From Over-the-Top to Elegantly Simple: One CEO's Journey to Master Minimalist Design
Playwell Bricks CEO Jason Pyett is a deep thinker, and part of this is that he likes to look back and analyze where he’s been and how his skills have changed over time. He didn’t start out designing the elegant, simple custom models for corporate gifting that Playwell Bricks is now known for.
“If you look at my design progression, I was doing all of these incredibly complex, way over-the-top things. That’s how I first got my following, that was what people were interested in: things like Brookside Mansion that were just way over the top,” he ponders. “I’d throw everything and the kitchen sink at my projects."
Brookside Manor. "If you look at my design progression, I was doing all of these incredibly complex, way over-the-top things."
“And those are great for flagship projects to get your name built,” Pyett hurries to add. “But my education over the past year is that companies don’t want custom sets that are super complicated. That’s just over and above what they’re looking for.
“When I do concepts for new clients, I try to just present the concept in the simplest way possible for them. And nine times out of ten, it’s exactly what they want with very few changes afterwards.”
Before this realization, Pyett tended to present ideas that were “more complicated than the client needed. Trying to get all the details and everything in.” Inevitably, “the client would end up choosing the simplest version of what I’d come up with.
“I think you have to get past your own ego, have that demolished, and then you can produce something that people want.”
His practical education “has been about getting it simpler and simpler and simpler and simpler. Now I can see the characteristics, I understand and know exactly what the client wants. Tending toward minimalism, that’s the key.”
His brow furrows as Pyett considers his next words. “There’s an elegance to simplicity.”
He holds up the custom model of a yacht he designed for TWW Yachts, one of his favorite designs. “Because it’s so intricately complex, so elegant, and it looks simple from the outside, that just checks all the boxes for me.”
TWW Yachts. "There's an elegance to simplicity."
I point out that making something complex appear simple is a sign of mastery. “Well, you know, I have put in my ten thousand hours,” he says, referring to a principle about how much deliberate practice it takes to master a skill.
If you’d like to put Pyett’s mastery to work for your corporate gifting needs, don’t hesitate to press that Let's Build Something Together button now. Playwell Bricks is here to help build your dreams by pairing your company’s ideals with the best bespoke build for your brand. Elegant. Simple. Playwell Bricks.
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