12: Che-Wei Wang & Taylor Levy (CW&T) - Iterating Together with Time
Che-Wei Wang and Taylor Levy are the founders of CW&T (Website, Instagram, X, TikTok), a Brooklyn-based studio creating products that exist somewhere between art, design, and engineering.The husband-and-wife team met at NYU ITP and shares a background across industrial design, architecture, computer science, film, including time at Pratt Institute and MIT. They won the 2022 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Product Design. They design and manufacture everyday objects including clocks, pens, tools, and other strange objects that challenge our relationship with time, attention, and materiality. Their most recognizable products include the Pen Type-A, Pen Type-C (my favorite), Time Since Launch (a one-time-use, 100-year timekeeper), and Solid State Watch, a remix of the classic Casio F-91W.Our conversation explores their fascination with time, their commitment to creating heirloom-quality objects in a disposable world, and how they've built a sustainable creative practice on their own terms. We discuss their prototyping-centered approach, the tension between digital and physical creation, and how they navigate collaboration as partners in life and work.Throughout, Che-Wei and Taylor reveal a philosophy that treats making as its own reward—they create what fascinates them first, trusting that others will connect with their vision.
- Uploaded
- Uploaded May 26, 2026
- Queried
- Queried 0 times
Speaker A: Welcome back to Dialectic. Episode 12 is with Sewei Wang and Taylor Levy, aka CW and T. CW and T are partners in life and in work and run a studio that creates some of my favorite physical products on the internet. Some of these are incredibly practical, like pens and tools, and others are more abstract or even artistic, most notably attempting to challenge our conceptions and relationship with time. It's worth clicking on some of the links in the description to get a better sense of the types of products they make.
But some of my favorites are Pen Type-C, a titanium bookmark pen that I ended up taking with me everywhere. Time Since Launch, a vacuum-sealed cylinder with a couple of AA batteries in it that will last about 100 years, where you pull the pin and it starts counting up from zero. People use this for startups, for weddings, for new children. I actually officiated a wedding in the fall where we pulled a Time Since Launch. And Solid State Watch, which is an amazing remix of the classic Casio F91W cast in resin that I wear most days.
They also won the 2022 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for product design. This is a conversation about why they're so fascinated with time, how they think about creating durable products that last as long as they should, and what their process looks like specifically with a framework built around prototyping. We also talk about CW&T, the studio, the brand, and the partnership, and what it is like to collaborate with a life partner. I think any creative person has a lot to learn from this conversation, but perhaps especially those like me who work primarily in the digital world with bits, with media, with software.
Want to learn more?
Ask a question