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When Andrew Neyer first set out to create his own products, he did so to build a career he could tolerate. Sixteen years later, that career has become something closer to a worldview. One with an open source philosophy that’s applied as much to how he runs his business as to what he makes.
In this conversation with Danielle Deley, Neyer explains why he'd rather get a laugh than deliver a lecture, why waste is the real enemy, and why a Lego set can be a masterclass in production strategy.
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Dune Light
01 of 04
DD
Your work reads as humorous and welcoming. Where does that instinct come from, and who else does it well?
AN
I can easily point to Charlie Harper,?? a Cincinnati-based mid-century artist, as an early, formative influence. He always had that aesthetic taste that I love, because it existed outside its time period and he always had these kind of cheeky titles. A good example is his piece that pairs a skull with a wren, titled Wrented.?? It was one of the first times I saw art that's good enough to be at MoMA but still being kind of not taking itself too seriously.
That instinct became a direct reaction against what I call the art world's "high-brow snobbery and pretentiousness." Humor, for me, became a functional tool rather than just a personality trait. If it's funny, it's funny — even if you don't want it to be. And it's so much more memorable so this thinking kind of became a cheat code.
I'm candid about where I want the work to sit. I don't want to make it Spencer's Gifts, but I do want to toe the line between selling the same product in MoMA, Spencer's, and at a Discount Drug Mart. What separates them, in my view, isn't the joke but the execution. You could take something at Spencer's that at its core is a funny joke, and any designer could spend a day and rebrand that and get it a lot closer to MoMA just by providing a constraint and stripping things off. The instinct should be reductive. Does a given detail, down to something as small as a visible junction-box screw, serve the concept? If not, it goes.
That instinct became a direct reaction against what I call the art world's "high-brow snobbery and pretentiousness." Humor, for me, became a functional tool rather than just a personality trait. If it's funny, it's funny — even if you don't want it to be. And it's so much more memorable so this thinking kind of became a cheat code.
I'm candid about where I want the work to sit. I don't want to make it Spencer's Gifts, but I do want to toe the line between selling the same product in MoMA, Spencer's, and at a Discount Drug Mart. What separates them, in my view, isn't the joke but the execution. You could take something at Spencer's that at its core is a funny joke, and any designer could spend a day and rebrand that and get it a lot closer to MoMA just by providing a constraint and stripping things off. The instinct should be reductive. Does a given detail, down to something as small as a visible junction-box screw, serve the concept? If not, it goes.
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Discourse Recorder
DD
Your manifesto lays out three distinct ways a design can come to life. Where did that framework come from?
AN
The Manifesto(TM) started as a preface for a longer piece I wanted to write on production methods, and it sort of evolved into an outline for how and why I design. I'm often asked by younger designers or students whether they should focus on trying to license their designs or attempt to produce them themselves. The Manifesto became my go-to response to explain the benefits different production methods can offer.
The three paths I land on are User Produced, Licensed, and Produced, each with a different end goal, not a different hierarchy of value.
User Produced aims to give someone an idea or confidence to produce the work themselves, with costs as low as possible, by leveraging the skills and materials they already have. An example is our Intern sneakers. Rather than make and stock a full size run of custom sneakers, I designed a set of patches to sew onto a fresh pair of Chuck Taylors, or any shoe.
This method eliminates overproduction of products no one wants, because the product is brought to life only in quantities of interest. If no one is interested in the product, it is not made. If 77 people want to make it, then 77 are made.
Licensing is always an option because the licensee is ultimately trying to make a profit; they're not just giving it away for free. This method can provide access to specialized production methods and distribution that can be a significant advantage in bringing a design to life if the designer lacks the necessary tools or means. For example, our Swing Dome Light was originally licensed by CB2/Crate & Barrel in 2015.
Because profit is the priority, the product will inevitably be discontinued if its interest and profit decline. Good design can live here, but it will always have to wrestle with its appetite for profit.
Produced is my own studio's model and mirrors how I think about making art generally. I want this thing to exist, so I'm going to design it, whether it's concept-driven or decorative—the design is the top priority. An example is our Cactus Catchall.
It is very difficult to self-produce goods that are affordable and accessible. This is the most challenging and exciting part of design for me because I want to create affordable, good designs.
The three paths I land on are User Produced, Licensed, and Produced, each with a different end goal, not a different hierarchy of value.
User Produced aims to give someone an idea or confidence to produce the work themselves, with costs as low as possible, by leveraging the skills and materials they already have. An example is our Intern sneakers. Rather than make and stock a full size run of custom sneakers, I designed a set of patches to sew onto a fresh pair of Chuck Taylors, or any shoe.
This method eliminates overproduction of products no one wants, because the product is brought to life only in quantities of interest. If no one is interested in the product, it is not made. If 77 people want to make it, then 77 are made.
Licensing is always an option because the licensee is ultimately trying to make a profit; they're not just giving it away for free. This method can provide access to specialized production methods and distribution that can be a significant advantage in bringing a design to life if the designer lacks the necessary tools or means. For example, our Swing Dome Light was originally licensed by CB2/Crate & Barrel in 2015.
Because profit is the priority, the product will inevitably be discontinued if its interest and profit decline. Good design can live here, but it will always have to wrestle with its appetite for profit.
Produced is my own studio's model and mirrors how I think about making art generally. I want this thing to exist, so I'm going to design it, whether it's concept-driven or decorative—the design is the top priority. An example is our Cactus Catchall.
It is very difficult to self-produce goods that are affordable and accessible. This is the most challenging and exciting part of design for me because I want to create affordable, good designs.
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Intern Sneaker
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Crane Light
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Cactus Catchall
DD
Was the focus on lighting as a product a deliberate strategic call, or did it happen by accident?
AN
By my own account, mostly by accident but a logistically smart one. Lighting has proven to have the largest margins for profit. Most people don't have a sculpture budget for their home, but they do have a budget for light fixtures. So, I add light sockets to the sculptures I design. I'm only half-joking when I say this, but in the company's entire product-photography history, not one light bulb has ever actually been shown turned on.
Logistics matter as much as aesthetics. Lighting hangs from the ceiling, so gravity is in your favor, unlike furniture, which has to be sturdy, substantial, and expensive to ship. I compare the margin logic to a farm stand. If a farm can make a knockout logo and also sell aprons and mugs, their profit margin on those non-perishable products is so much better than selling eggs. The constraint that keeps it from becoming just merchandise is that the light still has to function as well as or better than anything else in its category; only once that's solved does the sculptural, conceptual layer get to take over.
Logistics matter as much as aesthetics. Lighting hangs from the ceiling, so gravity is in your favor, unlike furniture, which has to be sturdy, substantial, and expensive to ship. I compare the margin logic to a farm stand. If a farm can make a knockout logo and also sell aprons and mugs, their profit margin on those non-perishable products is so much better than selling eggs. The constraint that keeps it from becoming just merchandise is that the light still has to function as well as or better than anything else in its category; only once that's solved does the sculptural, conceptual layer get to take over.
“The light still has to function...only once that’s solved does the sculptural, conceptual layer get to take over.”
Andrew Neyer
DD
You've called yourself a conceptual artist. What does that actually mean to you, given how much of the art world uses that label to mean "hard to understand"?
AN
My frustration with art-world conceptual art?? is specific. What most people in the non-art world see as conceptual art is art they don't understand, but to me, it's the weirdest cop-out, because if it's actually conceptual, I should be leaving with an overt concept. My unlock came from an unlikely source: the dictionary. Merriam-Webster clearly says the concept supersedes the artifact. I describe the relationship as a teeter-totter. The work I dislike has the concept so high and the artifact so low that it's a steep barrier to entry. My own goal is closer to balance: an artifact strong enough to stop someone before they even know there's a concept underneath it. That's why I love the Dune light. Once you forget the title, you're like, "Man! That looks really good." Then you realize it's a dune, and you get a big wave of the concept. It's this ebb and flow.
That clarity led to a literal declaration. In 2022, at my own birthday party, I staged a spoof of Michael Jordan's retirement speech, announcing to friends and family that I was retiring from every art form except Conceptual Art—kind of like when Baldessari burned all of his paintings. Half gag, half genuine turning point.
I extend the same conceptual approach to fatherhood [said in one of the conversation's more unguarded moments]. When I turn into dust, if I was a good dad, that concept lives on. Even after any evidence of me is long gone. My actions and the work I produce are just vehicles to deliver a concept. Making them remarkable and memorable is the goal. If it's truly a good concept, it doesn't even need the artifact anymore to be shared.
That clarity led to a literal declaration. In 2022, at my own birthday party, I staged a spoof of Michael Jordan's retirement speech, announcing to friends and family that I was retiring from every art form except Conceptual Art—kind of like when Baldessari burned all of his paintings. Half gag, half genuine turning point.
I extend the same conceptual approach to fatherhood [said in one of the conversation's more unguarded moments]. When I turn into dust, if I was a good dad, that concept lives on. Even after any evidence of me is long gone. My actions and the work I produce are just vehicles to deliver a concept. Making them remarkable and memorable is the goal. If it's truly a good concept, it doesn't even need the artifact anymore to be shared.
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Dune Light
DD
A lot of what you make stays close to home within Ohio. Was that a deliberate design decision from the start?
AN
I can trace nearly the entire supply chain by hand. The wood was Ohio-based from the beginning, but now the parts come from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Connecticut, Ohio, and Maine. The steel is domestic, cut and galvanized within a 50-mile radius of our studio. The metal spinning happens just outside Dayton, roughly 40 miles north of us, and our powder coating is in Woodlawn and Amelia. Most of the TIG welding is done in Fairfield, Ohio, about 22 miles away. Although I still do at least one weld on almost everything myself. The real exceptions are small lamp components, which I buy from outside suppliers and that make up a small fraction of any given product.
A lot of why it's close to home is because those were the decisions I made when I started. They were my first options, but it hardened into a principle. One of the biggest wastes in our process is transport, so I eliminated it as much as possible. The math is easy: if I have a milled aluminum part that fits 1,000 units in a 12x12x12" box, the difference between UPS shipping from Dayton versus California is only $7. The smaller and lighter the product, the more diverse we'll be with vendors. But the stuff we try to keep local is what has to be sent freight.
There's a quality-control instinct behind it too, the ability to just drive to a vendor and do a shop visit. It makes it so much easier.
A lot of why it's close to home is because those were the decisions I made when I started. They were my first options, but it hardened into a principle. One of the biggest wastes in our process is transport, so I eliminated it as much as possible. The math is easy: if I have a milled aluminum part that fits 1,000 units in a 12x12x12" box, the difference between UPS shipping from Dayton versus California is only $7. The smaller and lighter the product, the more diverse we'll be with vendors. But the stuff we try to keep local is what has to be sent freight.
There's a quality-control instinct behind it too, the ability to just drive to a vendor and do a shop visit. It makes it so much easier.
DD
Let’s talk about your Internal Resource Library, an open source blueprint for your entire business. Open source is usually a software term so when did you start applying it to a physical products business?
AN
The thread starts with staffing. As my team grew to six or seven people, I wanted a way for them to collaborate that wasn't just executing my own product ideas, because most of the designers who wanted to work for me actually wanted my job.
So I built a weekly staff lunch called Inspo. Each Wednesday, on a rotating seven-week loop, one employee would present something, a project, a video, an idea. The format grew out of something more personal, and on the preceding Tuesday, I would take each of those employees out for an unstructured one-on-one lunch, instead of doing these pointless performance reviews twice a year that mean nothing. The Tuesday lunch was where I'd invest in that person directly, and Wednesday was where they gave something back to the group.
To make the Wednesday sessions easy to run, I wrote an internal how-to guide, an article on how to write an article, so employees would send me plain-text copy by 9am and I could format it, photograph it, publish it, and have a printed version in everyone's binder by noon. What began as an intranet eventually became its own public site, deliberately registered as a .org, which I feel like that just conceptually already tells you what it is. This site is for someone to use however they see fit.
As for the term open source, it was very much a program and kind of software-based term, and in the last five or ten years, I feel like people really use that as a perceptual unlock. It's like the tribe that never had the word for the color blue and once you have that word, you're like, oh, that's what this is.
So I built a weekly staff lunch called Inspo. Each Wednesday, on a rotating seven-week loop, one employee would present something, a project, a video, an idea. The format grew out of something more personal, and on the preceding Tuesday, I would take each of those employees out for an unstructured one-on-one lunch, instead of doing these pointless performance reviews twice a year that mean nothing. The Tuesday lunch was where I'd invest in that person directly, and Wednesday was where they gave something back to the group.
To make the Wednesday sessions easy to run, I wrote an internal how-to guide, an article on how to write an article, so employees would send me plain-text copy by 9am and I could format it, photograph it, publish it, and have a printed version in everyone's binder by noon. What began as an intranet eventually became its own public site, deliberately registered as a .org, which I feel like that just conceptually already tells you what it is. This site is for someone to use however they see fit.
As for the term open source, it was very much a program and kind of software-based term, and in the last five or ten years, I feel like people really use that as a perceptual unlock. It's like the tribe that never had the word for the color blue and once you have that word, you're like, oh, that's what this is.
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DD
You've mentioned Lego as one of your favorite case studies for this kind of thinking. What draws you to it?
AN
The Lego brick's?? original design was purchased, not invented in-house which was based on stacking blocks designed by a British inventor that looked nearly identical but didn't actually interlock. The Lego Group's?? innovation was adding the internal tubes that gave the bricks their "clutch power." After building a business on that foundation, Lego went through a period of aggressively protecting its own IP against knockoff competitors like Mega Bloks. Eventually reversing course, publishing build instructions publicly (often before a new set even ships), and leaning into the fan and communities designing on top of the platform. By surrendering the copyright, it actually becomes way better because if you have a great product, no one's going to do it better than you.
DD
There's a real difference between an audience that buys what you've already made and clientele who commission something from you. As a creative how has it been having an audience?
AN
I describe it as a genuinely privileged position. We don't have a sales team. We have people who answer emails, and if people stop buying it, we'll stop making it. That model, I acknowledge, is a really romantic version to run a company, and one where the real skill is how do you actually sell people on this, making sure they know it's available, without pushing it on them.
Custom work still enters my pipeline, but selectively and on my terms, and often as a way to surface a genuine, previously unrecognized need. If someone brings a custom request, that becomes a chance to try and solve a need I didn't know was there. If a custom piece succeeds and seems to have broader appeal, it can graduate into a standard product, but volume alone is never the test. The quantity sold isn't the litmus test of whether it becomes a product. It has to be timeless.
Custom work still enters my pipeline, but selectively and on my terms, and often as a way to surface a genuine, previously unrecognized need. If someone brings a custom request, that becomes a chance to try and solve a need I didn't know was there. If a custom piece succeeds and seems to have broader appeal, it can graduate into a standard product, but volume alone is never the test. The quantity sold isn't the litmus test of whether it becomes a product. It has to be timeless.
DD
Where did "removing waste" as a governing idea come from?
AN
I discovered Taiichi Ohno's book Toyota Production System?? as another one of those word for blue moments, a term that reorganized how I already thought. I always used the word efficiency or things like that, but efficiency implies something different. Removing waste is a different way of showing up to the table. Efficiency feels like the end result of, you did this well. Versus, well, the way you did it well was you studied where the waste was.
What struck me about the book wasn't the productivity framework so much as the origin story, Ohno spending three weeks standing inside a factory, observing before making a single decision. It's a really cool read because you're getting to hear how and why this process became a process, as opposed to most lean-manufacturing literature, which I describe as more businessy, this is why you should do this, because it has this and this benefit.
What struck me about the book wasn't the productivity framework so much as the origin story, Ohno spending three weeks standing inside a factory, observing before making a single decision. It's a really cool read because you're getting to hear how and why this process became a process, as opposed to most lean-manufacturing literature, which I describe as more businessy, this is why you should do this, because it has this and this benefit.
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DD
Speaking of waste, you've scaled the business down since the early 2020s. What's driving that, and where do you see it heading?
AN
I now work with a single part-time apprentice rather than a full staff, a shift I tie directly to family life. With teenagers at home, I wanted a micro-retirement where I'm only ideally working during their school hours. I credit a specific inflection point: when my longtime second-in-command, Bill, moved away in 2021, I chose not to backfill the role. I'm just going to keep dropping it down so when I want to pivot it's not like trying to turn a giant barge around. It's like riding a jet ski.
“It’s a lot less money, but it’s a lot more time.”
Andrew Neyer
I frame the shift as a trade, not a retreat. It's a lot less money, but it's a lot more time. I'm aware of how that sounds out loud. And I always joke, at family gatherings, when people ask how the business is going, I say, "We're doing great; we have fewer employees, our revenue's tanking, but I have a lot more time!" I return to the sine-wave metaphor rather than treating growth as a straight line. I see the business as cyclical, deliberately returning to an earlier, smaller shape so I can start over with the confidence and the client relationships I didn't have the first time.
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DD
How do you personally define a successful product?
AN
I draw a clear line between commercial and personal metrics. I've sold fewer than ten of what I call one of my most successful designs, Cactus Catchall, now fifteen years old, that still functions daily in my own house as, among other things, the family's default hair-tie, glasses, scissor, tape, umbrella—everything. I think it's a healthy thing for a younger designer to know that I'm measuring the success of that product by how it's used, not how many sold. I connect this to a broader point about self-defined metrics, that the version of success has to be afforded to every human being, every day, otherwise you're measuring it wrong.
I also point to the flip side, from a design most people would call a commercial hit based on volume. I've sold over 500 units of the Discourse Recorder, a concept that retails for 2¢. It's technically a bestseller by unit count, but that only amounts to about $10.
I also point to the flip side, from a design most people would call a commercial hit based on volume. I've sold over 500 units of the Discourse Recorder, a concept that retails for 2¢. It's technically a bestseller by unit count, but that only amounts to about $10.
DD
A lot of your designs sit finished for years before you release them. Why the delay, and does it worry you that someone else might beat you to market with a similar idea?
AN
Having some time away from a design is probably my biggest tool. I make something, then live with it for years. If I still love it after that, then that's timeless. Many of my releases were actually designed a decade or more before they reach the public.
On the risk of being copied, a hundred percent, it will happen. That's how the universe works. But if they do it better than me, then that's on me. I trace this to a specific before-and-after in my career, the point where declaring myself a conceptual artist collided with going deep on open source. It's either got to be all open source, or it's not, otherwise it's not open source. That's the logic behind surrendering copyright outright on my site. This is literally business suicide a little bit, because I have no legal standing on anything. But I see it as reputational leverage more than risk. The person who was afraid to steal it is now emboldened to use it in a way that suits them. And I think the number of people who use it far exceeds the number who steal it.
On the risk of being copied, a hundred percent, it will happen. That's how the universe works. But if they do it better than me, then that's on me. I trace this to a specific before-and-after in my career, the point where declaring myself a conceptual artist collided with going deep on open source. It's either got to be all open source, or it's not, otherwise it's not open source. That's the logic behind surrendering copyright outright on my site. This is literally business suicide a little bit, because I have no legal standing on anything. But I see it as reputational leverage more than risk. The person who was afraid to steal it is now emboldened to use it in a way that suits them. And I think the number of people who use it far exceeds the number who steal it.
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01 of 03
DD
You've done a children's alphabet book already. Is an actual book of your design philosophy in the works?
AN
Yes, there are three separate, half-formed ideas collapsing into it. The first was a joke, a numbers-based sequel to my alphabet book, working title 123. The second was a straightforward need, an employee handbook, once required for HR purposes. The third was a checklist project modeled on things like Sister Corita Kent's Ten Rules for the Classroom?? or Dieter Rams' Ten Principles for Good Design,?? I originally aimed for ten rules of my own.
Reading Seth Godin?? around 2017 to 18 changed the math. If you give people five things, they're only going to remember three. And if you have three, they might remember two. I cut the list to three, which meshed with the 123 title already in my head, and then applied that three-part structure to restructure my employees' actual workday.
Reading Seth Godin?? around 2017 to 18 changed the math. If you give people five things, they're only going to remember three. And if you have three, they might remember two. I cut the list to three, which meshed with the 123 title already in my head, and then applied that three-part structure to restructure my employees' actual workday.
“That then universally became this overarching filter for anything I’ve ever designed or ever even thought about.”
Andrew Neyer
The framework works like this. Every role has a first priority, removing waste, because removing waste raises margin. A second priority, a designated production task, email and customer service for one employee, building lights for another. And a third priority, an investment category, whatever grows the person or the business beyond the immediate job. I built literal time blocks around it, a 9 to 9.30am waste-hunting and cleaning period, a production block, an investment-shaped lunch break, a short cleanup period to catch new waste, another production cycle, and, if time allowed, a final block to improve the studio however the employee saw fit.
The original language was omit waste, produce, invest. I've since revised it. Hone, Do, Think. I like that it echoes the numbering, hone includes the word one, do sounds like two, think starts like three, and that the book's cover, spelling out a jumbled 1-2-3, will look like an extension of the ABC book, printed the same way, on board-book stock.
The 123 framework became a universal filter. That then universally became this overarching filter for anything I've ever designed or ever even thought about, maybe almost a little too far. I had to pump the brakes and make sure it stayed at work a little bit.
I credit the IRL articles as the accidental first draft of the book itself. The IRL articles was my sneaky way to convince myself, just write an article that has nothing to do with this thing. And then all I do is comb through and pluck out the sections, the articles were my way of rough drafting the book.
The original language was omit waste, produce, invest. I've since revised it. Hone, Do, Think. I like that it echoes the numbering, hone includes the word one, do sounds like two, think starts like three, and that the book's cover, spelling out a jumbled 1-2-3, will look like an extension of the ABC book, printed the same way, on board-book stock.
The 123 framework became a universal filter. That then universally became this overarching filter for anything I've ever designed or ever even thought about, maybe almost a little too far. I had to pump the brakes and make sure it stayed at work a little bit.
I credit the IRL articles as the accidental first draft of the book itself. The IRL articles was my sneaky way to convince myself, just write an article that has nothing to do with this thing. And then all I do is comb through and pluck out the sections, the articles were my way of rough drafting the book.
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Letters are for Learning
DD
What are you producing next?
AN
Right now, I'm working on something called the Angler Light. It's a continuation of the swing arm family, so it sits alongside the Swing Dome and the Crane Light, but it solves a specific problem those two don't. The Crane Light can swing out over a table, but to actually walk under it, you have to mount it around 80 inches up. The Angler Light climbs at a 45 degree angle instead, so it can go on a lower mount and still let someone sit or pass underneath it. It's another way to get a light out over a couch or a small dining table, just approached differently.
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