Even by the strictest reckoning, Jordan Nollman has had a spectacular career as an industrial designer, evidenced by a quick look through his website, which features successful products for Virgin Atlantic, Bose, Dell, Burton Snowboards, Polaroid, Nokia, Nike, and dozens of others. After six years on the staff of San Francisco-based Astro Studios, Jordan recently decided to leave, focusing on his personal design firm Sprout Studio, and expanding a long-term role designing personal grooming and related products for Clio Designs.

Over the past decade, you've designed product, environment and packaging for IDEO, Ziba, Razorfish, Astro, Altitude, Eleven...an astonishing array of high-profile consultancies, but you decided to pack it up and work independently. What makes working for yourself more appealing than for some of the world's top firms?
For me it's a personality thing, and it's about having more freedom. Working independently, I can really drive projects, whereas when you consult for large client firms there are all sorts of other factors. You can work for a year or more on a one or two million dollar project, and it'll get killed before release. Or the division that was supporting it gets cut. All sorts of things.

At the end of the day, you want to get some stuff made, and working at a consultancy for larger clients that's often not the case. Working independently for Clio, on the other hand, I had seven different products go to market in six years, and that was just through freelancing on the side. It's exciting, getting to see your design get made, and the cycle tends to be faster with smaller companies. I designed an iPhone case for Press8 Collective, for example, and it got made in two weeks.

How do you find clients as an independent?
I've got a really good network. Back in school I really latched onto anyone I could, to the point that a lot of my clients now are actually referrals from other designers. Working for Astro in San Francisco was a real network-expanding experience as well; it's like venture capital central there, and I'd get a call every other day from someone who was cashing out from the tech industry and wanted to develop a product of some sort.

You were in the Bay Area for 6 years. Why the move back to Boston?
Three main reasons. First, Clio made me a fantastic offer, essentially making me their chief creative designer if I'd come out here. Second, I have a daughter now, and my whole family's in Boston, and it's important to have that around. But on top of that, the design culture in Boston has really come up recently. Maybe it's the fascination of the Big Dig, or all the schools, but there are a huge number of design firms here, and the IDSA Boston chapter is maybe the only really strong chapter I've seen. I love San Francisco, and may go back eventually, but it's super-saturated with designers...I had a lot of peers there, but here in Boston, I've got a lot of mentors.

What's Sprout actually look like inside?
I remodeled my house in San Francisco a couple of years ago, and built my Ultimate Home Office there as part of it -- that was Sprout until recently. We only finally finished the move to Boston a few days ago, so nothing's been established yet. We're back in my old neighborhood--Central Square--which is kind of a design ghetto: you can throw a baseball from here and hit about a dozen designers, so it's a good spot to set up. I have a couple of freelancers that I work with frequently, and might build Sprout up into a larger consultancy some day, but there's no real hurry.

You're running this studio and working as chief creative designer for Clio?
Yeah, Clio alone is 40 or 50 hours a week. I don't really sleep.

Tell me more about working on royalty.
If you're a young designer, you have to undersell yourself a little in order to get work in the first place, like "I'll do this for 50 dollars an hour, but you have to guarantee at least this many hours." And yeah, go ahead and do that, but you should ask if you can get two and a half percent on revenues; it hasn't even occurred to a lot of companies.

Clio was receptive to it--they were just a few guys when I started working with them--and then they really blew up; the first products I did for them sold a few million units. It's a really nice revenue stream, and let me buy my house. Who knows what's going to happen with the economy, but this is a constant, and the work's already been done.

Is it hard to convince clients to go with a royalty agreement?
It really depends on who they are. For a big company like Microsoft, no, don't even bring it to the table. But smaller more entrepreneurial firms are often open to it, especially if they don't have a lot of cash on hand. There's a process to that initial contact, just like any other design project. You talk through their business plan on the phone, research their background, take a meeting. You can tell a lot about how likely a project is to succeed by doing some digging, and base whether to do a royalty request on that.

How important do you think going to the right school is to being a successful designer?
I don't think it makes one bit of difference. I mean, there are some great schools out there: CIA and UC and some of the Ohio schools turn out some great designers, and if you've got the cash you can go to ArtCenter or something, but what students really need is an apprenticeship. This is what European schools have figured out. It's completely different there. My wife studied architecture in Europe, and spent about half her school time learning on the job.

A lot of the basic, practical stuff, you can learn in high school: drawing and computer skills. What I learned at RIT [Rochester Institute of Technology, in upstate New York], more than anything, was how to talk to people and learn things from them. It's funny, I didn't actually receive my degree until three years ago--I had three Spanish classes to complete!--but I don't think a single employer ever checked up on this. If you've got a good portfolio and good references, that's what they pay attention to.

How much of your current skill set can you trace back to school, versus having learned on the job?
We were using, like, Photoshop 1.0 when I was in school, so every piece of software I use now I learned on the job. One thing I did really value at RIT was the emphasis they placed on model making. I don't do it much anymore, and neither do most of the design firms out there, but as a way of understanding form it's incredible, and kind of a lost art. Smart Design is an exception, and it's part of why they're so good

Would you recommend going independent to a recent graduate?
No. There's so much you need to learn that's more than just design: finding work, writing contracts, managing projects. When I started working at Astro, I thought I knew what I was doing, but I had so much to learn. If I hadn't put in those additional 6 years I wouldn't be where I am now.