Marcel Wanders' 7 expert tips to spotting (and appreciating) good design
"I find it tends to be people who complain about the prices of design who tend to be least appreciative of it."
Marcel Wanders, the acclaimed Amsterdam-based product designer, doesn’t really get the enduring trend for modernism, in all its stripped back, plain functionality.
For him, it says nothing. It’s “outmoded”; even, like so much modern design, rather boring. Not so the London showroom of Moooi, the hugely influential design collective (of which Wanders is creative director) which marks its 25th anniversary this year.
But then what would anyone expect from the man who modelled a vessel on a spectacularly explosive nasal emittance, and then called it the Snotty Vase; or who worked out a way of effectively suspending rope in aspic, making it hard and forming it into his Knotty Chair; or a way of covering inflated party balloons with carbon fibre to produce, appropriately, the world’s lightest chair?
Here Wanders gives his off-the-top-of-his-head guide to appreciating design. Just not the boring stuff.
1. DESIGN IS NOT SOMETHING YOU HAVE TO OWN
People go to the theatre and like to discuss it. They don’t feel the need to own the play. They can see a lot of beautiful architecture and yet live in none of these buildings. That doesn’t mean you can only appreciate the home you live in.
And yet there is this idea that design has to be affordable, that it has to be owned to be enjoyed. It doesn’t. A painter painted for someone to own the painting but that’s never been the role of art for most normal people. The great thing about culture - of which design is a part - that we can step into that realm and recognise others in it. Ownership is irrelevant.
I find it tends to be people who complain about the prices of design who tend to be least appreciative of it. You can even hate design for free too.
2. THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO APPRECIATE A PIECE OF DESIGN
We all experience the world in different ways, some more visually, some through sound. And a piece of design can be liked for different reasons too. It might be how its made - the craft of it. Or on an intellectual level - what it might now about. Or It might be as simple as the fact that it makes a cool sound when you close it.
The task of the designer is to make sure that there’s something for everyone - and it makes me a better designer for trying. The task for you is to find what you do like in a piece of design - to make the same effort.
3. KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN - GOOD DESGN IS EVERYWHERE
Not everything is well-designed Some things are just put together without care, maybe just to copy what others already make but do it cheaper. And people will buy it because it’s cheaper. Other people will only notice design when something doesn’t work.
Yet there is great design all around us even if most people just don’t see it. The railing in the Metro in Milan, for example is so beautiful but most people just see a railing. In short, pay attention.
4. A CHAIR IS NOT JUST A CHAIR
People think they understand chairs because they sit on them. But a chair is more than something to sit on. There’s a reason why designers love chairs. A chair is connected to the world of culture, to manufacturing and engineering. The more you understand the big picture behind what makes a chair, the more you’ll appreciate it, in the way that knowing the full complexity of the Milan Metro and so understanding what the railing does as part of that makes your sense of the entire design that much more amazing.
How to understand a chair better? Get active. Read about your subject. Talk to designers if you get the opportunity. I’m not going to argue with a dentist if he wants to put a hole in my tooth. I just trust him. But I can know more about dentistry with study. And I find it’s hard to get them to shut up about centrists if you ask them about it.
5. THE IDEA OF BAD DESIGN IS A BAD IDEA…
If I design chairs in Europe, or I teach design in San Francisco, the gods in each place are very different, because the cultures are different, and so ideas of what makes for ‘good’ or ‘bad’ are different. That’s why I think there are no set rules for design.
I’m not saying there aren’t stupid designs, because there are: they make no sense, or break easily. And yes designers are allowed to make stupid designs sometimes, maybe one every other year - though not if they design pacemakers.
But I think most of us know more than we think we know - and that means we can sometimes just know if a design piece works. And by work I don’t just mean function. You can buy a functional chair for €11 and if you pay more than that you’re not paying for function anymore. Obviously a €500 chair isn’t about function. For me the whole principle of design is that that it says new things. It has ideas, a sense of fantasy.
6. ...BUT KEEP HOLD OF THE GOOD STUFF
It’s fact that nobody finds a Marcel Breuer chair just sitting on a skip, unless maybe it’s a copy. People just know that it’s worth keeping. But that’s more than because it’s just useful. It speaks to them.
I’ve always liked the idea of making things that last forever, but not necessarily in the sense of being unbreakable — more psychologically. Most people throw stuff away not because it’s broken but because their relationship with that object is broken. I remember a fellow design student created this textile and as it wore away with use it revealed a pattern underneath. And I just loved that. It made me think about how poor we are at accepting things that get old, especially since design is fixated on the shiny, clean and new. Nothing has a patina, nothing can have a crack.
But nothing grows old faster than the new, so I like to make designs that are old to start with. They have the cracks already, so to speak. It makes for pieces that the people who like them are connected to for longer. That’s durability.
7. GIVE THE MODERNISM A REST
I think modernism is an outmoded way of thinking about design. It doesn't reflect the way we live now. It always puts forward this idea that the past is irrelevant to tomorrow - and tomorrow is all that matters. But the past is part of who we are. When I was young even to think about decoration was so not what designers did.
I went to Giulio Cappellini with this idea of 'new antiques', which is what I wanted to make, and the company was subsequently excluded from a design fair because it was no longer seen as being 'modern'. It was crazy. But why shouldn't we make connections with old or traditional products? They're beautiful and can be made relevant.
Skip the search — follow Shortlist on Google News to get our best lists, news, features and reviews at the top of your feeds!
