Founder and Creative Partner of Blink Design Group, Clint Nagata was born and raised in Hawaii and his fascination with Asian culture and design led him to establish Blink Design Group's first studio in Thailand. Over the years, the company has expanded its presence into Asia and the Middle East with additional studios in Shanghai, Singapore and Dubai.

Yinjispace invites Clint Nagata, the founder of Blink Design Group, to share his unique insight on design on Wednesday 18th October at 20:00 p.m. on the topic of 'Understanding the Unspoken'.

Q & A

Yinjispace：How does the design start when designing different countries and hotels? What role does the hotel brand play in this?

Clint Nagata：I don't think we do anything different, the point is to have methods that can be applied to different geographic areas. I don't think our company has a specific style other than basic contemporary, the focus is on space creation. We do projects our way, we do a lot of research before we start a project and try to look at each place from the point of view of a local person rather than a tourist, and I think that's probably the difference between working in Asia and outside of Asia. You have to see things from the point of view of someone who has lived there their whole life, not from the point of view of someone who is new to the area.

How we work with different brands and we make mistakes all the time, but I think as a company you have to keep trying to work through them and I'm pretty sure you learn more from failures and mistakes, and we've found over the years that it's very important to build relationships, so if you have a good relationship with a brand, it's much easier to work with them and vice versa. That's a little bit of an answer to the question about how we work with brands. We build relationships with brands to help us get projects done, and we run the company that way.

Yinjispace：The teacher's works are all of a very high standard, so how do you control the consistency of this production? If there is a gap in personality and ability among team members, how can we specifically control the quality of the product?

Clint Nagata：As a Creative Partner I am responsible for all the creative work in the company, and the Managing Partner takes care of the outside world, which allows me to focus on design. I need to have people I can trust to do what I need to do. And with a design director like Gavin, among other things, we don't have a lot of unnecessary reporting layers, so I'll be working with juniors on projects, I'll be working directly with middle managers on projects, so I think accessibility is the key, and I think it ensures that we maintain a standard level of quality across all of our projects.

Yinjispace：The teacher’s project uses a lot of decorative materials on the overall wall. We  would like to ask the teacher how to deal with and balance the space materials and the shaping of the space mood. Even using simple materials can create a strong sense of atmosphere.

Clint Nagata：For us, placemaking is closely related to materiality, so we always try to find materials that are specific to that area to use, and the way we use them and the patterns may vary. But I think local materials immediately bring that sense of placemaking and create a stronger sense of place. Once you've put the materials into the space, there's also a sense of balance. Balance is always important to us. If you're using a lot of patterns, you need to balance it with something simpler and more elegant, so the second thing we have to think about is balance.

Yinjispace：Does AI have an impact on design? How does the teacher define a luxury hotel? What are the different thoughts on luxury hotel design in the future?

Clint Nagata：AI is interesting, and we're a company that's happy to adopt all kinds of technology, and we're very much on the cutting edge. But we are definitely open to using AI on luxury design. Using AI on luxury hotel design, I think that's harder. But I think luxury hotel design, hotels are probably the easiest business to follow the changes in technology because they're usually run by big companies. But I think AI is emerging as a design tool, it's an interesting trend for our future, and certainly I think we should embrace it rather than avoid it.