Quotidian: finding inspiration in everyday design

Publication essay for Quotidian: finding inspiration in everyday design, curated by Matt Blomeley, showing at Objectspace until 26 June 2010.

The Quotidian

“the human mind is exquisitely tailored to make sense of the world. Give it the slightest cue and off it goes, providing explanation, rationalization, understanding. Consider the objects–books, radios, kitchen appliances, office appliances, office machines, and light switches–that make up our everyday lives. Well-designed objects are easy to interpret and understand. They contain visible clues to their operation.” Donald A. Norman[1]

Quotidian: finding inspiration in everyday design offers a selection of New Zealand designers who talk about existing objects of design that have inspired their practice. These nine individuals and two collectives have each chosen a quotidian (def: everyday, commonplace) object not conceived by them which in some sense is a design inspiration, partnered it with an object of their own design and then written about the relationship between the two. The result is a collection of unique discussions that provide a designers eye view of our varied and complex relationships to objects that surround us.

The eleven everyday objects chosen evidence an impressive variety of influences upon the objects produced by these designers with which they are partnered. Through these qualities identified as influences it becomes apparent that what we call ‘original’ is often inspired by, or negotiated, through our appreciation of the everyday. Significant qualities highlighted by these designers and discussed in this exhibition project include; categorical references, aesthetics, mechanical principles, universal design, balance, precision, systems, economy, ecology, sensuality, purposefulness, freedom, beauty, history, skill, craft, and the decorative arts.

Matthew von Sturmer compares his design process to an axe. Using this ubiquitous and age old object to explain a simple mechanical principle, which is a driving force in his design process, “work equals force multiplied by distance.” Drawing upon this idea and another principle inherent in the design of the axe; the taper, it is apparent that modern digital tooling has fundamentally altered von Sturmer’s approach to his practice. Prototyping objects with a digital workflow in his studio and using ‘Trimatrix’, a “friendly” product developed as an alternative to more toxic materials such as MDF, von Sturmer observes that it is not the technology or the possibility of a smaller carbon footprint that drives him.[2] Through his renewed consideration of the engineering properties of an axe, von Sturmer has discovered new understandings, and perhaps new possibilities, in prototyping and manufacturing, as the Taper bench seat he presents in this exhibition bears witness.

In 2009 product designer Jamie McLellan wrote, “over the years I have learned to live with and celebrate my inner engineer”[3]. McLellan draws a significant amount of inspiration from the forms within industrially produced objects. What could in some sense be referred to as a form of ‘interior design’ is upon closer inspection a process involving direct formal and philosophical influences that draw upon the technology, processes and materials often unseen within the everyday, to inform the new products he designs. McLellan’s prototype carbon fibre Floor Lamp presented in Quotidian is expressive of this aim, “my fascination with engineered objects has led to many of my designs being expressive of their ‘insides’, with nothing hidden and no sides that shouldn’t be seen.” Peter Haythornthwaite, a well known New Zealand designer with a great deal of experience and a particular interest in manufactured objects, similarly finds “beauty in honesty.” Haythornthwaite, in his discussion of a design classic, the Olivetti Lettera 22, suggests that this complex and well developed object wasn’t indulgent, but exceptional, and what made it so was that the Lettera 22 “was not a product of styling imagination but rather of form determined by purposefulness – and that’s where its beauty originates.” Relating this modern classic to a principle of design such as purposefulness seems all the more important when considering the complex keyboard product for disabled computer users that his company peterhaythornthwaite//creativelab was involved with, the Lomak “focused on causing the users to feel advantaged, rather than disadvantaged.”

An interesting design opportunity popular with many contemporary designers is the extension of use of a single material. Plywood, for instance, is a versatile material and a fitting example of this as a material with a great deal of history in New Zealand design, attested to recently by the Hawkes Bay Museum and Art Gallery exhibition, Ply-ability, in which Katy Wallace featured. In Quotidian, Wallace discusses her Leaning Shelf, a ‘flat pack’ plywood design, the philosophy of which is interestingly demonstrated through her discussion of the staple-less stapler, an innovative product that simplifies the concept of binding multiple pieces of paper together without the use of that familiar small sliver of bent metal. Another example of “beauty in honesty”, the Leaning Shelf loses little functionality in its economy of form, literally being cut from a single piece of material.

Nat Cheshire uses the everyday as a point of departure in his design practice. Writing about a recent residential project, one aspect of which involved the conception and construction of an innovative four metre long cantilevered table, Cheshire, a delineator for Cheshire Architects, says “we have sought to destroy form.” In rejecting the everyday, Cheshire is of course aware the table still exists and in fact it is a central feature in the design of the property, but it is immediately apparent that he wishes to minimize the influence of the everyday objects in this project, without wholly purging them. It is fitting, having chosen an ornate demi-lune console table as his quotidian object, that the decorative detail in this object shares a lineage with decorative gilded painting frames. In paring back the visual impact of the necessary and the everyday, the interior of the residence in question ‘frames’ the contemporary art collection that it houses.

Kent Parker of Formway Design discusses the age old requirements for support and protection of the human body. Relaying the story of footwear’s history and highlighting the recent interest in ‘barefoot’ running with advanced yet simple shoes that are aligned closely with the natural mechanics of our feet, Parker raises an interesting point that sometimes innovation is startlingly obvious, sometimes it is hard to improve on nature’s good design. Formway’s award winning Be chair, for instance, employs a design process analogous to that of the Nike Free shoe design concept. Encouraging the body into maintaining a natural and healthy posture while sitting seems like an obvious requirement for a chair design, yet as countless uncomfortable chairs (and shoes) attest, this is a rare feat. Auckland design company Alt Group similarly have found it hard to improve a design archetype. In talking about the everyday, they observe that “every object has been designed, but some objects are considered common because we take them for granted.” Drawing upon the Bordeaux wine bottle, Alt Group “unlock new meaning” from this archetype. Their version of the bottle entitled A Lean Year, literally has a leaning body and neck and was designed as a gift to clients during the current economic recession. Valuing the power of keen observation to offer timely and wry commentary, they write; “so what happens when you mess with an archetype? You push up against what you already know, open up possibilities, unlock new meaning and make the familiar worth another look.”

Jonty Valentine describes his typeface design, Yonkers Line, as “a formal system of arbitrary signs.” Reworking the grid-based elevator display screen typeface that many of us interact with everyday, Valentine employed the grid as a set of parameters that were applied to a new typeface design resembling the elevator display but in which the grid system is advanced to incorporate a wide range of letters. Although the quotidian inspiration and his designed outcome have a close resemblance to one another, the geometry within Valentine’s adapted system is tested and pushed nearer to its logical limits. Valentine describes this kind of grid as “an essentially modernist point of view” in which “the best typefaces are the ones that make perfect sense within the logic of their own systems”. In some sense paying homage to the elevator display in this project, Valentine also illustrates the ‘borders’ of a designed world in which we may occasionally feel trapped.

“The use and manipulation of textiles is a growing interest both personally and within my practice,” says Guy Hohmann. He considers that the outside world is something from which we seek distraction in order to find a measure of comfort and Hohmann suggests that textiles can provide that distraction. He discusses his reaction to the writer Angeli Sachs, who said that “forms inspired by nature become topical when modern society finds itself in crisis.” Hohmann’s take is that in times of crisis – an everyday experience for many people – we do not express “a collective yearning for the pastoral,” but what we really seek is distraction. Cut and Sew Lamp, currently in prototype form, Hohmann says “attempts to replicate and exaggerate this idea of distraction, mimicking the soft ‘reconciliation’ of the carpet in the gentle bell curvature of the frame and the ease of the draping fabric.”

The proliferation of objects produced for the modern world suggest that we should sit back more frequently and reflect upon the relevance and value of existing objects. Fashion designers, Adrian Hailwood and Cybèle Wiren have each identified objects of influence that, while not coming from the discipline of fashion, illustrate the power of everyday objects to affect us, inspire contextualization and visual relationships, and remind us not to forget the beauty in that which already exists. Wiren talks about the inspiration board in her workroom, where two images of spiral staircases have lived on the wall, while Hailwood tells the story of an Oriental screen bought at a market that is used as an elegant and effective divider between his retail space and worktable. Some might regard it as paradoxical that these two designers, who work in a design field associated with the temporary or seasonal, are inspired by everyday objects that have stood the test of time.

Frequently we marvel and curse at the simplicity, elegance and limitations of that which already exists. But the designers featuring in Quotidian remind us that the objects in the quotidian can and do inspire outstanding contemporary design, their discussions emphasizing that design and design practice can be located, to some extent, in the quotidian. Considering the aesthetic and functional values of the objects around us, these designers highlight that in the pace of the modern world we often forget the everyday. It is fitting then for Japanese designer Kenya Hara to ask: “In a situation like this, might it be more important to listen to the cries and face the delicate values that are about to be dissipated in the whirling change, than to look for the next big thing on the horizon?” [4]

Matt Blomeley

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[1] Donald A. Norman, The Psychology of Everyday Things, Basic Books, New York, 1988. (pp2)

[2] John Thackara, In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World, MIT Press, Massachusetts, 2006. (pp18,21) Thackara, writing about the outcome of a recent study conducted in Europe regarding design and the environment, remarks “the designers and researchers at PRé [a Dutch group] insist that environmentally sound materials do not exist; environmentally friendly design approaches do.”

[3] http://www.objectspace.org.nz/programme/show.php?documentCode=1984 (accessed 14 May 2010)

[4] Kenya Hara, Designing Design, Lars Muller, Japan, 2007. (pp410).