Today we’d like to introduce you to Ryan Bricker.
Ryan, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I’ve worked for almost two decades for a large corporate architectural and engineering firm. My career’s design work has spanned a wide variety of architectural and engineering scales. As a trained Landscape Architect I’ve worked on a great variety of project types from city planning efforts, to site-specific urban designs, including transit stations, university campus designs, signature bridges and urban parks. Most notably, I have been master planning and designing the new southern expansion of the Arlington National Cemetery in our Nation’s capital for the past few years.
I have always had a great appreciation for and love of design in all its various forms. Whether its architecture, landscapes, furniture design, sculpture or graphic design, they all embody shared fundamentals in the design process.
The industrial design of beautiful and interesting products has always been a passion of mine as well. Consumer electronics, cars, and shoes have always fascinated me in their evolving style and form. I had secretly always wanted to be an industrial designer “in another life”.
Along with my passion for design came a natural curiosity for “inventing” products and ideas. I had always had ideas for new and better products but never really pursued them. That was until one day I was having lunch with a good friend who introduced me to his good friend who had just started a company called Corkcicle around this ingenious and beautiful product used to cool bottles of wine from within.
I was talking about my design background and he said, “why don’t you come up with new ideas for us around our brand?”. And I just like that I jumped into product design thinking which led to two very successful new products I designed for them, the Whiskey Wedge and the Cigar Glass.
Transitioning into the consumer product design world initially seemed like a large leap from bridges to glassware, but it became very clear that the fundamentals of designing for form and function translate universally across scales and project types.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has been kind of a roller coaster. I had this very early success with the design and invention of my first two products, but along the way I have developed many many more products ideas that would gain momentum with certain companies but ultimately not enough to make it to market.
Please tell us about R E Bricker Studio.
My company is principally a design innovation studio that develops new consumer product ideas for emerging and established brands. My work is known for it’s “simple genius” in ideas that seem so obvious but have never been seen. In addition to product design, my studio does smaller prototyping and fabrications as well commissioned sculptural and visual arts.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
When I was probably only six years old, my dad bought me the smallest available dirt bike motorcycle on the market. We lived on a small community lake in Oklahoma at the time and every kid in the neighborhood had a little motorcycle and we created a giant world of tails and jumps and rode all day every day. Probably where I began my love for design and shaping the land.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.rebrickerstudio.com
- Email: reb@rebrickerstudio.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanebricker/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ryan.bricker.98
Image Credit:
Carissa Byers, Will Graham
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