Vestaboard founder and CEO Dorrian Porter is back on the Design Better podcast with co-hosts Aarron Walter and Eli Woolery. His first appearance, in 2023, covered the inspiration behind the flagship product. This year, he shared the story of Vestaboard Note.
In the years between, the hosts became customers. "There's something magical about the Vestaboard," they wrote, describing the one in their kitchen that "greets our family with the family schedule for the day, riddles, updates from our favorite sports teams, and the best/worst dad jokes." They've started spotting others "from coffee shops in Savannah to airport storefronts in Minneapolis." Woolery keeps one in his office, where it does the job a chiming clock used to. "I'll get a really beautiful little piece of art or a quote or something," he said. "It just makes me look up from work and realize, yeah, okay, maybe it's time to pause and step away from the screen for a minute."
Walter framed the moment this way: "a bit of nostalgia, a bit of magic, and a whole lot of reclaiming the human experience."
"It was a sudden birth," Dorrian said of Note's development. Within a week of the initial idea, the team had cut foam to test the size. Within four weeks, pre-orders began. Much of the design traces back to requests from customers, including an interest in a display that could sit on a shelf or countertop. "We took a few ideas from the past and married them into this design."
The team went from concept to shipping in under a year. More than 5,000 Notes have sold, and the product won a Red Dot Award for design a year to the day after the team first discussed it. "Our goal this year is to make Vestaboard Note as lovable as the original flagship product," Dorrian said.
"Eli and I believe strongly we only work with brands and talk about products that we really truly love," Walter said. "We truly love Vestaboard. My family gets so much joy out of it every day."
Listen to the full episode on the Design Better podcast or watch it on YouTube.