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Sandy » If there's a designer who fashioned Robin Peng's life its name might be serendipity. And that also might be the best description of how his thought processes work. A coincidence?
Peng was born in Taiwan, immigrated to California with his family, went to design school, then to work for Ford Motor Co. He came to Utah to snowboard, married and never left.
Now he owns and manages Design Engine, with an office now tucked in a small warehouse in Sandy where Peng and six others do work for some top-notch companies and a lot of local ones. But in these times, he says, with the rapid economic rise of China and other Asian countries, the world is changing and so must designers.
You have to innovate or the wave will sweep right over you, says Peng.
Trying to move away from just designing for other companies, Design Engine is creating its own products. The first one is called Applecore, a small rubbery object shaped like its name and around which you can wrap your mouse, earphone, microphone, camera or other cords to end tangles.
"I think there are only two or three design firms in the whole country that actually launch their own products," said Peng.
Coming to America » With the zeal of a religious convert, he is a passionate advocate of what he refers to as Americana, by which he means the things Americans have made, such as cars. And he also is a
Peng came to this country in the 1970s and attended the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., one of the top design schools in the country, particularly for automobiles. From there, he wanted to go work for a car company, enthralled by the classic designs of American automobiles.
Peng got a job with Ford's concept car design department and moved to Detroit.
"As an immigrant, going to the heartland of America was like going to Disneyland for me," Peng said. Walking through Ford's gates for the first time, "it was like a very intrinsic and satisfying experience. Like I've made it."
Peng was recruited away from Ford by Nissan, where he spent less than a year.
A snowboarding trip took him to Utah. Enthralled by the spaciousness, the mountains and the snow, he decided to stay.
Peng ended up teaching design at BYU.
"It was one of the best things that ever happed to me because it opened up a landscape of what I was meant to do," he said, noting that he also converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints .
Serendipity» Peng continued to exercise his fascination with autos when he designed and built his own natural-gas powered rally car, used for back-road races.
Then serendipity entered again, when, as a result of his work on the car, he met Alan Niedzwiecki, now the president and CEO of Quantum Technologies Inc.
"I recognized his talent right there on the spot," Niedzwiecki said.
Niedzwiecki asked for help in designing a scooter that could carry a load and was powered by natural gas. The idea was to sell it in places such as Indonesia or Malaysia, where it could wind in an out of a city's traffic snarls.
To make the scooter model mold, the two filled a big box with expanding foam out of which Peng was to carve a design with a deadline rapidly approaching.
"I'm working toward this deadline, and Robin was sitting there staring at this block ," said Niedzwiecki. "And I handed him a saw and a felt pen and I said, 'No time to think, it's time to act. You start cutting on that thing right now and you make it look like a motorcycle.' "
And Peng did. "He drew lines on it and he started with the saw and cut that thing," said Niedzwiecki. "The next day, he had one of the most beautiful things you ever saw."
That project led to the foundation of Design Engine in 1997.
"It was like, wow, I actually have people who want us to do work," Peng said.
Design Engine has done work on U.S. military vehicles and for Ford, Nu Skin Enterprises, OC Tanner and Logitech. It has won awards from the International Consumer Electronics Show four years in a row.
"Robin is particularly good at creating technical or technologically advanced-looking products or robotic-looking products," said Andreas R. Haase, director of product design for Alienware Corp. and a former classmate of Peng.
One from the heart » When he started Design Engine, Peng admits, "I had no strategic vision. There was no kind of a process I took."
But he always told himself "how important is it to innovate."
That leads him off on another thought: "Do you innovate with your heart or do you innovate with your mind?"
Then he says, "Here's something off topic," and launches into a riff about the ancient Egyptian mummies and how the heart was always left in and the mind discarded.
But that gets him back to his point about design, "I think vision comes from the heart, not from a process."
Peng also talks about how many of the Great American companies -- Ford, Walt Disney, Nike, Hewlett-Packard, Apple -- came from the vision of one person.
Democracy, he proclaims, is not the best business practice when it comes to building great companies. And that leads him to the question of innovation.
"When we brainstorm on projects, the conceptualization of an idea, if you democratize it and everybody has a say in it, you're not going to get a clear vision," Peng said.
That ability to innovate is also something very American, says the immigrant. It's a cultural thing, especially when weighed against Asian countries where conformity and getting along are more valued, he adds.
"If you were to put a single American designer against a Japanese designer, the American designer will win every time. Americans in general, not just designers, are far more able to express themselves with no limitations.
"To me, 'Made in America' is an idea. For a long time 'Made in America' has been defined by the products and goods we sell. But ... what I'm attracted to is the idea we can create."
Embracing change » Peng's services at Design Engine include arranging for production of goods in China, where he travels frequently. The rise of that country, as well India, as major manufacturing centers and economic powerhouses has changed the nature of what works economically in the United States, he said.
That means Design Engine and other companies in Utah and nationally must rethink what they do.
"This is a kind of transition that has been forced upon us because of what's been happening in Asia. I think this is true for a lot of companies here in Utah."
All of this led Peng and Design Engine to its Applecore product. The small rubbery object looks like an apple whose outer edges have been eaten away, leaving the core.
To ensure the Applecore could find a niche, the company gathered up similar competing products, as many as 30 of them. All were compared for ease of use, price and looks.
Peng grabs a competitor's product off a shelf and wraps a cord around it to judge it against the Applecore.
"We really want to get people to understand the metaphor behind the product," he said. "It doesn't really require any explanation."
