Oliver Reichenstein is not a new face to the beyond tellerrand family. He was on our stage in Berlin back in 2014, when he talked about information architecture and the power – and limits – of the metaphors we use to build the web. He has a way of making you think about things you assumed you understood, and realising you didn’t quite. Or you did, but did not think of that angle of a view on it.

Since then, his work has kept expanding in ways that feel surprising and entirely logical at the same time. I’m genuinely glad to have him back.

So who is Oliver Reichenstein?

Oliver studied philosophy in Basel and Paris before becoming a designer. The latter is kind of engine of everything he does, in my opinion. He founded iA (Information Architects) in Tokyo in 2005, a studio now with offices in Zurich and Tokyo (and roots in Berlin), that has become quietly influential far beyond its size.

Most people in our community know iA through their tools. iA Writer arrived in 2010 and immediately stood out: a focused, distraction-free writing environment that took the idea of clarity seriously, not as a feature, but as a philosophy. iA Writer is the only tool (maybe next to Mail), that is constantly open on my computers, as I use it for nearly everything I do – in fact, the words you read are written in it also ;) iA Presenter followed. A text-based presentation tool that asks you to think before you slide. Both are built around the same conviction: that good tools should get out of your way.

In 2024, iA launched something that surprised a lot of people: the iA Notebook. A physical paper notebook. Not a gimmick. A product developed over ten years, built around a single idea: watermark lines that guide your pen when the page is blank and quietly disappear as your words take over. Last year it won the Red Dot Best of the Best award, a distinction shared by products like the original iPhone and the first Apple Watch, for example. It’s the first paper notebook to ever receive it, as far as I know.

Philosophy Meets Practice

What makes Oliver particularly interesting to me is that he has never been content to stay inside the boundaries of what designers are expected to think about. He connects dots. He asks why things are the way they are. He draws on Giambattista Vico’s principle of Maker’s Knowledge and information theory and interface behaviour in the same breath, and somehow makes it feel natural rather than academic.

In a time when the design conversation is dominated by AI hype and product velocity, his perspective – careful, rigorous, deeply human – feels more necessary than ever, right?

Why You Should be Excited

beyond tellerrand has always been the place where people who care about craft and people who care about ideas meet in the same room. Oliver is the kind of speaker who brings both at once.

So don’t miss out and be one of the people that will be sitting still, listening to him talking ;)

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