Design - Hardcover

Stephen Bayley; Terence Conran

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1840914777 ISBN 13: 9781840914771

Publisher: Conran Octopus Ltd, 2007

Synopsis

Paying tribute to the leading names, movements, materials and processes such as furniture, fashion, cars, graphics, products, signs and symbols, this title combines essential facts with authoritative opinions on the history of design, on everything, as the industrial designer Raymond Loewy once said, from a lipstick to a steamship.

About this title

About the Author

Terence Conran is one of the world's leading designers, furniture-makers, restaurateurs, retailers and founder of the Habitat group of stores, which revolutionized home furnishings in the 1960s. He is Chairman of Conran Holdings, the parent company of his retail and restaurant businesses, and Chairman of Conran & Partners, his architecture and design practice. Conran & Partners is responsible for a wide range of residential and commercial buildings around the world, including airport terminals in London and New York, the Roppongi Hills project in Tokyo, Butlers Wharf in London, housing for City Lofts across the UK, and hotels such as Great Eastern Hotel and My Hotel in London, The Fitzwilliam in Dublin, Trieste in Vienna, The Park in Bangalore and Delhi, and Niki Club in Japan. There are Conran Shops in London, Paris, New York, Tokyo, Marunouchi, Nagaya and Fukuoka, and acclaimed restaurants across the UK and in New York, Paris and Stockholm. Terence Conran also designs furniture for Content and Benchmark. Terence Conran's books include The Essential House Book, The Essential Garden Book (co-written with Dan Pearson), Terence Conran on Design, Terence Conran on London, Terence Conran on Restaurants, Kitchens, The Ultimate House Book, Bathrooms, Storage and How to Live in Small Spaces all published by Conran Octopus. Stephen Bayley is one of the world's best-known authorities on design and popular culture. He has been a design consultant working on imaginative communications projects for clients including Ford, Absolut Vodka, The Coca-Cola Company, Volkswagen Audi, Marks & Spencer, Penhaligon's, Foster Associates, Harvey Nichols, BMW, Piaggio and the V&A amongst others. He is also well-known as an outspoken commentator on art and design, contributing regularly to The Times, The Daily Mail, The Observer, The Evening Standard, The Guardian, The Spectator, The Los Angeles Times, High Life, New Statesman, The Independent and GQ. He often broadcasts and appears on various popular programmes including PM, Today, Newsnight, Start the Week, Channel 4 News, London Tonight, and Any Questions. In addition, he has lectured in universities and museums throughout Britain as well as around the world. He has also been a judge of many national and international design competitions, including Campaign Press Awards, RIBA Architectural Awards, The Building Awards, Louis Vuitton Concours d'Elegance at Hurlingham, Cartier Style et Luxe at Goodwood and BBC Good Food Awards.In 1989 he was made a Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France's top artistic honour, by the French Minister of Culture.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

A note on good design

Terence Conran

What is good design? This is a question asked very often, but rarely answered successfully. The answer is that it is immediately visible: something that has not been intelligently designed will not work properly. It will be uncomfortable to use. It will be badly made, look depressing and be poor value for money. And what's more, if it doesn't give you pleasure, it is bad design. You would be stupid to want bad design. Good design really is intelligence made visible.

Everything that is made betrays the beliefs and convictions of the person who made it. Everything has been designed. Conscious or unconscious decisions have always been made which affect the way a product is manufactured, how it will be used and what it looks like. This applies to a flint arrowhead or a cruise missile. Even arranging food on a plate is a design decision. As is your signature, a very important one in fact as it shows how you want people to perceive you.

My answer about good design, or thoughtful design as I'd prefer to call it, is that it comprises 98 per cent commonsense and 2 per cent of a mysterious component which we might as well call art or aesthetics. A good design has to work well, be made at a price the consumer finds acceptable and it must give the consumer practical and aesthetic pleasure. It also must be of a quality that justifies the price paid. If the design has some innovatory qualities then, at least in my opinion, it becomes an even better design. In addition, well-designed products tend to have a long lifespan and usually acquire an attractive patina of usage. Which is to say, it gets better as it gets older: old Levis, a legible printed page, a leather club chair, good shoes, table and chairs would all be examples.

I believe a designer has to research his subject before he puts pen to paper or mouse to computer. The car designer Peter Horbury pins-up photographs of all his inspirations before he starts work. On a new Ford pick-up truck, for instance, he used archive shots of Airstream trailers and steam locomotives. He says 'you need to tell a story'. You need to know history. Not least because those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. You learn from history; but you aim for the future. The designer's job is not to repeat history; but to make it. It is also essential in my opinion to know your market: how people live, where they live, their income and their aspirations. You must also have a clear idea of why and how what you are designing will improve their lives.

All this relates to the manufacturing process, the materials you use and the methods of distribution. No designer can work effectively if he does not understand the capability of the machinery he must use. The same can be said of cost structure and the humdrum facts of distribution and sales. How the product will be sold, displayed and packaged are all vital parts of the designer's task and must be fully understood at the beginning of any project.

Innovation is a defining characteristic of good design. The capacity to see a new solution to an existing problem is what a designer does. But that is not the same as saying good design involves a restless search for novelty; Good design tends to be enduring. It's this tension between finding effective innovations and achieving lasting values that, so far as I am concerned, gives the designer so much of his creative energy. The designer always needs a proper working relationship with the engineer, the materials technologist. This sort of collaboration is going to be ever more important in future, as established definitions and distinctions about design, art and architecture become ever more blurred in a world where the most significant activity is the invisible organization of electrons in the information economy.

In a changing world, some things remain the same. I firmly believe it is the designers responsibility to help improve the quality of people's lives through products that work well, are affordable and look beautiful.

That seems to me an intelligent solution.

--

A note on disegno

Stephen Bayley

In the Renaissance, draughtsmen did what was called disegno. For Leonardo da Vinci, the greatest draughtsman of them all, disegno meant not just the art and craft of drawing itself, but the ability to communicate ideas graphically. Leonardo's broad interpretation of disegno was very close to what we call 'design': an ability to conceptualise an idea, express it in materials and prove it by demonstration. When the word disegno migrated into English in the sixteenth century; it came to mean not merely 'drawing', but intention.

Today, design has both these senses: a useful mixture of creative expression and intellectual purpose. Leonardo knew that already. In his letter of application to Lodovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, he listed his talents and achievements, putting the design of useful canals far in front of mere decorative painting or sculpture. Design is an art that works.

Edition details

• Publisher: Conran Octopus Ltd
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1840914777
• ISBN 13: 9781840914771
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 336