feature / alumni / product-design / on-03
October 25, 2024
By Solvej Schou
Images courtesy of Yves Behar and Fuseproject

All Work All Fun  

ArtCenter alum and Fuseproject founder Yves Behar’s career as a global entrepreneur is filled with risks and success

A person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk. That, according to Dictionary.com, is the definition of an entrepreneur. As founder and CEO of the San Francisco–based design and branding firm Fuseproject, alum Yves Behar (BS 91 Product Design) not only embraces that definition, he embodies it.  

“Risk is a natural state of being for me—of doing everyday design work and jumping into areas that you have little to no experience in, designing new-to-the-world objects and experiences,” says the iconic Swiss-born American designer and recipient of ArtCenter’s 2021 Distinguished Mid-Career Alumni Award. “I went from being a stranger to American culture to embracing the biggest change, for me, of being comfortable with risk,” he adds. “Without taking those risks, my team at Fuseproject and I wouldn't have a place in the world of design.”

Sitting in a room at his parents’ home in Switzerland, in front of a Zoom background that includes photos of the ocean, Behar—an avid surfer—wears a necklace with a seashell hanging from a twisted rope, and a stack of bracelets featuring the names of his godchildren. As a creative, he has long merged Swiss aesthetics with California technology and cool. Behar is based mainly in San Francisco, but this summer he has been living in Lisbon—where Fuseproject has an office—with his art consultant wife, Sabrina Buell, and their children.

“It’s all work and all fun,” he says, with a smile. “I go fluidly between work and play and family. I try to be engaged, at all times, in the moment, and with what requires my attention. I've become a professional juggler in that way. And to perform, I have to take care of both my body and my mind, which I think is a critical part of having longevity in any field.”  

As a juggling and risk-taking entrepreneur, Behar founded Fuseproject in 1999, then in 2014 sold a 75% stake in the company to the Chinese conglomerate BlueFocus Communication for a reported $46.7 million, staying on as CEO and creative lead. In a bold move, he fully bought back Fuseproject in 2023 for an undisclosed sum.  

The firm takes an integrated design approach, with a focus on lifestyle, sports, fashion, technology, sustainability and social impact. Fuseproject has worked as equity owner, partner or co-founder with Fortune 100 companies and more than 100 different startups to bring inventive products to market. Its client list—long and diverse—includes Disney, Happiest Baby Snoo, Herman Miller, Kodak, L'Oréal, Movado, The Ocean Cleanup, Prada, Puma, Samsung and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Behar has co-founded startups that include August Home, a smart lock company acquired by Assa Abloy in 2017; Canopy, a co-working space based in San Francisco; and, most recently, the breakthrough EV company Telo Trucks. He has brought energy-saving LED technology to elevated design with his Leaf lamp and Sayl chair for Herman Miller. His design of the chair—with its ventilated elastomer back that resembles a grid—was influenced by suspension bridges.  

As part of the effort to create products that incorporate social fairness, Behar designed the low-cost, green-and-white One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO personal computer, which launched in 2007 and benefited millions of children around the world. In 2010, Fuseproject partnered with the Mexican government on a free eyeglasses program called “See Better to Learn Better,” with Behar designing adaptable frames to be distributed to 6 million children in Mexico.  

His more recent award-winning designs include the Snoo electronic bassinet, launched in 2016, which rocks babies to sleep; ElliQ, an elegant, smoothly shaped, voice-activated robotic companion for older adults; the bright-eyed, 14-inch, turquoise-colored Moxie, the world’s first AI robot companion for kids ages 5 to 10; and Telo Truck, a compact EV pickup truck the length of a Mini Cooper, with clean lines and grooved headlights, currently in its prototype stage. Behar is also the chief creative officer for Telo Trucks.  

“I'm celebrating the fact that this idea—which came to me years ago—that design accelerates the adoption of new ideas is now an essential part of any startup and large enterprise, with large enterprises trying more to be like startups, to accelerate their own transformation,” he says.

Risk doesn’t always result in success, he notes. For instance, in 2007, he designed Jawbone’s sleek and ergonomic wireless headset; in 2010, he designed that company’s mini rectangular Jambox, the first intelligent wireless speaker and speakerphone. Those products were global hits, but the company didn't make it. Failure, says Behar, is part of the everyday life of any entrepreneur, venture capitalist or designer.  

“Every drawing, every prototype, can be seen as a failure or a way to learn and make your design progress to the next stage,” Behar says. “Failures on a bigger scale, like with startups you invest energy in, that don’t make it—that’s what being an entrepreneur is about. Venture capitalists rarely list their failures. But as people in the field know, 19 out of 20 startups fail. So we try to put more likelihood of success in the startups we work with. Design is a part of making that startup connect better with its audience. You have to put your heart into things. You get disappointed if they don't work out. But you pick yourself up, and you work on the next thing.” 

Behar, who was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, grew up with an East German mother and a Turkish Sephardic Jewish father, whose family had resettled in Istanbul. Their son’s entrepreneurial chutzpah began early in life, and he has always been creating. As a teen, Behar discovered the freedom of punk music and its do-it-yourself ethos. He made bookshelves for his adolescent bedroom out of construction materials from a site down the street. He attached wood planks to skis, creating a base, to make a contraption combining two sports he loved: skiing and windsurfing. His mom would take him to frozen lakes around Lausanne, and he would glide quickly on his invention, even during stormy weather. “There was always a risk that the ice would crack and you would fall in,” he says, grinning.  

“On one hand, my upbringing was very much about being Swiss and fitting in, and on the other hand, it was about having parents who were from very different worlds,” he says. “I explored and tried new things, from furniture design to fashion design. I applied my creativity without expertise, which is a punk can-do attitude. That was very liberating.”  

Behar says that ArtCenter altered the trajectory of his life, changing him both as a person and as a budding designer. For two years, he studied at ArtCenter Europe, the College’s campus in Vevey, Switzerland, which operated from 1986 to 1996.  

“For me, ArtCenter Europe was a small miracle,” he says. “I didn’t have a lot of international experience. I think my parents read in the newspaper that a school based in California was opening a campus 20 minutes from my house. It was an incredible experience, because there were students there from all over Europe, the Middle East and Asia.”

After his two years in Vevey, Behar transferred to ArtCenter’s main campus in Pasadena. He had never been to the West Coast. He spoke little English, and with a thick French accent, he says. Moving to Southern California as a Product Design student opened his world up even more.  

“I wanted to experience more diversity of fields,” he says. “The fact that there were also Fine Art, Photography, Film and Graphic Design departments at the Pasadena campus was exciting. I was an amateur photographer and filmmaker, and being able to take courses in those areas was incredibly stimulating and inspired some of my design work. What made ArtCenter unique was the ability to jump around different fields and make friendships beyond my chosen field.”  

After graduating, Behar shone as a design leader at the Silicon Valley offices of Frog Design and Lunar Design, working with clients such as Apple and Hewlett-Packard, before going on to found Fuseproject.  

His accomplishments have ranged from solo exhibitions at museums, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, to being a multiple winner of the Industrial Design Excellence Award (IDEA). In 2023, Fast Company named Fuseproject one of seven top companies changing the world. And in 2024, Wallpaper* named Behar as one of its “USA 400”—individuals who are defining America's creative landscape.

For its 2024 Innovation by Design Awards, Fast Company crowned the Cionic Neural Sleeve, a lightweight, bionic leg wrap codesigned by Fuseproject and the neurotechnology startup Cionic, the winner of the impact category. Time magazine deemed the sleeve—which uses sensors to monitor movement in real time and deliver targeted electrical stimulation to leg muscles—one of the best inventions of 2023.
 
“To this day, what animates me in design is building things and partnering with entrepreneurs who have a vision that requires original thought and dedication,” Behar says. “The biggest pleasure I have—the icing on the cake of all the hard work—is when you hear from all around the world that people who are using your designs have benefited from a human experience standpoint.”
 
Reflecting on the increased role of AI in entrepreneurship, from its ethical implications to its multilayered opportunities, as well as its impact on his own designs, Behar grows philosophical.
 
The Snoo bassinet, he points out, is a robot; it includes an AI program that allows it to react correctly to a baby’s needs, mimicking methods of soothing, including swinging. He designed the milky-white, oval bassinet with pediatrician and Happiest Baby founder Dr. Harvey Karp, who based it on more than 20 years of research.
 
“Clinical studies now show that the Snoo alleviates postpartum depression, and it’s also used in more than 200 neonatal intensive care units around the country, which is huge,” says Behar. “Like with many technologies that have emerged from Silicon Valley, I see these technologies as tools, and never as the be-all and end-all. What we have found is that AI and robotics have been very compelling in shaping our projects in the future of health and health care.”

Behar has been focused on creating health care products tailored to children, the elderly and people with disabilities. Driven in this field, he and Fuseproject launched Moxie in 2022. With its curved, animated faceplate; wide, multi-angled green eyes; soft-touch material; and front-facing camera, the robot uses AI to boost learning, aid in emotional support and promote social skills development in autistic children. Moxie—which, according to a 2024 Wired story, has had more than 4 million conversations with children—is also Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) Safe Harbor certified.
 
Designed by Behar and Fuseproject in collaboration with Intuition Robotics, AI eldercare companion robot ElliQ was named Dezeen’s 2023 best health product long-listed winner, and a 2023 IDEA Award health product finalist. A 2024 feature by The New York Times notes that New York state officials have distributed free ElliQ robots to hundreds of older adults over the past two years—part of an effort to ease burdens of loneliness among older residents. The robot, with its design resembling a smooth tabletop object, can have in-depth conversations and can motivate elderly people to reach out to friends and family.
 
“These products are extraordinary in adapting on a daily basis to someone's human interests, as well as their physical and mental needs,” says Behar.

When the opportunity presented itself for Behar to buy back Fuseproject in 2023, it allowed him to expand the company and dedicate it even more to a partnership model, he says. Fuseproject opened its Lisbon office, and Behar became co-founder of EV startup Telo Trucks with founders Jason Marks and Forrest North.
 
“This has been a dream of mine,” says Behar, who has driven an electric car continuously as his sole personal vehicle for more than 12 years. “I've designed and worked on cars for the past 20 to 25 years, for BMW, Nissan and Mini, but it tended to remain sort of secret, and with the companies we were working with. With Telo, I’ve taken what I've learned in furniture and transportation and have had a chance to design what I think is truly a revolutionary vehicle that really fits the American lifestyle.”
 
The aerodynamics of the Telo Truck have been completed, and its interior design is being finished up, he says. Though compact, the truck can comfortably seat five passengers. Described as friendly and functional, it has a modern sloping front end, as well as a patent-pending small and easily manufacturable battery pack embedded within the supporting chassis frame.

“What I'm excited about is bringing sustainability from an EV, scale and materiality standpoint,” Behar says. “By early next year, we will have two fully functioning trucks to drive, demonstrate and maybe bring to ArtCenter.” He notes that through connections in Portugal, the company is considering using cork material from there for several aspects of the truck.

“The cross-pollination that we have at Fuseproject from the huge variety of projects we do—whether in health care, furniture, beauty or fashion—[allows projects to] influence each other, especially with a project like Telo that has a wide array of components,” he adds. “The chance to get back deep into the risk-taking startup world, as well as to continue working with our favorite larger brands such as Samsung and L'Oréal, was the perfect way to give a second wind to Fuseproject. Being independent again also means working globally, in Asia, the U.S. and Europe.”
 
The future, for Behar, also includes his pride for his niece as she paves her own path at ArtCenter as a new Product Design student. Behar acknowledges that he has never pushed his children to follow his own entrepreneurial design direction.
 
“They’ve been steeped in creativity since they were little, and in some ways it's the most normal of things to them,” he says. “Like, ‘Oh, you know, Papa is showing us another new thing.’ They take it for granted. As they get older, I imagine that it will feel more unique to them. So it's fun for them to see this path with my niece.”
 
When it comes to what kind of advice he would give current ArtCenter students, as well as those balancing entrepreneurial aspirations while navigating the complexities and stresses of 21st century life, Behar pauses—then provides a litany of wisdom, encouraging students to take care of themselves and also to be focused:
 
“Being focused on one thing you’re good at, where you can make a difference, is the key to other people recognizing your talent and hard work,” he says. “Ambitious students tend to want to do more, and run themselves into the ground, as I did a few times at ArtCenter. Focus on yourself and less on the things that you cannot change. I was not confident enough to start my own business at ArtCenter or right after. Don't feel intimidated because there are students starting their own businesses. There's plenty of time for you to acquire experience in the working world, which will help you when you are ready to venture on your own. But if starting a business is the instinct you have, go for it. Again, it’s about your own pursuits and protecting that at all costs.”