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By Bridie Bereza | MiBiz
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Independent designer Tod Babick fosters a love of woodworking through Pieter VanTuyl, an artisan-crafted modern furnishings company he helped found and for which he serves as director of design. Babick designed Table Bench, which features a solid slab of walnut accented by reclaimed oak legs and spindles. COURTESY PHOTO

GRAND RAPIDS — Independent designer Tod Babick has a confession: When it comes to balancing creativity with cash flow, he admits, “I am much better at drawing pictures.”

Babick owns Plow, a Grand Rapids-based industrial design business. Like many other “indie” designers, he’s faced the internal tug-of-war between over-servicing clients and satisfying his own bottom line. Along the way, he’s also learned some helpful business lessons about the topic that is central to Plow’s success: sustainability.

Some of those lessons were of the hard-knocks variety. Babick moved to Grand Rapids in 1995 and teamed up with former Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) classmate Tom Hazzard to form Chameleon Studio. Three years later, the business closed its doors when it lost a major client.

“It was hard and scary to be shut down in one day, but we made it through. That’s part of being your own boss,” he said. “There’s no job security anywhere anyway. You just have to go find new things to do.”

He launched Plow, a design firm focused on sustainable products and brands for office and residential environments. Sustainability, he adds, is a major focus of his practice and a reason that clients seek him.

“Sustainable design is now a ‘cost of entry’ consideration for office furniture manufacturers,” said Babick, who has served as chair of the Design Committee of the West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum. “It’s just expected at this point.”

Babick, a Dallas native, came to industrial design in a circuitous way. He studied woodwind performance at Indiana University and holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science. He has a passion for woodworking, having learned traditional hand joinery techniques and building a clientele in Dallas.

It was one of his clients there who gave him a book about Raymond Loewy, the design genius behind the slenderized Coca-Cola bottle, the Shell logo and the Greyhound bus. Prior to this period in his life, Babick said, “it had never occurred to me that somebody actually designed things.”

This revelation changed his life, and he decided that he didn’t just want to make things anymore — he wanted to design them. He sold his saxophones and enrolled at RISD. Post-graduation, he found freelance work for American Tourister and for a former professor, Marc Harrison, who designed the Cuisinart food processor.

Given his wide-ranging interests in both the aesthetic and the technical, it’s easy to see why industrial design appealed to Babick.

“Industrial designers have been called ‘the last of the great generalists,’ and we really are,” he said. “You have to know about a lot of things.”

Initially, projects landed in his lap. The nonprofit Aid to Artisans sent him to Sri Lanka to design a puzzle. He found consulting work with Haworth, where he met Chuck Saylor and Dan West with whom he collaborated to launch Saylor’s Spring Lake-based furniture company, Izzydesign, now known as izzy+.

One of Babick’s first projects as an independent designer came about when the nonprofit Aid to Artisans contracted him to travel to Sri Lanka and design a puzzle. COURTESY PHOTO

Unlike corporate designers, Babick doesn’t have the support of a wide network of company personnel. He has to seek clients, sell them on his talents and do the design work.

“It’s hard to acquire clients as an independent consultant, so I did what all salespeople do — research, call people, go to shows, contact everybody I know — go to NeoCon,” he said. “[It was] hard work.”

Typically, the design of any new product starts with a design brief, created by Babick and the client. The client states its need, and Babick asks plenty of questions.

“They don’t come to me with a drawing, but they do come to me with parameters with which to shape the outcome,” said Babick.

They also bring data about the target audience. For example, a client may desire a line of lounge seating to target a certain audience. That audience is often a complex one, consisting of people who will sit in it and those who will sell it.

Babick’s repertoire includes wall paneling systems, Kohler’s Smart Divide cast-iron sink, office furniture and more. He works from his Eastown home, which is equipped with a shop. There, he often makes rough models of his concepts.

“Nothing beats having the thing in hand. Models are great communication tools with clients and eliminate a lot of questions,” said Babick. “Drawings and 3-D renderings only get you so far.”

Babick says his area of design is somewhat broad, but generally he classifies it as objects for interiors and environments.

“One of the things that industrial designers do is become experts in the field that they are approaching, whether it’s furniture or computer housings or shoes. You have to dig into the company and its culture and its processes,” he said. “You also have to dig into the audience that you are designing for, especially the end user.”

Designers shy away from focus groups during the process, he says. They would rather observe end users with a product, which requires investment. As the principal on Kohler’s Smart Divide cast-iron sink, Babick saw the tremendous amount of work that went into the simple idea of lowering the basin divide in a two-compartment sink.

Developing a new product, he said, requires significant investment, so prototypes are important. By its very nature, Babick said, you can’t judge the reliability of a new idea, but you can do a lot of work to validate it. The rigorous work along the way makes the final product an easy sell to stakeholders.

“If the first part is done right, there isn’t much of a business case to make,” said Babick. “The business case is established. One of the distinctions between design and art is that art is self-contained self-expression, but design is done for business and it has multiple stakeholders and audiences that need to be considered.

“It’s a weird profession because we’re up at the front end of design, and then we’re on the manufacturing floor, doing the nuts and bolts. It’s really fun, actually, because every day is different.”

Babick says he is at a point in his career where he has found his stride and finds his work very enjoyable.

“There’s a maturation period for creative people. Some get there quickly and some take longer. You have to pass through that period to get really competent at what you’re doing,” he said. “And of course it never ends. There are a million things to learn.”

In addition to operating Plow, Babick nurtures his passion for woodwork as founding partner and Director of Design at Pieter VanTuyl, an artisan furniture company.

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