Glenwood

Glenwood is a creative studio based in Palo Alto 06:57 and Tokyo 20:57—working across stories, strategy, and software.

The studio is shaped by juxtaposition—founded by Justin Barber, a designer from Tokyo with 10+ years of Silicon Valley experience.

jb@glenwood.studio

This is our first step—with a store, a space, and more to come. Our first capsule collection arrives later this year.

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To get in touch, email us—to collaborate, take a look at the community page or reach out directly.

hello@glenwood.studio

Nothing is perfect & nothing is promised.

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いじょう

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Coming soon – For the aliens and the prophets

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The studio for today and tomorrow from Justin Barber

Last updated 25th October

Lux Capital AI Summit 2025 – New York

You can distill a "brand" down to two ingredients: words and visuals.

The purpose of these words and visuals is to inspire your investors, customers, and candidates to achieve outsized outcomes in fundraising, talent, and revenue.

But with generative AI, there's been a proliferation of words and visuals:

Despite this, the quantity of "high quality" – or inspiring – work is not going to inherently increase as a result.

So how do you push past making something derivative to create a truly inspiring brand?

Here are 3 core truths of creating an inspirational brand. Each one correlates to a specific part of the creative process

Creativity is a finite resource

• Creativity isn’t produced in a factory setting

• The primary risk of working with larger creative partners to develop your brand is that they will treat your brand as a commodity to maintain their reserves of creativity (for the week, month, year)

2 - Things are like other things

• If you're building X for Y, don't look at other companies building X for Y

• For example: if you're making a wifi router, don't reference what other wifi routers look like.

• Instead, reference objects that people put in their home (like how Google referenced Muji’s aroma diffuser)

• Find something adjacent and then pull in those metaphors to create something new

3 - Get copied or die trying

• If the work you put out is original and novel, it will inevitably get copied

• Others will copy the output in attempts to replicate your success, but copying shows that they don’t know why it was successful in the first place

• Success is rooted in authenticity and timing: that can’t be replicated

• You have two options: copy the work of others (because you don’t know how to be successful), or create the work that gets copied

Tech & Culture 25 minute presentation

Tech and Culture: Who Wins with AI?

AI is transforming tech and culture, but consumers are growing skeptical of the Silicon Valley narrative. With billions at stake, what strategies will define the winners and losers of the next decade?

Watch the full presentation on Youtube

Past: Phone Paradigm

1:04 What was tech & culture like in 2014?

2:38 Paradigm Shift

4:26 Winners & Losers

7:20 Path to Success

Present: Culture is tired

11:28 What is tech & culture like in 2025?

Future: AI Paradigm

14:05 Paradigm Shift

16:55 Winners & Losers

22:35 Path to Success

Watch on YouTube

Tech & Culture – Coming April 21

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Tech & Culture (Private Event)

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My Time – Part 2

In the Beginning

Creation is life's most beautiful challenge. To bring new ideas into the world requires not just taste, vision, and execution—but also the vulnerability to fully immerse yourself in the process.

It took time for me to get there, but last year I finally centered my life around the pursuit of creative excellence by opening Glenwood. If I succeed in realizing my vision for the studio, this work will unfold across decades, locations, and disciplines. But nothing is perfect and nothing is promised. And right now, I’m still at the beginning.

Rather than laying out the vision, I want to share three foundational experiences that shaped my path to this point.

Growing up in Japan

I was born and raised in Tokyo, but I am not Japanese. This means I will always be a guest in the place I call home. My approach to life and design reflects that—a juxtaposition of East and West held together in one form, like Ando’s glass. If you know the reference, “there’s a little bit of Japan in everything I do.” Family and friends still live there, and I return every year, finding ways to keep giving back to the place that gave me so much. So the studio, like myself, will be multicultural (stay tuned for the first studio release later this year).

Working with Qasar

Joining Applied Intuition in its early days and working closely with Qasar changed my trajectory. Anyone who’s been around him knows his relentless work ethic and uncompromising standards for prioritization and execution. But the most important thing I learned from him is distillation: complexity only exists within the wrong set of constraints. While building AI systems for vehicles is a completely different business than a creative studio (you know, give or take a few billion in market cap), I’m approaching the business, operations, and design of the studio with the same dedication to simplicity.

Taking Bilal’s advice

After a few meetings in Lux's Menlo Park office (just a block away from my first California apartment on Glenwood Ave), Bilal called me with the push I needed: “You should just start your own thing.” It wasn’t merely words—he and Scott both promised their support and they’ve followed through. Glenwood wouldn’t be possible without their help, along with Tess and Brandon. The studio came out of relationships and will continue to stay centered on them.

Trust is where creation begins—in people, in process, in potential. That’s why Glenwood starts here, with a few stories and ample whitespace.

After all, time and space is a luxury.

Justin