EAMES: The Architect and The Painter

Charles and Ray Eames are two of the most synonymous names with design. Charles Eames, the architect, and Ray Eames, the painter, were a husband and wife team that revolutionized modern furniture design. They also made extremely important contributions to the realms of architecture, fine art, graphic design, film making, and photography.

First Run Features has created a new documentary, narrated by James Franco, about the iconic duo. The film will have a limited release in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Music Hall beginning November 18th. The list of releases in other cities can be viewed here. Below is the recently released trailor.

Los Angeles is the home to a significant amount of Eames artifacts including the Eames house, located in the Pacific Palisades area just north of Santa Monica, and the former Eames studio in Venice Beach. The Eames studio served as the creative epicenter for Charles and Ray for several decades and now houses the Los Angeles design office for Continuum. I attended a design mixer at this office several months ago. Additional images and information about the event can be viewed here.

Front door of Eames house. Photograph by John Morse, June 2003. Taken with a Canon Powershot S-110 digital camera in natural light. Perspective corrected using Adobe Photoshop software. Former Eames studio. Now the location of the Los Angeles branch of Continuum Design Innovation.

GaTech IDSA Student Merit Presentations

I recently had the opportunity to attend Georgia Tech’s IDSA Merit Award Finals, where four senior Industrial Design students presented their work in a competition to determine who will represent Georgia Tech at this year’s regional IDSA conference.  A kind of showcase featuring Georgia Tech’s best talent (as chosen by ID faculty), the presentations provided a particularly intriguing insight into the program’s recent progress and direction.  My reactions varied from impressed to indifferent.

Georgia Tech has built its reputation as a premier engineering university, and deservedly so.  Such an emphasis on engineering and its associated deliberations has undoubtedly pervaded even the College of Industrial Design, where faculty harps on “process” and there has always been a ubiquitous concentration on designing specifically for manufacture using Tech’s decidedly vast technological resources.  Such a focus was apparent in many of the projects, and it was refreshing to see these endeavors carried out beyond merely pretty renderings.  Almost all of the presentations displayed designs that were carried out through prototype phase (TRUE prototyping mind you… not merely proof of concept mockups or scale study models).  Thought and refinement was clearly evident among the work of these students.

A few designs exemplified such a bent, including Grayson Byrd’s “Connect the Blocks” design.  Taken through a slew of iterations and prototyped for more feasible, mass manufacture, the “Blocks” are an interesting take on a classic kids’ toy.  This particular version lights up when the blocks are aligned in correct order.  That is, if the child makes a proper word with them, arranges them alphabetically, etc.  Smart.  And Cool.

Grayson Byrd's "Connect the Blocks"

Ariel Wu’s “Butter Extruder”, a fun (if not frivolous) solution that purportedly saves money and keeps one’s hands clean during the potentially clumsy and messy “buttering” process, was another design that exhibited a keen focus on truly working out the mechanicals, designing for manufacture, and again, taking the project beyond a shiny computer model or vellum rendering.

Ariel Wu's "Butter Extruder"

With that said, these projects also illustrate a marked flaw that seemed to manifest itself amongst all the work presented this past Friday.  As designers, we are tasked with making an emotional connection, and part of that involves designing a form and highlighting details that speak to the particular user, that work in the context of the product’s environment, and develop a connection deeper than that of mere “object” or “tool”.  The “Blocks” certainly look like kids’ blocks, but their form (and material) belies the fascinating technology within, does little to separate the product from its ordinary predecessor, and frankly, looks downright banal.  Granted, you’re toeing a fine line between old and new with such an established, recognized product as kids’ blocks.  Straying too far from the norm would indeed alienate the user.  But I kept asking myself, “Where’s the fun!?”

The “Butter Extruder” also had me scratching my head and asking the same question.  The concept is neat.  It’s fun.  It has, dare I say, an element of kitsch.  And that’s totally fine.  But it shouldn’t look like a glorified crayon on steroids.  There was so much opportunity to play with a VAST number of design cues, from the domestic landscape to packaging conventions and formal incumbents that we all associate with food, and I don’t find any of that here.  Barely a hint.

Now I’m not harping on these two projects, and certainly not these two talented students, as sole perpetrators.  In fact, the reason I bring this up is because I see it as a trend at Georiga Tech.  That end of the industrial design spectrum simply gets cast aside far too often.  Great concept, functionally shrewd… formally uninspired.  Of course, there were a few glimpses of smart, cleverly-addressed aesthetic details that I saw during the presentation.

Ieva Mikolaviciute’s “Tea Infuser” stood out as a particularly striking example.  With a very organic form and sweeping profile, the design certainly speaks to “natural” cues in a beautifully sculptural manner.  It at once draws on traditional cookware/kitchen aesthetics while tweaking them in an arousing, expressive way.  Most striking about this design is the very unmistakable contrast between positive and negative forms.  The bulbous, tulip-like infuser “head”, with its colander-esque perforations, beautifully segues into a flowing, distinctly planar handle studded with hemispherical dots that beg to be touched.  The punched holes juxtaposed with the gently-raised dots is simple, subtle… and remarkably clever.

Ieva Mikolaviciute's "Tea Infuser"

And that’s what ID at Georgia Tech needs more of.  Don’t stray from the process, continue to nurture the mechanically-astute inclinations of the students… but push them to package these wonderful ideas in more thoughtful, beautiful ways.  Take them from “like” to “lust”.  Highlight these great ideas.  Foster a better understanding of how a great concept takes the “next step”.   I’m still learning this myself, I don’t think anyone is ever finished learning.  It all can’t be taught over the course of eight semesters, and these presentations indeed showed great promise.  I just found myself walking away a bit frustrated with how much better these projects could be with the support of a more wholly focused faculty.  ID at Georgia Tech has come a long way; it has a long way to go.

Grayson Byrd's "Casper Chair"

Rob Curedale Interview

Rob Curedale is an extremely accomplished Industrial Designer. He is behind the highly successful LinkedIn design networks. With his groups, Rob has managed to bring together designers all over the world for several design mixers. I attended two mixers in the Los Angeles area, one at RKS in Thousand Oaks and one at Continuum in Venice Beach. The mixers were an amazing opportunity to meet local Product Designers and explore highly successful consulting firms. From the online front, Rob's LinkedIn groups encourage beneficial design related discussion and the opportunity to connect with Industrial Designers around the globe.

Rob is originally from Australia and has managed and directed design departments in several avenues of Product Design all over the world. He is the President of Curedale Inc. Rob has also taught design all over the world including at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and was the Chair of Product Design at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. Additionally, Rob is a Jurist for the Spark International Design and Architecture Awards and has been featured in Innovation, Forbes, the ID Annual Review, and on the Discovery Channel.

Rob Curedale is a designer that I am extremely inspired by and I was very excited to have the opportunity to interview him:

?: What is your background in design?

Rob: I was born in Australia and worked as a designer, design director and design educator in London, Sydney, Vevey, Switzerland, Portugal, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, Hong Kong, China and Detroit. 

I have designed furniture, medical, technology, and consumer products in global markets including Europe, Australia, Asia and North America. Curedale (Rob's consulting firm) has designed hundreds of products as a consultant and an in-house design manager at corporate offices and consultancies. Clients include HP, Philips, GEC, Nokia, Sun, Apple, Canon, Motorola, Nissan, Audi VW, Disney, RTKL, Government of the United Arab Emirates, British and Australian military, Steelcase, Hon, Castelli, Hamilton Medical, Zyliss, Belkin, Gensler, Haworth, Honeywell, NEC, Hoover, Packard Bell, Dell, Black & Decker, Coleman and Harmon Kardon. 

I have lectured and taught widely internationally, including at Yale, Pepperdine MBA Innovation Program, Loyola Business Management Program, Art Center Pasadena, Cranbrook, Pratt, Art Center Europe; a faculty member at SCA and UTS Sydney; as Chair of Product Design and Chair of Furniture Design at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit (then the largest product design school in North America), Art Institute California, Hollywood Campus, Cal State San Jose, Escola De Artes e Design in Oporto Portugal, Instituto De Artes Visuals, Design e Marketing, Lisbon, Southern Yangtze University, Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, and Nanjing Arts Institute in China. 

For design and pleasure I have visited more than 1,000 cities in over 40 countries.

?: What challenges have you met in developing your own firm and what are the most rewarding parts of owning your own design business?

Rob: I managed a design business in Sydney called Axis for ten years. I have managed a business in Detroit and for the last five years in Los Angeles.

I try to design products that show critical thinking and empathy and are more than restyling commodities. A friend told me that his wife's nursing job was made easier when her hospital purchased some prenatal intensive care products that I had designed. Last week I was interviewed by Skype about a chair that I had helped design thirty years ago that a Berlin exhibit curator had discovered by accident and realized the historical significance of some technological innovations and then went to some trouble to track down those involved in the project. I was at an attorney's office last week and she asked me what type of things that I designed and I was able to point to some Dell speakers on her desk that I had designed. It is this type of personal encounter with products in use that I find rewarding.

?: You have been involved with many specialties of product design, what is your favorite area to develop products and solutions?

Rob: I like medical products because they can have an importance beyond appearances. I like products that participate in small experiences that can seem insignificant to others but be significant to a person. This type of experience can be associated with even a cheap simple product.

As Ettore Sottsass put it, the difference between a President's speech and love whispered in the dark. We are told that The President's speech is important but love whispered in the dark is a personal experience that may have more real personal meaning for us. The most challenging role for the designer is to have empathy for others to help create by design this type of meaningful experience rather than selfishly elevating personal self expression and ego. I think that Steve Jobs shows this type of empathy through Apple products that create a satisfying experience. Perhaps it is a Buddhist way of thinking about experience rather than just the object or possession of the object.

?: Being that you are a design professor as well, how would you define 'design thinking' and how do you believe this method of problem solving will influence business practices in the future?

Rob: Design Thinking for me is an approach to designing that recognizes that creative and analytical thinking are necessary to develop a successful design. That these types of inputs need to come from a group of people working closely together. Individuals are usually better at one or the other type of thinking but not often at both. That design is an iterative process making ideas real and testing and refining them.

Design Thinking is a way of discussing design that communicates the value of a particular approach in creating and implementing new and better ideas rather than incrementally improving existing ideas. The design thinking approach is one way that Western organizations may remain competitive because it moves Western companies beyond just recreating and restyling existing products. This is a practice that cannot continue to allow Western organizations to be competitive. We must add more value through clever and courageous thinking to stay in business. It allows closer and more productive collaboration between technical thinkers like managers and engineers and creative thinkers like designers. These are different thinking styles.

Curedale Inc. website

?: Being that you have lived and worked in several parts of the world, how does (if it does) the language and process of design change throughout the world?

Rob: Differences are driven by regional cultures and economics. Compared to the US Designers in the UK and Australia think more analytically perhaps exercise the left side of their brain more than US designers. They are more concerned about the way things work as well as the appearance. They may be responsible for parts of the design process that would be usually undertaken by engineers in the US. This is partly driven by the scale and economics of US manufacturing and market.

I have seen research by TECAtech in 2008 that suggests that Chinese designers are focused more on value and functionality than Western Designers. Chinese designers find their inspiration more often in nature poetry and technology than Western Designers. Inclusive design is more important for Chinese Designers than Western Designers. 

Drawing is an important tool for product designers but I think that sometimes the art created by a designer as part of the design process is elevated above the quality of the end design in the US. Drawing is of value if it helps create a better design. The quality of the design of the car on the showroom floor is more important than the quality of the rendering that helped create that design. The car may be driven by tens of thousands of people and uses non-renewable resources. The rendering may be framed and hang on one wall perhaps if it is good. We are designers not artists and we should be proud to be designers. 

Anglo-Saxon designers- US, Germany, UK, Ausralia- tend to concentrate on the appearance of objects and the visual sense. Designers in the countries surrounding the Mediterranean sometimes consider relatively more the other senses including touch, smell and sound when designing products and experiences. The experience of an Italian car for example sometimes stimulates by design more of these other senses than a car designed in the UK or US. There is a legacy and sophistication in Italian furniture design that has developed over thousands of years of advanced practice and experience.

?: Your LinkedIn Industrial Design network recently reached 10,000 members, what has been your process in developing these highly successful hubs of networking?

Rob: I started those groups a few years ago when I saw that there were no design groups on LinkedIn. The groups have grown to around 70,000 members. I have tried with the groups to stimulate a higher, more interdisciplinary and and more global level of discussion than previously existed in the design professions. The groups have attracted the leaders of our profession internationally.

I wanted to incourage and try to initiate discussions that were being avoided by existing societies and industry groups such as the growing need for balancing environmental responsibility with business, technology, and people considerations in design. Yesterday, I was involved in a discussion that included the GM and Director of Design at NEC in Japan, a past VP of design from the French Auto company Renault, a leading Industrial Design Headhunter, the Director of Design at a major UK retail chain as well as leading design educators from Korea, and Cambridge University.

I regularly organize real world design networking mixers that are cross-disciplinary with engineers, architects, interior designers, product designers, graphic, retail, and exhibit designers attending. I think that this type of networking is richer and more likely to lead to useful exchanges of ideas than the traditional types of functions with only Industrial Designers. The events have had up to 400 people attending. My process to develop these groups has simply been to ask challenging questions that invite discussion.

Industrial Design LinkedIn group

?: What does the future hold for yourself and your LinkedIn networking groups?

Rob: I have created an organization called The Design Foundation. Design Foundation was established to promote cross-disciplinary international discussion and collaboration between diverse fields of design and architecture. We provide a forum for designers to exchange ideas and address important global issues through professional social networks while enjoying participation in real-world local mixer events in their regions.

The Design Foundation mission is to create, develop, coordinate and promote opportunities for the global professional design community to educate, communicate and network.

The Design Foundation website