Josh Morenstein

In a career spanning three decades, award-winning industrial designer Josh Morenstein has often thought about what it means to turn a sketch into a product that people bring into their lives. “The nature of what we do has a lot of permanence. That can be a good thing or a bad thing,” he says. “There’s a responsibility that comes with designing things that don’t go away.”

A second-generation industrial designer, Josh spent his formative years at his father’s foundry in San Francisco, where he learned to honor good craftsmanship by making architectural castings and metal sculptures. He worked for leading industrial design agencies including Frog Design and fuseproject—where as creative director and partner he grew the staff from 18 to 65 creatives—before establishing his own shop, Branch Creative, with former colleague Nick Cronan in 2013. Together, they have led teams that designed Bird Two, the second generation of electric scooters for Bird, and the Dusk Dawn lamp for Italian manufacturer Ghidini 1961. At fuseproject, Josh oversaw the design for award-winning products including GE WattStation, an electric car charger, in collaboration with Ecomagination, General Electric’s sustainability division. For NIVEA’s 100th anniversary, Josh and his team updated the brand’s logo and redesigned its product bottles to be more environmentally conscious, reducing materials by up to 15 percent.

Josh has worked with clients including Coca-Cola, Issey Miyake, Swarovski, Johnson & Johnson, and L’Oreal. His work has been exhibited at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Triennial, MoMA, and the Chicago Art Institute, and has been honored with dozens of awards, including from the Industrial Designers Society of America, ID Magazine, iF Design, and Red Dot. He is active within the design community as a jury member for competitions including the Dieline Package Design Awards and Toyota’s Ideas for Good.

Josh, a former competitive cyclist and avid cook, lives in San Francisco with his wife and twin daughters.