Creative people, like Inigo Elizalde, seem to find inspiration in places where others barely cast a glance; the worn look of an abandoned warehouse floor, the way an oil slick floats on top of a puddle in the street, the lush confab when nature and the built world collide (think rainstorms.) Continue Reading…
So here we are, Twitterati and reasonably active members of the Design Blogoshpere, Concretedetail, Paul_Anater, Dogwalkblog and I, and we may have, not for the first time and assuredly not for the last, possibly tweeted each other into a corner. The question “What is successful Design?” and the subsequent challenge to simultaneously blog on the topic arose from a cute little “oh-my-gosh-who-would-have-ever-designed-such-ghastly-crap” blog that I had just published. When the post was criticized by one of my fellow bloggers on account of there being real problems like the oil-in-the-gulf fiasco and people who designed garbage like that only did it to get attention and I should not stoop to give them credence by writing about them.
I beg to differ on that POV. By writing in a way that people may find appealing, humorous, informative or even provocative, I create an audience. Now in order to keep an audience I have to keep things fresh and interesting even at the risk of having to employ the devious art of showcasing half-naked-sumo-wrestler-side-tables but in doing that, I now also have an audience which may occasionally listen to serious topics on design, products, business or even the oil spill.
But all this was just an aside and feeble attempt to remember how we got to asking the question in the first place.
But here it is: When do we call design successful? Is it when people ooh and aah? Is it when it ends up in Architectural Digest? Is it when a homeowner call his designer and tells him that for the first time his “house is now a home”? Or is it even successful when something is so much of a train wreck – I do have to ask..the chair(?)above, who the $&*# designed that? – that people talk about it and spread it from blog to blog? They’re all design and in their way successful but wherein do we gauge their success?
Notice how I didn’t even dare bring up the idea of a design being more profitable than others, ha, what nonsense. Is it not often the design we pour ourselves into, and oeuvre d’Art that is all consuming and by “all” I mean one’s time, one’s energy, one’s ability to focus on any other project and one’s profit ? So no, money can’t be the big indicator here.
My answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind. To me there is no right or wrong in design, other than the chair above and possibly the disaster below. The definition of the word ranges from “to conceive and plan out in the mind” to “to execute”, in other words you have an idea, you plan how to realize the idea and you actually turn around and build it. Voila. By definition the design is successful if you’ve taken it from concept to completion. If someone doesn’t like it, too bad, they can come up with their own.
What I would really like to hear or see are your ideas of successful designs and with that hopefully inspire a pretty blog, full of beautiful designs and creative solutions, to where I no longer feel forced to pull all the stops just to get a little attention around here.
Inspired Design by Red Bridge Studio
After reaching out to designers and asking about design inspiration, I was overwhelmed with creative replies. Some expected and many very surprising. We often seem to find inspiration in nature, in trade publications and even in our clients or our own immediate environment and all are very valid. But now I wonder if maybe there are sources of inspiration that surround us every day, that we never even notice. So I will venture further and dig deeper to find inspiration in everyday items , or better yet, I’ll let Tyshawn Henry of Red Bridge Studios do the talking…visually of course.
A collection of Tyshawn’s work…from dandelions in Brugges
to chairs in Brussels and from boots in Cologne to cheese in
Paris … where else?
The inspiration………..
…and the creative interpretation
He found these chairs sitting on a side street in Brussels and
use them to inspire the rather Warholesque design below.
And the boots? I love the boots, I don’t care
about inspiration anymore, where do I get the
boots ??????? Actually Tyshawn found them
in Cologne in a store called Chang 13, but
who has the time? Can someone call Zappos?
…and finally…
….the “piece de resistance” or rather the
“piece de fromage”, cheese in Paris.
Well done Tyshawn. I would like to show more but I really
have to go find those boots now. If anyone wants to see more,
and everyone should, click here.
Here is something I began noticing years ago in design school and have been intrigued by to this day. Sources of inspiration for interior designers, or all designers for that matter. What makes the light go on? What causes a spark in your creative mind?
I’ve often watched fellow students and later co-workers and much later my own staff who quite happily sketched out a space by it’s dimensions and then did not really design but rather headed straight for the resource room to find fabrics, wallpaper, paint swatches and finish samples to be applied to the space. So is there a difference between applying elements one knows exist and designing based on pure imagination followed by the arduous task of then trying to find the products that interpret that vision? Surely there is.I am certain there are great solutions either way. Personally, I tended to send my staff away, to a park or shops or even home, whatever it took, in the hopes that they would find inspiration first. And inspiration for design, imho, can happen anywhere through anything.
So my question is simply: What is your inspiration?