We sat down with Tom Hughes to explore the behind-the-scenes process of his brand and product design for one of the most recent projects out of Idealab: Heliogen.

Q: Heliogen just emerged from stealth mode today. You designed the brand and a lot of the product’s hardware. What experiences did you draw from when designing an industrial brand identity in the cleantech space?

Tom: At Idealab, I’ve named and/or designed branding for a number of clean energy companies. For example, eSolar which was purchased by GE, Edisun, Carbon Capture, Energy Vault, Cool Energy, Energy Cache, Energy Innovations, Stirling Motors, AgriTower, TerraCool, StrataMill, and RayTracker, which was purchased by First Solar. 

Q: How do you begin designing hardware so massive? Where do you start?

Tom: I’ve often found myself marveling at things that engineers seem to understand, seemingly without effort. But, I have come to see that many things that designers see, perhaps intuitively, are things not easily realized by engineers that I’ve worked with... whether at Idealab, Caltech, MIT, or JPL. I find that creating a 3D model is very useful and when possible, I’ll print out a model or component on my 3D printer to better understand the form. It’s heartening to get feedback from an engineering team that says: “You’ve made our concept look amazing.” There’s no better reward than that.

Q: Tell me about the logo and the process that got you to the final version for Heliogen.

Tom: For most of the Idealab companies, I’m part of the company concept creation and will work on naming and branding it. Then, I’ll create a basic example of the concept, whether it’s an app or something larger scale, like Heliogen. From there, I’ll create a pitch deck for potential investors. Bill Gross will then meet with investors and CEO candidates for the company. Over the years, it seems to work best for Bill to hire a CEO and then let her or him hire the next set of executive team members.

Heliogen fell out of this track, since it was a rebranding and reimagining of the Edisun company, which I had named and branded a few years earlier.

Getting back to my process, it usually takes me a day or so to play with some word combinations. Sometimes things that would seem totally incongruous will converge to form an idea that seems to work, and fit. After I list my word and name combinations, I might go to a site like wordoid.com just to see what weird word mashups pop up. You can probably relate to seeing something that seems totally unassociated but can trigger a whole new thought or idea. 

Then, I’ll take my top name candidates and visit a site like iwantmyname.com to see which domains might be available. This can definitely shift the initial ranking of my name candidates. From there, I’ll work up a quick branding study to support the name. That often helps the team to see the potential of the concept. 

A good example of this is for a three-wheeled scooter project I worked on for Idealab that competes with Lime, Bird and others. When I proposed the name Rollo, it was initially met with a collective “meh” and worry over the candy brand of the same name. I wasn’t worried about the candy trademark since it’s in a totally different category. I was able to show them how it could work for them on an app, on their product and social media... and how different it was from the candy brand, but also how well it visually competed against their established scooter competition.

Q: You have designed hundreds, if not thousands, of recognizable logos over your career. Which ones were some of your favorites?

Tom: I think my favorites have less to do with the design than the relationships that were part of the design experience. For that reason, I’d put the original Macintosh identity and branding for Apple at the top because it was a worldwide success, and that was part of my design concept. Plus, there was no tougher client than Steve Jobs and he was delighted with the work. 

After that, the branding for the Electronic Frontier Foundation that I did for Mitch Kapor and the late John Perry Barlow. There are others, but I was proud of naming and branding Picasa, which Google bought and eventually changed to Google Photos. 

Picasa is a good example of what I strive for in a name. Its roots represent Picture and Home, which fit perfectly to support the concept for a storage place for all of your photos. It carried the additional association to Picasso as a way to set that first-read impression to art. They may only be your photos, but we consider them as art.

Q: Have you seen the Heliogen product in action? 

Tom: Based on my experience with eSolar, which I’ve mentioned, and had visited during installation and operation, it’s built on the same basic concept of mirrors tracking and reflecting sunlight to a central receiver to collect heat to drive a power generating turbine… or, in Heliogen’s case, to supply heat for industrial processes such as cement and steelmaking, which renewable energy has not yet disrupted. And, that's a huge opportunity because of the global demand for these materials. The cement and steel industries are responsible for more than a fifth of global emissions, according to the EPA.

Q: What influenced the design of the mirrors?

Tom: With eSolar, we had similar mirror fields but they were rectangular. We considered round, oval, square mirrors. Pretty much any practical shape imaginable. The final form of the irregular hexagon of the Heliogen mirrors was calculated by Heliogen’s engineers who ran countless simulations to establish just how much of that rectangle was actually useful. 

So, from a production perspective, you might say that the cost of additional trimming of a rectangular mirror is an extra step and perhaps inefficient. But, there are efficiencies in shipping weight and field assembly. That relative lightness makes them easier to install and requires less power for the positional motors to align the mirrors. 

Finally, there’s less surface area to be affected by wind load.

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Recently, Obama named the Heliogen product one of the top 20 reasons to be hopeful.