“Interview: Founder Of Nooka, Matthew Waldman”

1. For the viewers who aren’t familiar. Tell us a little bit about the Nooka brand.
-Nooka is a new york based fashion brand, but moreover, it is what I like to call a mindstyle™ brand. I strive to create products that embody an ethos of universal communication and in doing so are provocative in the true sense of the word – to make you think about the objects, it’s form, it’s language, materials, and moreover, systems in your life. The system can be as complex as time telling or as simple as how your organize your credit cards or how you communicate non-verbally through scent. Though i won’t limit it to even just those examples.

2. How did the word Nooka come about?
-As a brand story, we tell people that it is a contraction of “New Yorker”, but the process of how I developed the name was something along these lines: I wanted a brand name that transcends linguistic and geographic borders as well as have a futuristic feel. “Nuclear” is a word that comes up quite frequently in 1960s futurism and the sound “noo” on its own makes any word sound fresh. All of these references combine to form NOOKA. I was also told it means sunrise in Laotian!

3. What or who has played apart in motivation all these years?
-Tom dixon was very supportive of my initial designs and provided key introductions for getting my first product produced. Tatsushi Nagae, an art director in tokyo who i’ve worked with over the years was also a key supporter in the early stages of my struggle with launching my own designs. My motivation is something from within, but cheesy as it may sound, the seeds were planted by watching a lot of optimistic science fiction growing up. I truly believed the world would be a much better place when i grew up, and the fact that it has not lived up to my childhood expectation is motivation enough for me to do my small part.

4. Would you say designing is your first love?
-For sure! My mom always told people how easy a child I was, as long there was a pencil and paper for me. That’s all I ever needed to keep me occupied. I started drawing up fantasy cities complete with water reclamation plants and unique architecture at a very young age. I also remember copying Chinese characters onto napkins from Chinese restaurant menus and making believe i could read what i was writing. I was a designer before i even knew the word!

5. What were you pursuing before Nooka?
-Depends on how long you go back. Creative direction for corporate identity as well as being an expert consultant on interface design. Nooka was actually the result of my training mind to be more organized to do better and more intuitive interface design. Before that, fashion magazine art direction and advertising art direction.

6. I know you don’t like to be called “the watch guy” So, in a sense do you feel that the watch choose you?
In retrospect, yes. There is no logical explanation for the passion and drive I applied to get this project off the ground.

7.Nooka is not ONLY a watch brand. Being that Nooka has covered everything from watches, characters, belts, wallets & fragrance are there any other products you wish to design?
-My motivation as an artist and designer is to create things that communicate universally. This creates a framework for a wide array of potential nooka mindstyle™ products. The aesthetics of design are the vocabulary for this process but I’m far more interested in systems. I want to do a phone, but the whole system from billing up, as well as a car. It’d be great to do a line of apparel.

8. How many hours, days, or months go into producing a Nooka watch. From design to production?
-I always start with very rough pencil sketches and notes to go over with my design team. We then do digital sketches in Adobe Illustrator to get a feel for a new design. Then after tweaking in Illustrator, we make a 3-d digital model of the piece. We then either have a prototype made for approval or to send out for press responses. The process from idea sketch to prototype can be as fast as 3 months or as long as 12 months if new components are required, so the average development schedule is 6 months.

9. What mainly inspires the designing of the watches?
-A bright chrome coated glam future!

10. Which Nooka products are you wearing now?
-I’m wearing the nooka strip, the nooka ao, the nooka zirc, and the nooka fragrance. I’m all nooka’d out.

11. When your not designing, producing, or selling, what do you enjoy doing?
-I love kids and spend a lot of time with my nephew and god kids, so in actuality, my weekends may seem a bit boring to people who imagine me at the latest opening drinking cheap wine. I enjoy riding my hybrid mountain bike EVERYWHERE. I keep a Muji one speed bike in my Tokyo office as well so I can commute via bicycle there. I’m also a music geek of sorts – always trying to find the next fun band [most of it indie/electronic/alternative]. I therefore spend a lot of time in reading online music blogs. I’m really lucky to have friends at labels like ghostly records to get an inside track on tracks. As for obsessions, I read a lot of research science papers on comparative physiology, morphology and evolution.

12. As a New Yorker, what are things in New York that never gets old?
-The multi-ethnic nature of the city. For example, I love Los Angeles, but you only see one kind of people in each neighborhood. I love seeing the full spectrum of humanity every day.

13. How did you get to where you are today?
-My bicycle

14.Nooka has done tons of collaborations, any more coming up?
-As a brand, we are always looking to do collaborations. I choose collabs for one of 3 reasons. 1. My salespeople tell me it will help open doors to certain shoppes. 2. I think it will add new values to the brand. 3. I love the opportunity to work with other creative geniuses. We definitely have more collaborations coming up.

15. Any advice to young designers coming up?
-Yes. Less talking, more doing. Unless you come from a well connected family or school, most people will not support a project you just talk about. Show people what you are doing. And when you talk, choose your words carefully, again, same advise: only talk about what you are doing. It’s subtle, but most people don’t get it. An extension for designers is also to note that just showing drawings, mock-up advertisements and statistics is the same as just talking – just with a visual language. Yes you made a pretty presentation, but if your goal isn’t selling pretty presentations, you’re not ‘doing’ it.

16. Any words of wisdom you live by?
-Be strategic in everything you do. Define a fluid set of goals with variable time frames. Treat everyone you work directly with even better than family.

I would like to thank Matthew for allowing me to interview him, I enjoyed every minute of it! & you guys can follow him on twitter Nooka You can also check out there products here Nooka.com !

♥duckie!