R E F LE CT I O N S O N T H E M E A N I N G O F D E S I G N .
TALK
D E YA N S U DJ I C
TA LK S TO
KO N S TA N T I N G R C I C
A N D S A M H E C H T.
T
alk is a series of conversations on issues that
concern us as capitalists and citizens. Talk is not
a periodical; it will be published if and when we
feel there is a need to try to shed some light on a
particular phenomenon or development that has
implications for business and society at large.
Daniel Sachs,
CEO Proventus,
Stockholm.
ore
m
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funda
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novatio
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sperity
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A
t present, the distinctions between art and design
are becoming increasingly blurred. Talented designers exhibit
bespoke one-off pieces at art galleries and make more money in
a few weeks than in a lifetime of designing for industrial production. So, what does design mean and what is its relevance?
What happened to materials and production technology?
Is there a distinction between industrially advanced processes
with the aim of creating new products and the last-minute
addition of an aesthetically appealing form? Does design
involve an understanding of the context in which the object
functions?
Proventus believes that all sustainable growth departs from
3
the product. Our product-centric approach has made us reflect
on the meaning of design. In our world, design is ideally part of
a holistic industrial process, living close to engineering, material knowledge, production technology and the needs and
requirements of the user. At a time when global markets and
rapid technology development are causing fundamental shifts
in competitiveness, a strong product is essential, particularly
for those areas of the world where costs are higher. In Europe,
the industrial sector is finding competition increasingly difficult
and the need for true innovation is pressing. This is not only a
concern for the competitiveness of industry, but also has a fundamental impact on the kind of society we are building. Do we
want Europe to remain an industrial society – where prosperity
is partly based on the ability to innovate and produce – or do
we accept a development where we are merely consumers.
Innovation, design and product development can have a significant impact on this global development. But, like many
other carelessly overused words – such as democracy, economic
development, culture, sustainability – design has become a
generic term, stripped of almost all its meaning.
In Talk, Deyan Sudjic talks to designers Sam Hecht and
Konstantin Grcic in order to try and bring the word design
back to its core meaning. Or at least help us reflect on some of
the central ideas that the word encompasses.
Daniel Sachs
4
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Konstantin Grcic,
industrial designer,
KGID, Munich.
6
-
D
EYAN SUDJIC: When did
you become aware of what design is?
KONSTANTIN GRCIC: During my time
studying craftsmanship in wood at the
Parnham School in England, through making
things. Even the word “making” turned into
design. It includes the question of what you
make, how you make it and who you make it
for. It was a process. At the same time, I discovered the history of design and the work of
certain designers and began to understand the
larger picture. Design evolved from manufacturing, from craft and small industry. It could
not be a local craftsman who drew the chair he
would build. It became more complex and
specialised, whether it is furniture – which is
closest to my personal experience – or the
more sophisticated varieties of industrial
design or services. But in the end the idea
of design always comes from the reality of
making, it’s not just a theory.
Design can be a form of creative selfexpression. That’s the way I work, it is what
distinguishes design offices like mine from
the ones that have a more pragmatic
approach. We don’t just offer a service to
somebody who needs a product. We can add
something extra. Authorship is part of good
design, it’s something that we appreciate. It’s
what we want in a product. A design may
be good in how it functions, but it isn’t interesting unless it has something that makes it
appealing. Only the design can give that
quality, whether or not you know the name of
the person who did it.
SUDJIC: Do you mean that if design adds
something that goes beyond the practical
8
and the functional, you are helping to make
people pay more to be seduced into buying
something that they don’t need?
GRCIC: Design is an added value. Maybe
that means the price is higher. It certainly is
sometimes used in a cynical way, and people
do sometimes mistrust it. A “designer” something does not stand for more quality, it is
perceived as a marketing trick or as fooling
us. I am not sure what the way out of this
problem is. Design should still be a signature,
but one that represents quality.
SUDJIC: What is a designer product?
GRCIC: In fact there are no “non” designed
products. But look at the ones where you can
see that someone has sat down and tried to be
original. At their best, they are reassessing,
refining and rethinking – taking an object on
to another level. I don’t just mean Philippe
Starck. Design can be anonymous but still
represent real development. Designed products are the best ones. It’s interesting how
“design” has lost credibility in the product
design sector, but in services we use technology design to create credibility. You design a
timetable to be more reliable. In this context,
design still means something. It stands for all
the virtues, somebody is trying to improve
things, to make them more efficient, that is
how I see design.
SUDJIC: Is design about luxury?
GRCIC: Quality is a luxury, but luxury
doesn’t necessarily mean material value.
Luxury can mean owning less. It’s not necessarily a commercial issue. I strongly believe
that industry today produces better quality
than all but the most outstanding craft manufacturers such as Nymphaneum or Hermès.
A lot of the furniture industry still depends
on a degree of handcraft, but it means lower
quality because it involves investing less.
Spending money on the high technology that
you need for a real production line means
higher quality. But it’s difficult to get the
message across. For too long, the public’s
perception has been that industry means standardisation and therefore low quality. Craft
has a certain aura. Essentially that handmade
means more care. Craftsmen can produce
things that industry can’t do, but industry
surpasses what you can make with your hands.
SUDJIC: How does design relate to art?
GRCIC: Right now, the design boom in
gallery pieces in design has created a new
debate where price does not matter. Look at
something like Ross Lovegrove’s milled aluminium table, which sold at auction for six
figures as if it were an art piece. The table is
interesting because the strange market that
suddenly exists has allowed a designer to produce a piece on his own with no constraints.
It’s his own self-motivated production that
allows him to do what he has always tried
to do. That is what is sometimes missing
in design. There is very little real research
into the design process coming out of the
commercial world. And, to be optimistic,
what Lovegrove and others like Marc Newson
do can be important. Even if Newson
designed the Lockheed lounger for just the
five people in the world who can afford it, it
can still have a huge impact on the history of
design. Ettore Sottsass changed the very idea
of furniture with the Memphis movement.
It’s not IKEA, but they are really important
ideas, very special outstanding things, iconic
things. The discussion about whether they
are accessible or commercial products is less
relevant. I was very struck by the scene in
The Devil Wears Prada, where Meryl Streep’s
character spells out to her assistant that by
wearing a cheap jumper from H&M she may
think that she is getting
away from fashion, but
she isn’t. Streep explains
its link to Karl Lagerfeld
and its significance to a
whole world that goes far
beyond the air kissers. I
think that argument is
really true and it’s very
relevant to design too.
My ideas about design
have changed. When I
started, I always had an
idea of designing a product for everyone. I would
redefine the role of design
now. The tight little
scene of known name
designers is elitist. A
more positive route is to
create an avante garde.
We need companies and
designers that use their
privileged position to
create original ideas, to
rethink a product or a
design. To discuss design
that trickles down like
the Lagerfeld cerulean
blue to the H&M
sweater. Memphis was
like that. It changed
design completely and it
didn’t matter a bit if
their production wasn’t
for a large manufacturer
or what most people saw
were just images of prototypes in magazines.
We should not just be designers of showpieces. But the ambition of the illusion of a
mass product is really wrong. Reality is more
individual. The iPod was not expected to be
such an enormous success. Apple designed it
to be quite an exclusive object. The quality
they gave it was of a jewel: it was meant to
feel expensive. Now it has turned into a real
mass product. But everybody wants the origi-
9
KO N STANTI N G R C I C I N H I S STU D I O
nal. Apple’s competitors should just accept
defeat. They won’t catch up or make a product
that is as good. They should be investing in
trying to leapfrog it. It’s not just the object,
it’s the download. Like with coffee capsules,
you create a closed system. By buying a certain coffee machine, you have to buy the
capsules too.
SUDJIC: Do you worry that design is creating built-in obsolescence?
GRCIC: The lifecycle of a mobile phone is
about six months now. We lease computers
because after three years you don’t want the
same computer. We cannot escape it, and as a
designer you must be aware of those cycles
and mechanisms. It is tricky territory. Even
the most beautiful Apple becomes obsolete. I
keep my old ones and that makes it slightly
better, I suppose. Design can take a moral
position. But the moral position is not to say
“no”. The best way to make your statement or
pursue your arguments is to be inside the system. If you are employed by IBM, you have a
better lever than stepping outside and saying
point is that most manufacturers in this area
are looking for what a designer has to offer,
rather than expecting them to deliver another
version of what they have already got, or to
work within the constraints of the company
DNA. So for Magis, it’s my own product for
the Magis catalogue. But with Krupps, it’s
a Krupps product, not our own. That’s interesting too, it’s different, it’s a new approach
for us. There is nothing wrong with it in principle. But the reality with a lot of companies
is that somebody will give you a handbook of
what the company DNA is. There is a book of
rules for Krupps, they all have it; they employ
marketing companies to produce manuals and
expect you to work within their parameters.
A manual can be good, but it can also be shallow and not at all convincing.
In furniture, the company DNA is usually
the individual entrepreneur. It’s a Perazza, or
an Alessi and they don’t need a manual. The
entrepreneur is what guarantees its authenticity. It’s a beautiful and important quality for
small family-run firms that still exist and can
VIVO, BALLPO I NT P E N, 2004, STAI N LES S STE E L AN D PO M, LAMY.
they just produce waste. The reaction should
not be to go on strike.
SUDJIC: How important is the identity of a
company to the way in which a designer works?
GRCIC: When we design for furniture or
lighting companies, like Magis, Flos or
Authentics, we discuss an idea of what these
companies are like. But that depends more on
infrastructure: the tools and skills that they
have that shape the kind of products that they
can make, rather than talking about the sort
of image that they want to project. But the
be passed on from one generation to another.
In larger companies, authenticity is more difficult. Though it can happen: when Apple had
a crisis, Steve Jobs came back. Company
DNA can turn into a list of rules that can be
done well or can fail. The bad examples are
endless, cases where authenticity is lost or
turns into a cynical formula. Cars are different
because there are so few manufacturers. They
have to distinguish themselves from each
other. That means working with the heritage
of a company. Over the last 10–15 years,
11
D IANA TYP E FAC E C R EATE D BY F LO R IAN B Ö H M, 2004
D IANA, S I D E TAB LES, 2002, S H E ET STE E L, C LAS S I C O N
D IANA, A, B, C, D, E, F, S I D E TAB LES, 2002, S H E ET STE E L, C LAS S I C O N
identity has become very important. Every
now, because things are at a crucial turning
designer has to be conscious of it. Any carpoint. They are changing very fast. Design is a
maker without a distinctive grille, like
key element for the changing industry and for
BMW’s kidney-shaped grille or the Rolls
the world and society. I am not just talking
Royce temple is in trouble. Designers can
about product design, but design in all its
produce their own book of rules; it’s not such
aspects. Mass production is more mass proa bad thing to have a signature. You don’t
duction than ever before. Industry is bigger,
argue with Jenny Holzer who has found her
we produce more. And of course less and
medium. You always see it as quality to go
less of it is produced in Europe because of
deeper into a subject.
China’s grip on manuSUDJIC: How do you
facturing. The reality
revive an old business
of design for me is a
with a great name?
close relationship to
GRCIC: The probhow things are made.
lem for investors is
I want to really underthat though they may
stand how things
acquire the history
work technically, but
and all the stock that
also how commerce
goes with it, what
works, as well as find
the greatest companies
out more about distristood for was their
bution, which has litstrength in developing
tle relevance to design
brilliantly innovative
culture. But if you
products. Most new
understand how mass
owners believe that
production is changthey can do the same,
ing, you can underbut they underestistand where design
mate what that really
can have an influence
means in terms of
and how it can be
the development and
steered in a certain
research that is needdirection.
ed. Of course it can
Unless we are lucky
work. With BRIO,
to work with a large
they have successfully
corporation with real
managed to put electop management and
tronics into the basic,
talk to clever, intelliclassic wooden toy.
gent marketing peoC HAI R O N E, STAC K I N G C HAI R, 2004, D I E- CAST ALU M I N I U M, MAG I S
They have a new train
ple, it’s more difficult
that is like a diagram of a computer. It
to be involved with big business than workbehaves like My First Sony, a complex thing
ing at the other end of the scale talking to the
broken down into its components. Maybe it’s
boss directly. Small companies can do things
too intellectual, but some friends of mine
large ones can’t. Porsche is small for a car
bought a BRIO tunnel that is a sphere that
builder and very profitable. GM is huge, but
makes a noise as the train passes through. The
in trouble.
noise can be a bird noise or a train whistle.
SUDJIC: What does the threatened position
The kids love it.
of manufacturing in Europe mean for design?
SUDJIC: Is this a good time to be a designer?
GRCIC: The only advantage Europe has is
GRCIC: Design matters more than ever
its commitment to research.
15
D ES I G N BY R OS S LOVEG R OVE 75 ¢
D ES I G N BY R OS S LOVEG R OVE $ 350.000
Deyan Sudjic,
director,
Design Museum, London.
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Sam Hecht,
industrial designer,
Industrial Facility, London.
POST-IT WATC H, S E I KO
K N I F E S HAR P E N E R, HAR R I S O N F I S H E R
M O US E TR AP, LE XO N SA
F LE X LAM P, D R O O G BV
S U R R O U N D S O U N D EYEWEAR, R N I D
LAN D S CAP E CAM E R A, I F
D
EYAN SUDJIC: I’m interested in the way that designers use the word
“problem” so much. There is something quite
puritanical about the idea. It suggests that
design is basically a question of looking for a
problem and then coming up with a way to
solve it. It suggests a particular idea of functionalism, but there are other, equally important things to think about for a designer.
SAM HECHT: Either you are confronted
with something that the client thinks is a
problem or you think about the design in a
way that reveals the potential of a situation.
Problem is not the right word, opportunity
is better if you are looking for a creative outcome. A lot of problems are self-inflicted. I
designed a photographic printer once, and
there were lots of ways to improve the way it
worked and how it was made. But in the end,
Kodak ended up selling a camera with a
printer. So the printer suddenly had no value
whatsoever.
These were huge problems, very complex
and really on a large economic scale. Their
solution to it was to say well okay, if the
industry can’t make money from printers,
they’ll have to make it from selling ink cartridges. So no one cares about the printer.
Designers all want to design chairs, for
instance. But there are no problems left with
chairs anymore. There is no reason why any
chair should not be comfortable, stack easily,
be very light and pretty cheap. But all of us as
designers are continually doing chairs, so
basically we make our own problems now.
We think about designing the world’s lightest chair or the strongest chair or the most
recyclable chair. We have to create our own
constraints.
SUDJIC: What we call design may not be so
much about designing an object so that it
works well, but is more to do with persuading
people to use it more often or selling them a
service contract which they can’t fully understand. If one takes a pessimistic view, and
usually I don’t, this might be seen as being a
sorcerer’s apprentice moment for designers.
We’ve created an industrial system that can’t
be stopped. More and more things happen
faster and faster and the process is now out of
our control.
HECHT: It does sometimes feel like that,
particularly in China. China has changed
design in so many ways. I’ve never been to
China, even if 80 per cent of my work is now
produced there. I’ve never seen the factories,
I’m almost scared of seeing them.
SUDJIC: From choice?
HECHT: No, I am more than happy to
investigate it. What has changed is that the
methods of production are quite different
now. You work with agents and all sorts of
strange mechanisms and then out pops the
product with a superfast turnaround. It looks
I F 4 000, TAYLO R’S EYE WITN ES S
21
pretty good and if it doesn’t work, then you
can re-engineer it or adjust. The distance
between production and the designer is wider
than it has ever been.
SUDJIC: Given that the link between
design in Europe and manufacturing in Asia
is becoming more and more attenuated, can
design survive as a strength in the West?
HECHT: Maybe one way of answering it is
to look the other way. I’ve been to countries
that don’t have a particularly rich heritage of
design but are building a strong basis for
manufacturing. I don’t know if we’ll soon
become the novelty acts rather than fundamental instigators of design. We are approached quite often now by clients from
Eastern European countries. For one reason or
another it hasn’t worked out, but they’re
clearly looking for designers and adding them
to their economies. I suppose, essentially,
you need to put something back into the pot
to make sure that it doesn’t deplete to the
point where there’s nothing left. And perhaps
one of the pots that is quite interesting and is
still full for Europe is education. There are so
many foreign students using Europe to learn
about design as opposed to being educated
at home. I think that has become an industry
in itself.
SUDJIC: Are you optimistic about design?
HECHT: Well, I am always a little bit pessimistic, but that is why I have a partner who
is the optimist. I see so many companies
struggling at the moment and trying to deal
with huge problems, from waste to social
responsibility.
SUDJIC: You are talking about your clients
rather than designers.
HECHT: Yes, but there is something that
design can contribute to here. It requires a
different viewpoint on what a designer is. A
designer is often thought of as someone who is
a trendy fashionista, who is either obsessed
with material and how or what you can do
with, or hung up on colour or form. But you
will never be able to really contribute at that
level. I worked with Rem Koolhaas on a project for Prada, and I think that designers have
22
a lot to learn from his level of ambition. He
brought the idea of the urban scale back into
the frame of architecture.
SUDJIC: Can design be critical in the way
that someone like Ettore Sottsass has proposed? Can you use the ultimate product of
industrial design to ask, well just a minute, is
this the right thing to spend our resources on?
HECHT: I think that is the kind of model
that I strive for. I have always said that if all
you are doing is designing things that are to
hand, you are never really going to make very
much impact.
SUDJIC: If you are Victor Papanek, you
would claim that design is in business to
seduce innocent consumers into spending
money they don’t have on stuff they can’t
afford and that this is actually part of the trick
and the way the consumer society works on its
victims.
HECHT: It’s a reality that design is intertwined with capitalism. Design has become a
minefield for a lot of people trying to navigate
through marketing tricks. I think the least we
can expect now is that things work effectively.
There is really no excuse for them not to.
SUDJIC: And then what? What more does
an object need to do?
HECHT: Well, then the design kicks in. It
offers what is relevant to me as a person.
That’s what we do with Muji for whom I am a
consultant. The company is up to something
like 6,000 products now, so every meeting has
to look at what else we can do. It’s become a
process of gap finding.
SUDJIC: And each of those products needs
to demonstrate the Muji DNA?
HECHT: Exactly.
SUDJIC: So you’re the guardian-in-chief for
Muji’s DNA?
HECHT: Well for Europe, yes I have played
a part in this. I do believe they are doing the
right thing. Partly because I really have the
same sensibility.
SUDJIC: How should designers respond to
the virtual world?
HECHT: I can always spot a design that has
been created by a computer. About a year ago,
we had an interesting experience designing
a chair for Magis that made us decide deliberately to deskill the studio. They asked us to
design it on the computer. They told us it
makes the process so much easier. So we did.
We had a person operating the machine, we
talked it over. We designed it and it looked
absolutely spectacular. We were very confident about it and they said okay, send over the
files and we’ll prepare a prototype. So they did
and I went over to see it in Italy and no matter
how good it looked on the screen, it was just
appalling in the flesh. I had been taken in to
such an extent by how it looked on the computer, it held all of the qualities that I
thought it would hold, but in reality it didn’t.
So now we make everything by hand. With
a computer you are looking at a luminous
layer on the screen, it is backlit, so it already
looks magical. At the same time, a computer
doesn’t allow you to stop. You can go on forever, adding more and more. So, trying to
design something that has a certain elegance
and simplicity to it is very difficult on a computer because there is a natural urge to discover and use all the tools on the computer on
the product.
Now we deliberately work with models
rather than simply a screen. That gives you an
immediate connection. And when you present
to a client, a working model can be a powerfully persuasive tool for something very simple and elegant. When I was working on a
coffee maker, all I showed them was a model
made from cardboard tube. The big idea was
just a cylinder. But if we had done it just as a
rendering of a cylinder, it would have been
impossible to present. They would just have
asked me: where’s the design?
SUDJIC: Is the object losing its appeal?
HECHT: I think that as humans, we have
a natural instinct to touch things that are in
our environment. I don’t think that will go
away. It’s just the form of expression that
changes. People customise and they want
more engagement, they are less keen on the
perfect thing. People want more possibilities
with the things they own – to make them
theirs as well.
SUDJIC: When you meet a new client, what
do you talk about in terms of what you can do?
HECHT: I’ve found that if you get along and
you enjoy each other's company, that generally makes for a good project. It gets a lot more
complicated when you are dealing with bigger companies, especially when dealing with
more people. I don’t think we have ever had a
client who has come to us and said: can you
give us a simple design? It is more about us
simplifying a process or the particular brief.
But it is hard to pinpoint exactly why they
come to us. We talk about what we see in the
world that is captivating – that might influence the project beyond what the client might
imagine.
SUDJIC: What can a designer offer that a
marketing consultant can’t?
HECHT: It depends on the degree of passion
and commitment. You can have a very good
marketing person, who is super clever, super
intelligent and really wants to develop the
brand of the product to the best of his ability
or you can have a weak person.
SUDJIC: If industrial design is about making mass-produced objects, you would assume
SAM H EC HT
23
S EC O N D TE LE P H O N E, M UJ I
FAN, M UJ I
that the most successful pieces of industrial
designs are the ones that perform best commercially?
HECHT: Successful design is much more
than making something that is purely functional. The things that I would regard as successful have a message or a meaning. There
needs to be something in an object that I can
see but others can’t and that doesn’t get in the
way of how it is used. It doesn’t happen often,
it happens sometimes. Then it is very pleasant.
SUDJIC: It’s an elusive quality?
HECHT: Yes. I designed a notebook for
Muji once. It was the same size and shape as a
passport. It came in black, red, green and
blue, so the colours were not simply colours.
They amounted to a nationality. People didn’t
realise what they were carrying around. I really enjoyed that sense of giving an object
meaning without making it obvious. It’s not
like a post-modernist form of meaning, which
is really about visual literacy. It was much
more subversive.
I do make a point of challenging the
processes that a lot of companies use to develop their products. A lot of the time, you’ve
got marketing departments desperately
trying to make their products as visible as
possible in the market place. We designed
a printer last year and we wanted to make it
off-white with a brown lid. In Japan they
accepted it when I explained the concept to
them. I spoke to the marketing people and I
said, you know, if you want to make an
impact, do the exact opposite of what the others are doing. Everybody else’s printer is
shouting for attention and using lots of fancy
metallic sprays and finishes and bright lights
and those sorts of things. I said, if you make a
printer that is just a box, that is very simple in
a domestic colour rather than a shop colour,
then it will have a bigger impact. It worked in
Japan, but in the UK and America the client
refused to accept it.
I spent hours arguing but they wouldn’t
accept it, and sure enough their version
doesn’t stand out at all in the shops, but it
does stand out in the domestic world. They
26
were vehement, the company said that it had
to have a silver finish, just like all the other
electronics. Why are most TV sets silver? I don’t
need to look at the TV when it’s off. They are
silver because they are making me feel that’s
how you can generate glitzy specialness.
SUDJIC: That’s the magpie appeal.
HECHT: Exactly. We go around picking
up these shiny objects but the reality is that
when you bring it home it has absolutely no
connection with the domestic setting, and
that is very frustrating for me.
SUDJIC: Design is not an automatic passport to commercial success?
HECHT: True, it’s not, but I think that
design is now very important to a lot of companies. They feel that the customer is far more
savvy about what design is and so they feel
that design should be part of the equation.
I like difficulties that need to be overcome.
That is often what sets up what the project
will be. I know a Japanese designer who I
think is very good. He once told me that
when he meets a client, if he can’t think of
what the final design will be in the first ten
minutes of the conversation, he won’t take
on the commission. I think there’s something
in what he says. Probably, I wouldn’t say that
I wouldn’t do the project, but certainly if
my mind starts racing very quickly as the
project is presented, then I know it is going to
be good. But if I don’t feel that speed and
momentum right away, then it invariably
becomes a struggle.
SUDJIC: Which parts of the process do you
enjoy most?
HECHT: There is a very strange Freudian
space between the idea and the reality,
between what is in a designer’s mind and
what it will be when it's been tested and
becomes real. I find that playing in this area
is really very, very interesting. I can feel an
object, I can see it before it actually exists.
And I love that gap. It’s a dreamlike experience; sometimes I go to bed looking for those
periods. It’s very hard to explain but when
an object is made real it has lost that quality.
It has become something else.
“EITHER YOU ARE
CONFRONTED WITH
SOMETHING THAT
THE CLIENT THINKS
IS A PROBLEM, OR YOU
THINK ABOUT THE
DESIGN
IN A WAY THAT
REVEALS THE POTENTIAL
OF A SITUATION.”
SAM H ECHT
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