Design for Life: Starck finds his British protégé

Ilsa the college lecturer in 3D design from Liverpool wins a place on Starck’s team. Her walking aid Flo for the elderly impressed the judges. In this the last episode of the program Design for Life Mike and Ilsa had to finalise their designs and work on an advertising campaign for the products.

Advertising posters needs

• Product name

• Logo

• Tag line

• Images

They both met with an advertising team. Advertising is all about letting people know the product exists and promoting the benefits of the product. Mike and Ilsa are instructed to design a poster. They need to have a product name, logo and tag line.  

Advertising is all about letting people know

Ilsa appeared to be all over the place. She continued in her style of complicating everything. She confused the advertising team by changing direction a number of times. Ilsa found it hard to stay focused on the project.  

Mike decides he wants his product (dining setting for the visually impaired) to appeal to the general public as well as the blind. The advertising team like his product name ‘Stable’. He explains Starck was unimpressed with the name. They convince him to use the name as it sums up in a word the main features of his design. He also has to redesign six items. Starck wants his intelligent design to be elegant. 

Comments on design

• Design touches us in our daily life

• Design is about solutions to problems

• Design is not easy

• Great design requires work work work…

• Designers need to think bigger

Results

Ilsa and Mike present the advertising posters to Starck. He is impressed with both. Ilsa had selected an image of Charlie Chaplin as part of her image. Starck thought she should find a modern image. Mike did very well considering he had to design six items. Starck was impressed with his design particularly the knife. Ilsa impressed Starck with the sculptural design of the Flo mobility aid for the elderly. He said it was the most beautiful object he had seen in a long time.

The budding product designers had impressed. Starck considered both joining his team. In the end Ilsa won because her design was ambitious and completely new. She won the six month placement with Starck’s company in Paris.  

Starck's Design for Life Continues

Watched the second episode of Design for Life and found it very interesting. I find it amusing Starck refers to his Paris design team as the tribe. I totally agree with his design philosophy with regard to the idea; design should be democratic. 

Good design should not be created for and available to only those who can afford it. It should not be elitist everyone is entitled to good design. This has been my philosophy from the beginning of my design career.

Starck sees himself as a bottle opener of the mind. His accent is difficult to understand at times so I don’t always grasp what he is saying. He again mentioned the effects of product design on every aspect of life. He believes designers should design to help humanity to help others achieve full potential.

Seen in this light being a designer can be awesome responsibility. The design brief he presented to the students was certainly very wide open and appeared to overwhelm many of the students.   

To be honest I was glad to see Nebil leave, his over confident attitude really annoyed me. Polly came up with the brilliant idea of placing a water meter in each British home. She seemed to be the only one to grasp what Starck wanted; to find a problem then design a product to overcome the problem and in turn benefit humanity. 
 

Philippe did find what he thought the laziness of the students frustrating. He wants them to push ideas to the limit. For example Rob’s idea of placing buildings on the sea instead of land remained only an idea. He did not develop the idea and design the buildings to be built on the sea. This was an opportunity to create something completely new.    

"All fine architectural values 
are human values, 
else not valuable "

Frank Lloyd Wright

Philippe Starck chairs available at Sample Board Online

Sample Board Online (SBO) the cool eco friendly design tool always has the best designs from the suppliers of quality interior design products. The Spazio Company featured on SBO is the supplier of some brilliant Philippe Starck chairs.

I finally watched the TV show Design for Life. The program is a 6 part series like an X Factor/Biggest Loser hybrid. During the show twelve British designers/students vie to win six months at the Philippe Starck studio in Paris.

Most people know Starck the famous designer one of his most famous designs the Louis Ghost Chair. He reveals some of his views on design; there are too many useless and non sustainable products. He encourages would be designers to look at the story behind the product.

Design he believes should help society toward a better life.

I totally agree with him. For a number of years now I have been interested in public and community health and design. At some stage I would love to do some research on the topic. I had even thought of going a Masters using this topic as a research project. But at this stage time and money have put the idea on hold. 

In the first episode Starck sent the budding product designers to find items in a supermarket. The articles selected have to fall into one of three categories functional, ecological or gender. Each person was asked to find two objects within one of these categories. 

With the functional choice a product considered to be functional and one not very functional needs to be selected. In the ecological category an environmentally sustainable product should be found and a non sustainable product should also be found. In the gender category a male and female related product should be selected.

The two people who do not accomplish this task successfully will be sent home. One of the main things this exercise revealed to me was the tenancy we have to go into panic mode when we are out of our comfort zone. I must admit I have been guilty of doing just that in similar situations.

It has a lot to do with confidence and self talk. If we are confident and positive we are more likely to relax and let the creative juices flow. Philippe wanted the searchers to think outside the box. This is difficult to do when we feel panicked. 

The young man who seemed to most impress Starck and his team did not panic he was confident and was positive in his words. I did find him a bit cocky and over confident. It will be interesting to see how he goes with other tasks.

Another thing revealed during this exercise was the amount of time spent, writing, researching and procrastinating. Designers do need time to think. With experience the ability to think and make decisions quickly will come. But it takes time to learn this skill. It’s really about left and right brain thinking and the ability to tap into the creative side. Well that’s what I think.  

I will follow the next episodes with interest.

‘Get the habit of analysis - analysis 

will in time enable synthesis 

to become your habit of mind'

Frank Lloyd Wright