck! thank you very much. curator: thank you mr. nezu.