Medium Small
Established by Brandt Hewitt and Megan McGuinn, Medium Small focuses on furniture, lighting and specialty fabrication. Designing and producing from their San Francisco studio, Brandt and Megan shape interior spaces with big ideas and fine details, delivering a variety of projects as well as collaborations with like-minded creatives.
TLP Can you tell us more about Medium Small and how it came to be?
MS We met in architecture school, where we began our long-term creative partnership. After a decade of practice, we decided to focus on design on a different scale. Our approach is grounded in a combination of handcrafting, digital technologies and industrial tooling.
TLP Whose work do you greatly admire and who would you love to collaborate with?
MS Overall, we’re inspired by designers who bring multidisciplinary mindsets to their work. For example, Charles and Ray Eames were curious about everything, ready to try any medium, while Jean Prouvé had a special blend of engineering and aesthetics that feels inspiring in its comprehensiveness. There are others too, like Richard Rogers, Poul Kjærholm and Hans Wegner, whose impeccable craft and ability to make forms feel both geometric and fluid at the same time – these are qualities we try to invoke. The list could go on, but we’re both curious people and take inspiration from all over, regardless of medium. There are a lot of contemporary designers we would love to collaborate with as well, including Mast Furniture, Kennedy Nolan, Studio Bright, RBW, In Common With and CW&T.
TLP On a personal level, what do you gain from your practice?
MS Running our own practice allows us a much broader creative licence. Control over creative direction gives us the flexibility to pursue a variety of design concepts and collaborators based on what we find personally interesting.
TLP How would you like your collections to be experienced?
MS This varies from collection to collection. We like to work in a variety of mediums and scales. Some objects are meant to be statements, some are intended to blend in. We’ve been really interested lately in the power of a quiet piece, something that can act as a strong supporting character. Across our work, we want the quality of the materials and high level of craft to be experientially evident.
TLP What are the projects you are most proud of?
MS Colossal. We broke our own product development mould for this collection, and we are really pleased with the result. From the initial sketch, we The quality of the materials and high level of craft are evident in all of Medium Small’s pieces. worked through a design and produced a prototype (albeit imperfect) in a couple of weeks. We made improvements through v2, v3 and so on, focusing on the feel of the materials and the logic of the build. After living with the prototypes for a few months, we made a small run and were ready to launch. Our tendency is to scrutinise every step, but it was rewarding to just trust our experience and let ’er rip.
Ultimately, our modus operandi is cool projects with cool people.
TLP What is your design philosophy?
MS Ultimately, our modus operandi is cool projects with cool people. We think that nurturing a design community of creative individuals yields the most satisfying results. Our practice is integrated into our everyday lives, so this is especially important to us. Some real-life examples include working with a very talented mechanical engineer friend to design the custom-printed circuit board for the Kendama lamp, or finding a thoughtful developer client who wants to include custom touchpoints in a house project, or working with a local architect to specify our products and provide customisation to suit their needs.
TLP Given the chance, is there a previous collection that you would extend or redesign?
MS Lojai. This piece is one of the oldest that we still produce. Brandt made the original 001 version back when he was first learning woodworking and experimenting with bent plywood as a medium. We would love to revisit this piece as the beginning of an expanded collection now that we have more experience and better tooling. In fact, we’re already working on some plans for this now.
TLP What are some of the challenges you encounter in your work?
MS It’s challenging to run a very small shop in an urban environment. We have a good network of resources, but the manufacturing and craft scene in San Francisco is fairly constrained by the economics of the Bay Area.
TLP What excites you most about your work?
MS Coming up with a technique or process on the back end that becomes a design breakthrough and allows the goal to be realised is exciting. When you’re working through an idea, hit a hurdle and then find ways to overcome it through a new joint, connection or jig – that’s really satisfying.
TLP What’s next for Medium Small?
MS We are experimenting with producing our work on a larger scale, but not necessarily through traditional routes. We’ve been collaborating with people to design what we’re calling “custom products”. These products are tailor made for clients but can be produced on a micro mass-manufacturing scale. We’re also excited to explore more lighting – we have some things in the works that we’re looking forward to realising.
