Thoughts on originality
Hello everyone,
All those who have followed the recent discussions in this forum will certainly enjoy reading the essay written by Koen De Winter that we have just published in the 'essays' section of Design Addict.
Feel free to react in this forum to this very interesting subject that concerns all designers and more generally all creators.
http://www.designaddict.com/essais/Originality.html

Just an after-thought
The other day I was reminded by one of the readers of the essay that originality in it's etymolgical sense means "related to it's origins", in other words...closer to the great Catalan Architect Gaudi's interpretation (I can not quote him because I can not find where a read it first) but I remember from my art history class in the late fifties that he considered originality as "having found or discovered the roots, not only from the problem at hand but also of ones own culture"...I just hope that my bad memory serves me well here...
Anyway it was just an additional thought. As far as the design concious minority is concerned, I agree with Gerrit van Eckhout. I am aware of at least one academic study that indicates that it is not more than 1% in Italy and that the highest % in the European countries that were part of the study was 1,5% in the Netherlands.

originality
"What is originality? Undetected plagiarism."

that is what it is!!!
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~caveman/Creative/Techniques/m...

dear david
More than ever easy and fast communication allows us to promote, test and eventually sell the results of our creativity. So...to complain about the negative reactions of showrooms does not seem to be very justified. What if they were right? It seems more likely to me, for the simple reason that showrooms and stores for that matter live from selling, and live from selling products that the consumer is interested in. Why would such an institution refuse to show something that has the potential to sell well? Yes I am simplifying the process but I wonder if these rejections would be as regular and consistant if one would spend as much time on improuving the designs, refining the understanding of the environnement in which they are used, knowing more about the culture of the users, find out about the technology and about understanding it's possibilities, especially the under-used ones, or the ones that lead to more economical solutions. What about finding out more about the function, not just at the first level but also the function of satisfying more i-material needs. Design is about added value, it's about producing more with less, it's about satifying more needs with lesser means. I think that when you succeed in achieving this in a product, no showroom or store is going to refuse to show it. Good luck! It us such a satisfying, exiting process..and please tell us about it!

ugly!
david, i took a look at your designs and man, are those tables ugly! BUT please don't be offended by my personal opinion. Just have in mind that a lot of people might find your designs not so nice as you do yourself. And therefore your market will never be the 'mass sheep taste' but a small niche market. You tried to sell them in designshops but what do they sell?; like you said vintage designclassics that has a commercial value (= read wellknown companyname); i think that you should sell your furniture in shops where people go that do not want something that is labelled as 'design' but something special, 'original'. 'designminded' people are a group of traditionals on their own; most of them buy 'retro'stuff like old Gray, Le Corbusier and Eames designs. You got one advantage; Pawson's minimalistic 90ties are almost over and 'neobaroqkitch' like your designs (and like Borek Sipek, Garouste & Bonetti) are coming up again. So stay yourself and search for the right road to walk on.

Balans chair

About the balans chair, I bought one 10 years ago and never sat in the right position for more than 2 hours. Had to explain to 90% of the people that saw it how to sit on it. I still have it because I found other use of it... That I can't mention here. Even with all the research I don't think it's the best seated position to work. I have studied a little about chinese medecine and there are some aspects of the human body that are not considered in this chair. The energy flow of the position given by the chair is favorable for physical rest but bad for intellectual stimulation (which requires to close energy circulation and the regular seated position is preferable for that). So the chair is interesting but is it really for the user, who benefits the most of it...
We design for ourself also -right?-

cont.
industrial designer (Carsten Jorgensen) who in spite of being capable of distancing many of his collegues in originality has chosen instead of keeping in step with the people that he and Jorgen Bodum wanted to serv. Yes they have pushed the envelop, yes they have tried time and again to push the public somewhat harder than what the public expected. But each and every time they came back stayed in though and expressed the expectations of their client, doing less than what their own imagination and creativity could anticipate. I agree with Michael that that is good design....the rest is important to but let's keep calling the things by their name. When you paint a canvas full with bright yellow sunflowers, it's called art, when you design and produce 50 "Carleton" bookshelfs it's called craft, when you make 7 million "ant" chairs it's called "design". As humans we need both arts to explore, crafts to apply and design to live. Design would be nowhere if it was'nt for the form language developed in the arts and crafts, but let's not confuse things. The world is a complicated place, let's contribute with some simplicity and clarity of thought. Artistic people do not need design and mass production to express themselfves...they find better and more crative ways. To design is I think to make the choice to channel that creativity into an activity that serves a larger number than oneself. So...you never design for yourself.

disagree
You cannot force "design" down peoples throats but you can give them choices.

Near where I live is a successful furniture manufacturer who employs about 25 workers. His furniture is very good quality, solid wood but, in my opinion, ugly, over heavy, unrefined details. But he has a loyal clientelle who like his stuff. He sells thru his own showroom so he does not have to rely on the opinions of retailers, like David Ulrich says.
I admire him his success but not his designs.
I don't subscribe to the notion that you should design what the public wants because I do not think the public knows what it wants. Often people have to be led mostly by role models - pop stars (what do they know?). The late Princess Diana did much to promote the fashion industry, first with her magnificent wedding gown and later with her wardrobe. But she did nothing for to promote good design in the jewelry industry (in which I was involved) because the engagement and wedding rings were so ordinary as was the rest of her jewelry.
I read some while ago a comment in Time from a designer at Ferrari, I believe, who said that if you ask the public what it wants in an automobile you get a Eurocar. Leave it to a designer and you get a Ferrari. Ofcourse more people drive Eurocars but most would want to drive a Ferrari!

correction
If my comments are understood as: "designers should design what the consumer wants" I have to apologize. It was not intended like that. I think that designers should design, not to fulfil their own aspirations, but to design according to the aspirations of the public they are serving. This does not exclude prospective and creative views on the contrary. As I remember it there was never a consumer or consumer group that expressed the need for a small piece of furniture to be put in the corner of our living space, with a matt glass side on which, mostly in the evenings one would be able to look at pictures of news of around the world, movies and other theatre etc. Yet, we all enjoy T.V. at least from time to time, and it is obviously something people wanted. As for being whores in the industry, I find it slightly insulting for workers in the sexbusiness. As long as division of work has existed, industry and society in general has hired people and has put them to work in specific capacities. In many cases it was just for their manual labor. Very seldomly are people put to work with the intention to use their complete human potential. Sex workers only use that part of their body to make a living, which is as honorable as the fact that I use my creativity and knowledge of the industrial process. Let's continue!

Suite...
Sorry guys... this last message was sent before reading comments by Micheal and Gerrit.
I have to say too that people don't know what they want and that's why we are here, to give them a choice ...and by the way we are also customers and part of the public, moreover the most or not to say the only important one- WHY? we are customer who know what we want-and because we have a critical view on this matter which concerns us. Therefor why not fulfil our own aspiration? because we have to be in an environment that let us do so.
As I study -I'm still a student- I want to understand this fascinating phenomena , the popstar craze. Being on top is the best way to promote good design (ecological, affordable...). Are they more original, how come we see them everywhere, who promotes them, can a city get known with the help of one person, how political is design, how come italy became such a reference?
Tell me if in your country the goverment invests in design?

hehehe....so many questions

I don't know how successful Alessi is but they have an international business which has been running for 3 generations now. And I'm sure most of the objects are sold by 1000's every year. How close is the gap between their visibity and their possibility for being original (in the full meaning)- They must have understood what originality is-a lifetime acheivement...

_seems I'll allways be a student_

Meaning of discussing design...
I have often argued this point, allow me to do it again. To "just do it" might suit the Nike people but I fear that it is just a slogan. One could simply start with stating that discussion is a way of exchanging ideas and that those ideas will serve as inspiration for the next product. One could also argue that discussion is a way of finding and building consensus. Which is the basis of our democratic system: you inform or get information, you discuss, and finally you make a decision. The same logic applies to design. One could argue, that to design could be, to inform other people about different options or to make a final decision and that the discussion in between is useless. I have to agree to a certain extend: to design is to discuss with objects instead of with words. But the reality of my profession (industrial design)is that there is a technological gap between one product (enough to inform) and the third stage:industrial production, which requires high investments both in production and distribution. So, we have to discuss design simply to bridge the gap. For decades now, we have a strong input in the first stage, which is informing people about the possibilities and being critical of the achieved goals. That input has to a large extend be made with one of a kind pieces or very small series, think of DROOG, of Memphis and of a whole range ofindividual designers like Ron Arad, etc. It is obvious that these objects are not intended and not suitable for mass production. As other examples of the past (Rietveld's chair etc.) these products are the equivalent of manifestos and in order to be loud and clear they often lack the level of "usefulness" that the consumer expects. With the help of some transitional (wider spread) products, think: Ingo Maurer, Enzo Mari, Philippe Starck, Karim Rachid, Marc Newson, Konstantin Grcic etc. these manifestos will eventually influence larger groups of the population...and serve well, those consumer groups who identify with them. All of this forms a rather smoothly working system, the result of which is an diversified choice for consumers. But some of the gaps still have to be filled and I do not see any other way than doing it by discussing what we are doing and why. The only other way is to abuse the system, i.o.w. to take huge risks with the money of investors and encourage them to invest in tooling and marketing efforts for product ideas for which we do not have build or observed enough consensus to justify the necessary investment. (please do not read "investment" in $$ signs, but in time behind the computer, time behind a milling or spark erosion machine, time in meetings etc. ,all of which become completely wasted if the product does not succeed. Read invetsment as time we could have spend on the beach, with our girl or boyfriends,their or our children...anyway, you get the picture). That would be my main reasons not to follow the Nike advise.

TWO STRANDS:
in design, on one hand you have the YIXING teapot approach, Gerrit seems to favor?.And on the other the incremental refinements perhaps reaching for (a type form)a "Germanic" concept of which Koen is an excellent proponet of.Is it just a matter of which god you follow...Apollo or Dionysus?

Darwin
There is a theory in Darwinian evolution that actually applies here. It evolution, progress (as measured by random mutations that occasionally result in breeding success) occurs not at a constant, predictable rate but rather at a dramatically inconstant rate. Millennia of treading water. Creeping progress punctuated by tremendous leaps, sometimes taking places in a few generations.

Maybe design works the same way. Millennia of eating with our hands and then some wise ass invents a fork. Years of small steady improvements punctuated by leaps at the confluence of a cultural/technological shift and a good idea.

The best concept
When I was on summer holidays (jan 2007) I took the easy to read it, since then I wanted to comment many things but I didn,t yet.

We all admire most of your comments and thoughts.

But the one that impressed me most, The one that was absolutely new was:


The purpose is not to deny the first designer any of the benefits derived from having made the original, but to open the possibility for others to make a contribution in the areas of their expertise.

If I have to choose one sentence, if I have to choose one concept, if a have to choose only one idea in all dessignaddict.com, it would be this one, without any doubt. (the second would be some ideas about copy/original/reproductions)

And I was so surprised than something so great, so fresh, so new, so different wasn,t been mention before, some ideas are written trough the forum twice, 4 times 10, times. And this, so yours, to great, NO ONE!.

Sorry for not been commented before.
(I still have to comment the rest of the essay)