Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The design industry is really pathetic.
If I can feel freedom then I can create.
I don't like to make my life like a book.
But to me, to be original is to be yourself.
My life style in a sense is kind of private.
I don't have any furniture of mine in my room.
I was sort of open to do anything, I was free.
I never buy magazines, I never even buy books.
I'm interested in youth culture and popular culture.
I'd love to be approached to do ordinary things more.
I've always listened to a lot of film music, actually.
I pre-dated the trend for large watches by about a decade
To create well I have to be in a good mood, happy and cool.
You know like it has its own personality, its own character.
And where I grew up in Australia, surfing was a part of culture.
I'm fascinated with materials, with processes, with technologies.
I was much more interested in making things than in designing them.
In Japan, Australia, and England there is such a strong youth culture.
I have a lot of objects in my space, little things, reminders, memories.
I think it's really important to design things with a kind of personality.
Now I'm doing more snowboarding but I have to get back into surfing again.
With the Solaris, however, I wanted to design a very simple, elegant dress watch
People kind of tend to mystify design and architecture by suggesting you need to train.
I made some salt and pepper shakers a while back and waited three years for them to come.
If you can just be yourself, then you have to be original because there's no one like you.
Design schools are good, I guess, sometimes I visit schools, but they are very very limiting.
You know some people say that you make watches or perfume bottles, it's all different things.
My job as a designer is to look into the future. Not to use any frame of reference that exists
You know that's history, that's why some people say that my stuff is retro, but I don't agree.
If you see something that you feel is familiar it gives you an important kind of emotional connection.
So if I design it and then go away, it's still living somewhere and it still exists by itself without me.
I'm always working. Like a lot of creative people I can't switch off. I can't disassociate work from pleasure. My job is my hobby.
If somebody asked me about my inspiration I would say that it's not the peopleand it's not the things, it's travel and experiencing different environments.
Then I started to do furniture and interiors for a friend and just to get stuff in a magazine, and then slowly started to build up and started to doing exhibitions.
Yeah, my dream would be to work for 6 months and then have 6 months to play, just snowboarding, surfing, and going to cool places to listen and be alone and kinda chill out.
Doing anything in Japan as a sort of architecture - related project is just fantastic because they do everything so perfectly and so quickly. It's unlike anywhere else in the world.
So if I want to buy a light in a shop and I don't find a light that I like, I think to myself what would I like? What would I like to buy? Then I started to imagine and design it for myself a lot of the time.
The fashion industry has an enormous amount to offer in what we do in industrial design because fashion is fast, fashion has its finger on the pulse. There are very few creative industries that work on that rhythm.
Well, I never studied design and I went to art school to study art, you know, sculpture and things like that, and ended up making things like sculpture and started making chairs and jewelry together and that's how I started.
I have to confess that I'm in a constant state of evolution in terms of the way I feel about it. When I was doing early pieces, I wasn't exactly in love with the idea of building the stuff. I could do it because I had the skills, but I really did it because I couldn't find anyone else to build it for me.
Studing jewelry gives you an incredible technical background. If you can work on very, very small things, then, I think, typically you find it easier to go bigger rather than the other way around. I think a lot of architects have struggled with small things. Whereas if you start small, it's easier to get bigger.
I'm so immersed in my little world that I don't often sit back and pay attention to what's going on around me. It truly stuns me when people recognize me. Obviously, I'm not a film star, but even at a design exhibition or art exhibition, if someone comes up to me, I'm sort of taken aback. I don't think of myself like that. But if I can have an effect on young designers, that's great - particularly young designers coming from Australia. Europeans grew up with design. The rest of us lived on tidbits of information.
I do feel that the world is entering into a period of the incredible period of reflection and introspection. A lot of people are questioning the future, and I can't help but think that's a positive thing. I'm not sure about the art world, but the design world may be able to offer some solutions. Design is about troubleshooting. As a designer, I ultimately feel like a gun for hire. Companies hire me because they've got a problem. That's kind of what it boils down to. And I think this is a moment in our history where we need different solutions.
One of the great things about design is that it's truly international. No one in the design industry would say, "This country is mine," or "I will make it look this way because it's for an American market and that way for a Chinese market." If you look at all of the Apple products, they are the same everywhere . . . I mean, I can't deny that I love traveling. It's a very healthy thing to be able to appreciate other cultures - or at least witness them firsthand. And all of that goes into helping someone be a good designer, because it's an international business.
One of the best things I ever did was to train in a practical skill. I love computers and they've become such a part of life, especially to the world of design. But it's important to understand that they are a tool, as much as a hammer or a saw is a tool. Computers don't help you design. There needs to be more emphasis on training young designers in how to build things. A good writer needs a good vocabulary. A good designer needs to understand his materials and processes. You can't, as a successful designer, pretend to get any respect if you don't know how things are made.