Moto Undone Project By Joey Ruite

For Joey Ruiter, the joy of the design process is seeing around what is expected. Founder and design lead of jruiter + studio, Ruiter can’t wait to strip a machine down to the bare parts, to ignore the accepted norm and to start over. From office furniture makers and power boaters to urban fashionistas, Ruiter helps businesses re-conceptualize their products to present today’s design-savvy public with a fresh look at what’s next. A recognized rising talent, Ruiter sold his first office chair design before he earned his diploma from Kendall College of Art and Design. He won his first Best of NeoCon® Gold award just two years later. You can find this owner of 25+ design patents in Popular Science, Metropolis and Discovery Channel’s Geek-Week, meeting with industry leaders or doing what he likes best – creating inspiring products from his studio in West Michigan.
“When companies hire me, they get a broad range of experience that crosses the design disciplines, to create objects at their core that stand out. To get there, you have to see around what we are being asked to do. FInd the real, honest answers and try to establish a plan. Sometimes the answer doesn’t even involve me.
But when you can get rid of all the cheese, fluff, and doodads, you can create icons. Great products of yesterday and today simply do what they are supposed to do. It’s not mysterious. And you wonder why it hasn’t been there the whole time.”
“Stripping machines down to their core essence and rebuilding them leads me to new discoveries, thoughts and inspiration. I love to spend time browsing in antique shops. You can learn a lot from past technologies that changed our cultural outlook. These are ideas that changed our lives, like the micro computer does now. What if you could find a new way to use things or see things that are already familiar? It creates another chapter, just when you thought you were at the end of the story.”