We were lucky to catch up with Ken Jasinski recently and have shared our conversation below.

Ken, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you tell us about an important lesson you learned in school and why that lesson is important to you?

I attended the Cleveland Institute of Art back when it was a five year school. The first two of the five years helped students explore traditional fine arts (drawing, painting, sculpture, art history, and electives), and the remaining three years was focused on your selected major. I chose Industrial Design as a major and elected to be active in sculpture for most of my last three years of school .
During the first week of college I met Frank, he and I developed a friendly competitive nature which led us to push each other further creatively than we expected. I remember he kicked my ass on a project where we were tasked with crating a machine that creates a line drawing. He developed a plow made from hand hewn walnut that emitted seeds as he dragged it across the earth. I remember helping him drill the longest bore we ever attempted through that beautifully sculpted piece of wood that allowed the seeds to travel down the handle of the plow and into the ground. We helped each other succeed, even at the expense of time spent on my project which paled in comparison to his machine. Frank still comes to mind each time I’m woodworking and smell fresh cut walnut.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

For over a decade I have been working professionally as an Industrial Designer in the consumer electronics industry. My influence is seen in several world class design projects in corporate, startup, and design consultancies. I’ve been a part of teams at Meta, Microsoft, Xbox, UbioLabs, NewDealDesign, Box Clever, Smart Design, Tactile, Teague, and Mike & Maaike.

One of my notable projects is the Xbox Elite Controller, where I helped lead the design and innovation of the controller. It was a project where design became the mediator between human factors, mechanical and electrical engineering, marketing, and leadership.

I have always had a passion for creating with my hands and have been able to integrate the hands on prototyping to my design process. As an industrial designer you need to have a tactile feel for products you are creating because people will be using them – not everything can easily translate from a CAD file to physical product.

While working to establish my skills professionally as a consumer electronics designer I spent my time before and after work focusing on my own company Buttur. I launched in 2015 with two clothing hanger designs – Fork and Woodie. Over the years I continue to create home goods and furniture products while also working freelance design through Buttur. Recently I launched BEEFY SMASH, a burger press and culinary tool. Additionally I recently started After Sunday with a collection of handmade 24k gold plated crosses that I have been selling on my website and Etsy.

My career has ebbed and flowed with Buttur while being placed at companies but I continue to push creativity through Buttur as much as possible. I started laying out a few different product directions in hopes that one will take off and I can continue to focus on building that into something more.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

As a creative everything we do is subjective. There really is no correct answer. We use our experiences and feelings to develop the things we create.

When I was starting my career working in consultancies the team was often asked to provide 8-10 concepts for the client to choose from. We knew the 2 good concepts, the remaining were just filler to show we did a lot of work for them. I always felt like we were hoping for the client to choose the design the team liked most, and if they did we got lucky. As I moved along in my career I decided to show fewer concepts to the client because they should be trusting my input as a designer. I still have the other concepts ready to show in case its a complete failure, but I have been working to put my vision first to gain the trust of my clients in the work I produce.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I dont enjoy talking about it, but Ive been laid off three times in my career. I’ll never know why exactly, but as I look back on it each layoff was exactly what I needed at the time. One pushed me to become more mature at the place of work, another helped me reset my life before my firstborn child, and the most recent one came at a time where it helped me worry less about work and focus on family. After each layoff a new opportunity emerged at the perfect time, often in a place I was not looking at. And with Buttur as an ongoing source of freelance through most of my layoffs Ive always been able to seamlessly roll into it, and right now at this moment Buttur is becoming my primary career path.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.butturisbetter.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/butturisbetter/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-jasinski/
• Other: www.aftersunday.com