Magic, Memory and the Method Behind the Curtain: A Zillennial Interview with Adrian Westaway
What happens when a magician becomes a designer? Adrian Westaway explains how magic helps us understand technology, remember the moments that matter, and feel cared for.
Last month, during a two-day design thinking course at the Royal College of Art, I found myself surrounded by executives who spend most of their waking hours thinking in spreadsheets, procurement paths and KPIs. All lovely people, but not the easiest crowd to sell “delight” to.
That’s why I was a little shocked when Clara Gaggero-Westaway and Adrian Westaway, co-founders of Special Projects and course leaders, began to talk about magic.
Not metaphorical magic, but actual magic – the kind performed on stages, behind curtains and, in Adrian’s case, inside one of the world’s oldest magic societies.
I watched as an entire room of executives suddenly leaned in. Magic, it turned out, wasn’t fluffy, it was surprisingly clear and practical. It gave everyone in that room a direct way to feel how design works, rather than just hear about it.
That’s why, for the December theme Magic & Memory, I wanted to speak to Adrian properly about how he and Clara have spent years building a practice where magic is part of their method.
The magician-engineer origin story
If you ask Adrian where this all began, he’ll take you back to age 11, opening a magic kit on Christmas morning and writing – with absolute sincerity – to Paul Daniels asking how to make his teacher disappear. “I didn’t even know the address,” he laughs. “So I just wrote ‘Paul Daniels, BBC’ on the envelope.”
Two weeks later, a detailed reply arrived, and something clicked.
“I loved that magic had two distinct parts,” he tells me. “The method – the technology, the sleight of hand. And the story – the performance. Unlike music, where the method is visible, magic needs those two to stay separate.”
He trained as an electronic engineer before arriving at the RCA and meeting Clara, who showed him what happened when method met narrative. Technology, he realised, becomes something people can feel when it’s wrapped in story.
That duality would eventually become the foundation of Special Projects and –very neatly inline with our theme – it’s also the foundation of memory. The things we remember most are the sensations after all.
Making magic credible in a boardroom
Magic is a seemingly dangerous word in business settings. It can sound naïve and unserious – maybe even be labeled as a distraction from the “real” work. Adrian and Clara know this, and they’ve spent years refining how to speak about it without the eye-rolls.
“It can be challenging for businesses to see the value in spending time on details that make something feel special,” Adrian says. “It’s often viewed as ‘nice to have’ rather than core to the product.”
That’s why they return, again and again, to one of Clara’s favourite quotes from Charles and Ray Eames: “The details aren’t the details, they’re the product.”
Magic, for them, is the accumulation of deliberate choices – the micro-decisions that shape perception long before someone realises their expectations have shifted. They show clients past projects, walk them through the intention behind every moment, and reveal how emotional clarity removes cognitive friction.
Once executives understand that, delight stops looking like decoration and becomes strategy.
Micro-magic and the memories we carry forward
When I asked how magic intersects with memory – and why these tiny moments matter – Adrian pointed to one of the most iconic examples of all: Apple’s MagSafe charger.
“It sits there doing nothing for weeks,” he says. “But the moment you trip over the cable and the magnet pops out, saving your laptop, it feels magical.”
It’s a moment engineered entirely around context and it’s also a moment you never forget.
It’s clear from our chat that Special Projects places its bets not on flashy centrepieces, but on micro-magical interactions. In practice, this could look like a subtle uplift, an unexpected kindness or a simply just a reminder that someone has considered the exact moment where frustration peaks and decided to meet it with care.
If you look only on the surface level, you’ll find that the world is overflowing with “delightful” UI animations, however, actual magic is noticing the human beneath the interaction and designing for the part of them that remembers.
Old-world magic meets new-world design
Of course I asked Adrian whether magic’s analogue traditions ever clash with the digital interfaces he builds today. He explains: “I don’t think there is a tension… because magic is about people. Whether you’re designing a lamp or an AI application, it’s still a person interacting with it – someone who lives in the physical world.”
This is the hinge that explains Special Projects so well. Magic feels timeless not because of rabbits-in-hats rituals, but because it deals in perception and expectation, which are two things that never stop being human.
Historically, magicians have always worked at the edges of emerging technology, whether its ether, psychology, stage mechanics, or early electronics. Magic updates itself constantly by pushing new tools to their emotional limits, so the digital world isn’t a break with tradition. In fact, it’s the latest stage.
Magic as a tool for behaviour change
The best example of magic-as-method might be the Samsung project that Clara and Adrian worked on just after graduating from the RCA. It was designed to help older adults learn to use smartphones.
They turned a dense user manual into a magical book. As you turned each page, the physical object revealed a new part of the phone, allowing people to learn slowly, at their own pace.
“It completely transformed the experience from one of intense frustration to one of giggling and delight,” he says. “It wasn’t a magic trick, but it was a magical experience that solved a hard problem.”
Designers talk endlessly about empathy and this is a great example of where empathy crosses over with engineering. It’s magic not as spectacle but as reassurance. If you’re wondering where memory comes in, it’s that the user associates a positive memory with this brand experience and is more likely to become a loyal customer.
Ritual, anticipation and the next wave of digital experiences
Much of Adrian’s recent work centres on AI, specifically, how we interact with it. As he put it: “Historically, we’ve had to fit into what the computer wants. Now we have an opportunity where computers can fit into our lives.”
One concept they’re exploring is Aperture, a phone case that creates a small window into the screen when flipped, triggering a minimal AI interface. You speak and it responds, making the entire phone a ritual object.
It essentially takes an overwhelming, ubiquitous technology and reframes it through a small, intentional gesture. Magic is merged with the mundane, and something special comes out of it.
So what is the magic, really?
Magic – the kind Adrian describes – isn’t about deception or trickery. It’s about attention, care, and timing. It’s about the small things that make us feel seen.
We’re in a digital world optimised for efficiency, yet magic is a design language that can slow us down just enough to notice. It’s a way of encoding humanity into systems that would otherwise flatten us and, crucially, it creates memories we actually want to keep.
If you’re a Zillennial like me, you’ve been raised in the glow of devices but you’re probably nostalgic for tactility and a bit of wonder. Special Projects’ work sits perfectly in the in-between, reminding us that magic is what happens when method finally meets meaning.