Will McCallum

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I am 28, brown hair (going grey - rapidly) I like running, skiing, design and making stuff. George and I have been working together doing this for about 6 years now which seems pretty crazy. It's very fun though and still doesn't feel like work.

skiing in Japan a few years ago

London street

What does your day to day look like?

At the moment it’s very different from what it has been for the last few years. About three weeks ago I found myself in London. My Fiance Sophie has always wanted to Study her masters in art and we have come over for her to do that in London at Sotheby's Institute and I came along for the ride. For the last three or so years, we were in Mount Maunganui which is a small beachside town in New Zealand. Now we are exploring London and finding our routine here.

Richard Serra

Do you also have an interest in Art?

I became interested in art in New York about three years ago when Sophie and I spent a year there. There are more art galleries in NYC than anywhere else in the world, so that’s what you end up doing during the weekends. My favourite artists are Richard Serra, David Shrigley, Christian Rosa and Tyler Hays (BDDW). This is a cool video of Christian Rosa. This is a photo of me with a Richard Serra piece in Denmark at the Louisiana Museum. Richard uses massive pieces of corten steel. His structures are simple and mindblowing. Not sure how they are transported around.

Cool little house with a red door in Knightsbridge

How would you compare NYC to London?

Only just got to London but its a lot older than New York - London is over 2000 years old, where NYC is only a few hundred years old. Lots of trees in London and less honking. Both cities are awesome. Lots of red bricks in London - love a bit of brick, they are not very common in New Zealand.

sketches of the Round Sign

What is your role at G&W

It’s always changing every day but I spend a lot of time working on our product range and making sure they are under control, working on new launches, photoshoots and different little projects. We have made a cool little e-book lately which will soon be available, which will include projects, stories and fun little things to do. I am quite excited about that.

Our warehouse/photo studio/office

What do you wish you were better at?

Drawing and typing. I need to get better at typing.

Which new products are you guys working on?

We have had friends with cafes and customers begging us to make table numbers so we are playing around with those at the moment, we are looking at making these functional for staff, the cafe customers and also be something a bit different from the flimsy chrome-plated ones you see around. A few things which we have to consider are; they have to be visible from when they are sitting on the tables, not take up too much room behind the counter, wear in nicely as they are getting handled all day, not fall over, fit into a range of different spaces and be good to look at.

Dieter using accents of colour

G&W products tend to be colour neutral. What’s your favourite colour?

We are pretty conservative on the colours, although we do love colours. There’s a James Taylor Lyric which describes my colours of choice quite well. ‘Deep greens and blues are the colours I’d choose’ it’s from Sweet Baby James, great song. But yeah I love navy and forest green and little red accents. There is another quote I like fro Dieter Rams ‘“Having small touches of colour makes it more colourful than having the whole thing in colour” Rams did this really well with Braun. Their calculator is a classic, which inspired the iPhone calculator design.

Hyde Park Hyndrangea

What is your favourite flower?

Hydrangeas are pretty cool. The pink and blue ones change colour based on the acidity of the soil, to make pink ones go blue (or your blue ones stay blue) increase the acidity of the soil. This is one I saw the other day in London.

What is one of your favourite things at the moment?

Bose 35 Quiet Comfort Headphones, Uniqlo and Sunday roast at the local pub.

What is your favourite fruit?

Mandarins, cherries, feijoas, good apples, pre-cut mango with lime juice.

I saw somewhere selling a fruit salad last week and it said ‘Melon-free fruit salad’ that’s amazing. The classic hotel buffet fruit salad is 90% rock melon/Cantaloupe, no one likes rock melon.