streng

Daniel Streng
Co-Founder

Not all change is good. You must qualify and tell a story, or it becomes too abstract.

Interested in disruptive aesthetics, Daniel is careful not to be disruptive to the point where selfhood is lost. By testing the limits of objects' identities, he discovers their utmost indicative elements. In contra–balance to his brother, he often proceeds beginning with the parts before the whole, experimenting with new forms to understand what life they will inhabit.

MIAD / Consumer Testing/ Ten Avant Gard Team Award / 2003 Cooper–Hewitt Design Triennial / Good Design Juror

Christopher Streng
Co-Founder

I used to find things that were cleverly built, and... take them apart.

By analyzing and deconstructing exemplary objects, Christopher develops a sense of how their parts fit together into the synthetic whole. Starting from a clear vision and deriving details from that vision, he bases his design on what essential task the object is supposed to perform. “When function is allowed to dictate the elegance of a thing,” in order that the function itself lends it its mood and emotional evocativeness, thats the kind of final product that deeply satisfies Christophers aesthetic drive and that of our clients.

MIAD, Furniture Design / Keynote Speaker, KBIS 2005 / Ten Avant Gard Team Award / 2003 Cooper–Hewitt Design Triennial

Tim Read
Senior Lead Designer

Treating each problem as a riddle and answer each with an opportunity or avenue for exploration. That is what drives me — knowing there will never be a right answer, only new insights.

Tim is in charge of “keeping the road map” and exploring the inter–connections that are obtained between concepts, stories, and innovations. His predominant role is to develop and implement user interfacing, extensive market analysis and research. Tim develops and utilizes programs from a users–centered approach. Tim's extensive design expertise has been indispensable to identifying critical elements of the user-experience that continue to open up opportunities for Streng's clients.

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign Masters in Industrial Design / Musician / Composer

Brett Wieland
Lead Designer

I believe that truly great designs come naturally, or even accidentally. It’s after the idea has arisen that the hard work of perfecting them is necessary. Great solutions want to be discovered.

Brett’s desire to become a designer began when his father challenged him to make trash beautiful. Born from this was a youthful disregard for usability focused design, and the belief that beauty itself creates functionality. As he has matured, Brett has reconciled this belief with the knowledge that most of the world is far more practical than he.

As a staunch perfectionist, however, Brett fully believes that neither functionality nor beauty must be sacrificed for the other. In a truly great design, both are executed to 100 percent perfection. He prides himself on understanding exactly what clients want and need, and finding the perfect balance to suit them.

Purdue University at West Lafayette Bachelors in Industrial Design / Writer / People Watcher

Aaron Brown
Director of Visualization

Since childhood, Aaron has had a passion for computer graphics and animation. Influenced by his father’s love for CGI Sci-Fi films like Star Wars and Tron, as well as an early interest in math and video games, Aaron became enamored with creating the most realistic images as possible with computers. Aaron brings nine years of architectural rendering experience to Streng and is an avid fan of architecture and studies of human interaction with space.

Art Institute of Pittsburgh Bachelors in Computer Animation and Multimedia / DJ / Video Gamer

Philip de los Reyes
Designer

My inspiration comes when I'm pushing materials in new directions finding fresh opportunities for distinction.

Through an inventive relationship to material innovation, Philip takes an inspired twist on the standard language applied to furniture and industrial design - the result of which is familiar and yet completely unique. A key member of the studio his input is functional and to the point while ever buoyant in his excitement for design. Not only a designer, Philip is an inspired builder, often relying on the three dimensional object to guide the final design cues.

Rhode Island School of Design Furniture Design / Kite Flyer / Model Airplane Designer

Jacob Heer
Designer

If you asked Jacob to describe his particular approach to design, he would define it as “minimalist with a humanist flair.” He strives to not only create objects and products, but to discover them; to arrive at a design that is so obvious, pure and simple, that there is no question that it is the ultimate solution. This philosophy allows Jacob to please customers while combating rampant materialism - replacing “things” with solutions and experiences worth keeping forever. His design heroes include Dieter Rams and Naoto Fukusawa, who Jacob believes encompass “efficiency, purity and creativity in all of their creations.”

Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design Bachelors in Industrial Design / Electronic Music Enthusiast / Rubik’s Cube Solver

David Yoon
Designer

David’s love of industrial design stems from a childhood passion for tinkering with his toys and electronics. This fondness has blossomed into a love of all things design. Whether he’s putting pen to paper to create a sketch, figuring out exactly what a consumer needs and wants, or building a model to illustrate his ideas, David strives to culminate these processes to create the perfect design.

Purdue University at West Lafayette Bachelors in Industrial Design / Bike Enthusiast / Video Gamer

Michelle Wasson
Color Specialist

Michelle enjoys making objects and experiences that are playfully haunting. Her paintings, drawings and installations use subtle contradictions in color and form to explore the intersection of architecture, landscape and history. Inspired by utopian and visionary residential architecture of the last half century, Michelle’s latest series of paintings are hyper-colored utopian landscapes.

Michelle exhibits her artwork internationally and teaches in the Art +Design Department at Columbia College Chicago

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign Bachelors of Fine Art / Washington University Masters of Fine Art