Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: I believe design philosophy depends on the brand.
So designers always come with a vision, but you should take one step back and look at the brand and see what the brand needs and look at the heritage and legacy.
So sometimes designers come and they want to change things immediately. But I would like to stay and understand what the brand needs and how my design thinking fits into that.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Welcome to this English language edition of Chapter Talks Design, a podcast from Chapter magazine. In each episode we speak with leading voices from contemporary design culture, from mobility and product design to architecture. Our conversations explore individual design philosophies, sources of inspiration and personal success stories.
[00:00:53] Speaker C: My name is Timo Schmidt. I'm the design Director at Chapter and our guest today is the award winning designer Bigum Tomruk. She is currently Dean Industrial Design Director and Creative Director of the luxury audio brand Marantz, founded in New York in 1953. In her position, Bilgum Tomok is currently responsible for the design, development and further development of all Marantz audio products which are always characterized by a timelessly elegant design and at the same time reflect the passion of Moran's craftsman sound engineers.
[00:01:29] Speaker D: So yeah, today I'm excited to dive into a field that is both very new to me personally as well as this podcast. It's the world of luxury audio and high end amplifiers. A space where design, engineering and emotion intersect in very fascinating ways. And yeah, I couldn't be happier to welcome a person that is going to guide us through that today. It's a specialist. She's a specialist in this realm. And I'm super pleased to welcome Begum Tomrok who we going to meet today in today's episode set of Chapter Talks Design. Welcome Begum.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: Yeah, thank you so much, Timo. It's a pleasure for me to be here and it's my first time doing a podcast about hi Fi. It's pretty exciting. Yeah.
[00:02:17] Speaker D: So it's a first for both of us today. Yeah, yeah. We're super curious to hear how you landed in that very special and interesting position.
So there was a point in your life when you realized you wanted to become an industrial designer.
So let's talk about that. How did that happen?
[00:02:37] Speaker A: Yeah, of course. So I was born and raised in Istanbul. It's a very inspiring and very contrast city with a lot of history and I would say innovation at the same time. That always inspired me during my education when I decided to study industrial design.
My father is an architect actually from the same university that I graduated from and my mother is a chemist and my grandfather, he was an electric Engineer.
So in my home environment there was always like projects or tools that I could play with a lot of creativity. I think that inspired me.
And I decided to study industrial design because with that aspect I could always switch and move swiftly with other studies such as art. I was always interested in art.
I actually wanted to study, but I said if I study industrial design, I can always do my art, which is true.
And I started to study industrial design in Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University.
It was a fine arts university, saw a lot of inspiration. And my professors, my teachers, they always taught me how to look into product design, but also to artistry. How can you add artistry when you design? Bring new products to life, but also look at the storytelling behind the consumers behind.
I always thought I would end up in Italy, maybe working in Italy, because I also went to Italian high school in Istanbul. But then my career path moved me to Germany and I started as an intern at Grohe Sanitary Ware company headquarters in Dusseldorf.
And then after my internship I decided to stay. They wanted me to stay, so I completely moved to Dusseldorf.
So this is how my Germany story started.
[00:04:42] Speaker D: Was it a. Was it a cultural shock for you to go from, from Istanbul to Dusseldorf? I mean, I can imagine I've been to Istanbul briefly and I've been to Dusseldorf briefly, but all I can say is it's very different vibe. So how was that for you?
[00:04:58] Speaker A: It is completely different because there is a huge contrast of lifestyle, traffic, even the landscape, because Istanbul is a huge city and dusk is way smaller. You can go by train or walk or go with your bicycle to anywhere you want.
But in Istanbul you have to plan everything because it takes quite some time.
There are some things I miss, of course, the culture, the inspirational part. But here I can also find my work, life balance and really travel in Europe easier.
And also it supported my new role also after my experience at Grohe, I think achieved the career path I wanted there because I was really like focused and a little bit ambitious, I would say.
And I also gained quite a lot of experience in brand relaunching a brand, really focusing on luxury experiences with the Grohe Spa brand.
So that taught me a lot about brand identity and holistic brand approach that you can look like not only from industrial design perspective, but all brand touch points, including showrooms, packaging design, UX ui, even events like how they should be created.
And then afterwards, yeah, it was just a moment of change, I believe. And I was offered the role for industrial design director at Marantz.
And then I thought that would be the change, that would be the time to move forward. And thanks to my position being in Dusseldorf, I could work with the German and Europe team.
But having a more global role almost two years ago.
[00:06:54] Speaker D: Yeah. You mentioned getting into these also corporate structures and really starting off your career. I can imagine you for the first years in that job, you're very busy with that. But would you say there was also time for you to develop your own design philosophy at this point or was that something that came came later after Groa?
[00:07:17] Speaker A: I believe design philosophy depends on the brand.
So designers always come with a vision, but you should take one step back and look at the brand and see what the brand needs and look at the heritage and legacy.
So sometimes designers come and they want to change things immediately. But I would like to stay and understand what the brand needs and how my design thinking fits into that and how I can help that brand.
Because I always question why we do that, you know, what is the story?
And I managed to look with fresh eyes because I come from a complete different industry, sanitaireware to audio.
But designing for audio is super exciting because it's part of our lives and everybody like listens and enjoys music.
In the end it comes to this. Like design is design.
Right. So the perspective I bring, I need to filter it from the brand perspective and brand lens and then really find that change.
[00:08:27] Speaker D: Yeah, of course, like a shower head is very different from an amplifier. But was there also something where you could immediately tell there's something that connects those both very like different sectors in a way.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: Well, being luxury, I see also music as well being because it makes people happy, it brings joy to people and luxury is different. A lot of people take luxury as a price point, but I take the luxury as experience. And music is a great tool to express that.
If you tend into that direction as a brand, then you can bring a lot of experiences and a lot of change and benefits for the user.
[00:09:16] Speaker D: Yeah. If you think about Marans, what are those characteristics or maybe three words you would say come to your mind when you think about the brand?
[00:09:26] Speaker A: We bring the brand to the luxury frontier now. So we are at the beginning of a luxury journey. But the products we have and we design and we produce together with the engineering teams, they are top, high end and they already refer to luxury segment. But when I think about Marantz, it's very iconic from the past. If I see all the Marantz timeline, the hero amplifiers from the past, precision and materiality, craftsmanship, very selective cmf color, material, finish directions and the iconic porthole. Those are the few things that's something.
[00:10:11] Speaker D: That immediately pops out. Yeah, that seems very like a sacred element for the brand. Right. That's not going to change anytime soon, is it?
[00:10:21] Speaker A: No. And also the branding, the Marantz logo remained almost unchanged over the decades since more than 70 years.
There was a slight change, but still it is always centered in the center position of the amplifier, so it's symmetric and that makes the product stand out. So you can immediately see the Marantz products with the CMF direction, with the branding and with the very selective finish.
[00:10:57] Speaker D: I personally love the logo. To me it looks so, so iconic. Also the fact that it hasn't changed in all those years to me is really interesting because a lot of brands take it very lightly to change their logo and of course there's sometimes steps in a more modern direction and there's trends to go a bit more retro again. But, but this logo to me is, is really, is, is really cool because I can also see how in the history of the brand it maybe was sometimes a bit harder to bring together with the product because the product also stands for this, this innovation, you know. And then the, the logo is super.
Yeah, you can tell it's from, from that time, from like 1953, the year the, the brand was founded. And yeah, it's really amazing to me that brand decided to, to keep that as a heritage element because it's, to me, it's still very, very modern. Yeah.
So, yeah, a brand like, like, like with such a big history is obviously also a lot of possibilities, but also a little bit of a burden sometimes. So how do you, how do you deal with that? I would you say you're very good in balancing this heritage and.
[00:12:21] Speaker A: Yeah, if I speak on behalf of the design team as well, because before I joined Marantz, they have been still designing, developing and they still do new amplifiers or new products.
And there is always a tendency to get inspiration from the past if you're a Legacy brand with 70 years of history. And sometimes when I ask the question to my friends or designer community, they remember Marantz from their parents or from their grandparents.
They always say, well, we used to have a Marantz amplifier or we still have it, my father has it, he still uses that. And people really admire the heritage products, so they pay a lot of money to purchase those hero models.
If you are trying to bring a change and innovate for a brand with that legacy, it's very difficult because you might always get this question, like, why are you Doing that, why are you changing it? But we can't stay stuck in our past. I think no brand should stay stuck in the past, but they should respect and build upon it. Actually, Marantz Horizon and Grand Horizon is a good example for that.
So with that collection, we wanted to bring a change. We wanted to expand the target group. But within the same year, just a few months previously, we have launched the 10 series.
So this shows that we still stick to our core business. And the 10 series has a lot of echoes from the past, from Model 9 and even the previous Model 10.
But we also innovate and catch up with the latest technology and industrial design, interior design trends.
[00:14:25] Speaker D: Yeah, the Model 10 is really a design icon. You can say, what do you think makes it so timeless?
[00:14:33] Speaker A: I think the whole collection is like the Rolls Royce of amplifiers.
So that was the goal of the brand team when they wanted to have such a strong but also very good quality and sound like, how can we design a collection like that?
And the inspiration lays in the past, as I mentioned. So the previous Model 10, the color direction was applied to the champagne color. So we released with two colors, black and champagne, which was historically in the brand DNA.
But also the industrial design details of Model 10, the porthole detail was coming from Model 9.
So because in Model 9, that detail was kind of extruded on the front cover.
And with the current Model 10, we carved it in, but we applied the same spin finish around that.
And we moved from analog meters to digital meters because we wanted to have a good resolution on the digital screen where you can really show the volume control. There you can see the detail of the Marant star.
The pattern was something new, which we didn't have in the past.
But the story is linked to having almost two water ripples intersecting, and then when they intersect, they create a beautiful patternless ripple pattern which has also a connection to the sound. So that's kind of the visualization of sound that you start to see on the front panels of our amplifiers. And even on the top mesh cover of Model 10, we applied that detail on the woven mesh so you could see the interior of the amplifier, which is also designed in a. In a symmetric way. So you have this transformator, this beautiful design, and together with illumination, it brings a lot of value.
[00:16:48] Speaker D: So when you're designing a product like this, who is your audience? You would say, you already mentioned they might be interested in seeing what's inside, maybe being a bit tech savvy. Would you say your audience is nerdy in a way?
[00:17:05] Speaker A: Yeah, by the way also, this whole collection was designed by our Japan industrial design team. So they are experts in that and in our Kawasaki studio. And also it's very connected to Shirakawa Audio Works. So they work in collaboration with our engineering team. And it was a challenge to design that with all this design requirement, symmetrical approach, CMF details. But we were very happy with the result.
And the target audience was audiophiles because audio files is our core target group.
Now together with Horizon, Grand Horizon, we expand that to status seekers and indulgers.
But whoever wants to buy the 10 series, I see it like day, want to celebrate the design.
They want to almost like show off, like, wow, this is staged, you know, in their listening space and with the illumination detail, like adding kind of this beautiful look and feel even in the evenings, that it kind of celebrates that moment. And it's very tech driven. Yes, but also design driven as well, I would say.
[00:18:30] Speaker D: Yeah. And very poetic in a way also. Would you agree?
[00:18:34] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:18:36] Speaker D: For you personally, did you also grow into that audiophile scene in a way? Was that something that you kind of had any touch points with before?
[00:18:49] Speaker A: In my family, we had musicians that had great contributions to Turkish folk music, actually, but they were mostly involved with.
I wouldn't say they were audiophiles, but they were highly involved with instruments, piano or violin. So they were always part of the family gatherings. So I grew up within those.
And also we were always going for concerts.
Orchestra, classical music was always part of it.
And I played piano for a long time, so I had musical ear, I think I didn't find myself in an audiophile environment like having amplifiers or having passive speakers where I grew.
But we always had LPs, so we always went to concerts. So I was pretty much within that scene always.
And then when I of course started my role, that kind of opened another door for me. I was like, okay. So I really found myself actually, because now I can have access to all those great listening spaces. So when you go into that listening room for Moran's or even together with Barber's and Wilkins passive speakers, then you, after hearing that, you don't want to hear anything else, sets your level higher. And then.
[00:20:30] Speaker D: Yeah, so now you can recognize a song being played through one of your systems, probably.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true, by the way, because each of our brands, they have sound identity as well, like sonic branding. But on top, Marantz Amplifiers, they have a signature sound, so warmth is really part of it. And this is precisely tuned by our sound masters in Japan.
So even Horizon and Grand Horizon they have the story linked to Japan. So that's why our crafted in Japan claim goals there. Because craftsmanship is for us could be production of those amplifiers, but it could be also sound tuning and making those products.
[00:21:23] Speaker D: Marantz like, do you also work with that, with those like audio characteristics? Do you also mirror them in a design in a way? So I'm just thinking, I don't know, this is probably very like flat, but if the sound is more like warm, is that something that's maybe reflected in the color or material?
[00:21:47] Speaker A: Color, material and finish. They of course has the contribution to that and in the storytelling. They should also fit. Maybe Model 10 is a good example for that. Because when you look at the product, especially the champagne color, it is a warm color and it's very rich and together with the illumination, you kind of link that. You kind of raise an expectation from the consumer that, okay, it's linked to the warmth. You know, we see it in the cmf, but we also see it in how the product sounds, you know, so I'm involved in that part to make sure that we protect that signature sound. But also the CMF direction that they go sometimes hand in hand.
And my role is to tell the teams, marketing teams and the brand teams to keep that consistency.
[00:22:53] Speaker D: How would you describe that collaboration across teams and disciplines? What does that look like in your.
[00:23:00] Speaker A: World as a design team? We are always in a great collaboration with our engineering team because it has to be. You need to get input and give input.
So it's like a great harmony when we design new products.
But also I believe design can have a big impact on marketing because we know the story from the very beginning, right. And we can change that direction with our intuition. And if we believe this is the right direction and this is the new design we have, and with the storytelling, you can influence the teams to tell their story in the right way because they have to think about the campaign, they have to think about even the consumer, like how do they capture photography, content creation, all these things. I think it's linked, it's connect to the design story.
That's why holistically, when I look at this, I want to see everything from the creation until it comes to life. And then like, how do we sell it? Because there the design story applies.
Because selling nowadays is if you talk about technical details, maybe it's interesting for audiophiles because they want to understand it's a different thing. But if you are targeting indulger status seekers such as Marantz Horizon, Grand Horizon. So design has a Big impact on the sales pitch because nobody is interested in hearing technical details. They want to hear the story and poetry, the emotions behind.
[00:24:53] Speaker D: Yes. Very emotional, of course.
Yeah, yeah. Would you also say that sometimes you really let your, your gut feeling take over in your design process? Because if this is going to be such an emotional, like holistic product, I think that's also not a part that can be neglected.
[00:25:13] Speaker A: Right, yeah. Of course, as designers we need to listen to our gut feeling, which is most of the times true.
But you have to, I think, prove that also.
Right. You have to bring it in front of the teams and you have to defend that. It's not easy, but if it's right. Yeah. It will be seen.
[00:25:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:41] Speaker D: Sometimes that's what gives the soul to a product really. But of course it's sometimes hard to put into a pitch when you meet other teams. It's probably sometimes hard to illustrate what you have in mind on that level.
Are there any projects or partnerships that stood out to you? You already described the collaboration with the Japan team a little bit. Is that one maybe?
[00:26:11] Speaker A: Yeah. It's not only the Japan team, it's also our teams in the US if we talk about the engineering teams, but our in house design team is located across the world.
So we have a team in Kawasaki in Japan, we have a team in Carlsbad, Californ and we also have our UXUI teams spread across the world. But also a team in the uk, I am in Germany, so we work with multiple time zones, we adapt and we also work with the marketing teams which is also like spread across the world. Yeah, it's quite fun.
[00:26:51] Speaker D: There's something like a typical day for you. To me it seems like every day is very different.
Is there like a routine that maybe happens over and over again?
[00:27:03] Speaker A: Yeah, the weekly calls, of course, the weekly meetings, they create kind of a routine, but sometimes depends on the priorities.
You might need to work agile a little bit to catch the momentum and I like that because something happens then I have to move very swiftly and bring that in front of the team, saying that we have to get that, catch that momentum because otherwise if you wait, you will not have that opportunity again. Then the agenda changes. Of course.
[00:27:38] Speaker D: To me, it's very funny thinking about audio products that there is so many layers to it. Of course, the product itself, then how it's used and the spaces where you find them. But of course also what you play on them is that also are there different philosophies or different.
Almost like fan groups of people that say what you should play on a high end device like this for example.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I wouldn't play any Turkish pop music.
I don't like Turkish pop music.
Of course there are some artists. I like Turkish artists. But for the audiophile segment, I think there are some specific playlists I could say. I don't want to call them playlists but specific songs that really with great bass and also great vocals that could really showcase the full capabilities of the system.
So those are mostly used for audiophile. But if we talk about wireless speakers, you don't need to go into that niche. You can of course, but those products are not amplifiers or you have to treat them differently. That's why you can play what you like. You can play classical music or you can play indie pop music, which is something I play quite often. So for studying or for focusing, I play classical music. I can't concentrate with vocals so it has to be more atmospheric. But if I want to energize and I also switch even to electronic music and play them on Horizon, Grand Horizon.
Something interesting. Maybe it's linked to user experience user interface.
So we have my Mirage in Horizon and Grand Horizon. So when you onboard the products, you can select either the sound master mode which you hear from like how Ogata San, our sound master did the audio tuning so you hear from his perspective, or you can select My Mirage.
There you have three options like warmth, spaciousness and clarity. And you can play with that threshold.
So if you want more warmth and rich sound that you select warmth. But if you want more clarity, if it's music with some vocals, then you select that and you can really play with that difference based on your needs. It's almost like a signature thing for Marin's Horizon. Now that we can potentially bring that into different products or different user experiences even.
[00:30:35] Speaker D: Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, that really seems like you can make anything even a bit more personal in a way now. Like the music you like anyways you can really personalize it a little bit more and seems very like. Like a big benefit for. For such a product.
[00:30:55] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:30:56] Speaker D: Let's talk about luxury a little bit. We're talking about a product that really is. You already mentioned it positioned in a luxury segment. What does. What does luxury mean to you personally? Is that something you could put into words?
[00:31:13] Speaker A: From my perspective, I think time is luxury really, but also special moments, even happiness.
I think how you enjoy life and what you set as priorities could be your luxury.
For some people it's music.
For me, music is also luxury. Especially if you hear from a Great system that is luxury. And if that system gives you a great emotional experience in all touch points from purchasing, from when you receive the product and how you unbox that product there. Our packaging design team did an amazing job and they designed a very beautiful unboxing experience for Marantz Horizon, Grand Horizon. And these are very precious products and heavy products and you get them transport all over the world. And the packaging has to protect the product within humidity circumstances or drop tests.
We did a lot of tests and the final packaging design really makes you reveal a jibble. So you take the carton box out and then you see this Marantz teal colored packaging without any product photography or graphics. Just a beautiful Marantz logo in the center and celebrate the brand color.
This already sets a luxury statement, I believe because sometimes competition, they might see it as a risk not to put a product visual on the packaging.
But if you are so sure about what you have inside and what you're going to deliver, that you can go more sleek and more simple. This is what we wanted to do and that is part of the luxury brand experience, for example, or how the products are shown.
We recently put our products at Harrods, so on the shop window.
Because Harrods is also providing a luxury experience.
Not only price, but also how the products are staged within that environment and events. So we have done several events, luxury events, but focusing on immersiveness, attention to detail.
How can the taste experience be like even creating the cuisine in a way that you have hints from born in New York, crafted in Japan. So you have this fusion between two continents.
I think all of this design thinking and touch points in the end celebrate luxury for a product and of course how it sounds is in the end the most luxurious thing.
[00:34:23] Speaker D: To me, it all comes down. What you described comes down to the sense of mindfulness, touching all senses, really. And that also reminds me, one of your designs is also a watch, the relaxed watch, a watch that reminds you to pause.
Can you describe the concept behind this watch? Because to me that kind of like really links it together.
[00:34:54] Speaker C: No?
[00:34:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
Now I'm cold. I wasn't expecting this question, but it's cool that you mentioned.
Yeah, that watch that we designed because that was part of our side business before I took this role.
We were actually bored of the daily work and we just wanted to do storytelling designs together with my partner Mirko.
We were always interested in timepieces and relax watch. We also have a clock version. So the story came from there having almost no time.
So how can we make people forget about time and make it blurry. And this is how it started. That's why I also said time is luxury. It's true. And then the storytelling kicks in, then it becomes a selling point. So I think that's a valid point for almost each good brand.
Right. You have to question and find the why and you have to find the right audience.
So because then if you understand the problem and the audience and the consumer what they need, then you solve the problem with your storytelling. Then you create something timeless. I think.
[00:36:17] Speaker D: That already brings me to the big closing question of today.
Of course, with those products you can contribute to a good life, like experiencing mindfulness. Surrounding yourself with luxury is obviously something we all can enjoy if we have the possibility. But of course, it's just a small part of what makes a good life. Do you have an answer to that big question, what makes a good life?
[00:36:48] Speaker A: I think if I want to answer from maybe the brand perspective, I think a good life would be finding the balance between your ethos and shifting towards the future. So it's also, for us, it's the same. So we know our values, right. So we know our purpose in this life and what we are going to achieve, what we want from this life.
Right. If anything that's going to make you happy and purposeful, then it's going to apply also for the Moranz brand.
Right. So for the Marantz brand, I think the brand always wants to be remembered for the great industrial design and great sound because even the founder, Saul Marantz, he was an engineer, but he had great insights and expertise about industrial design as well. That's why he put the products out from the basements and he wanted them to be seen.
So we want Moran's products to be seen, but we want them to be timeless as well and we want them to sound amazing.
And for me, I believe this is how a good life should be for Morin's future. Right? And also what's going to come in the future, which is exciting.
[00:38:19] Speaker D: Yeah, it is. It definitely is. And yeah, I can recommend to whoever hasn't had many insights into this brand and its products to check it out. I can highly recommend it and thank you so much Bikram for that journey into that world today.
[00:38:36] Speaker A: Thank you so much, Timo. It was a pleasure.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: This was today's episode of Chapter Talks Design. My name is Timo Schmidt and on behalf of the entire Chapter team, I would like to thank you for listening. For further insight sites and multimedia content and contemporary design culture, please visit our website at Chapter Digital or follow us at Instagram at Chapter Magazine. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to our podcast channel to stay tuned for future episodes.
