Portrait Round-up

Here's a quick portrait round-up of just a few of all the interesting people we've had the opportunity to meet.

An excerpt from LAGO APPARTAMENTO - A Living Showroom

This is an excerpt from a book about LAGO's Appartamento concept. The book covers the story behind the appartamento concept and some short dialogues and reflections tangential to this idea. The book is currently floating around, so if you are interested in reading more from it, come find me, it might be in my hands. Anyway, I've copied an interesting section regarding a dialogue with Marco Bettiol (VIU) about the future and changes in the design world. Enjoy!

 

Re-inventing Made in Italy Dialogue with Marco Bettiol

               With the appartamento, LAGO presented a highly innovative project and comment on the new values of design. In the Appartamento we organized a series of seminars, where we addressed the various elements that seemed to us to be the important factors for design – now and in the future.

                During these seminars a number of interesting issues emerged regarding the evolution of design. A particularly interesting one was the conceptualisation of design in terms of it being a sense-making activity. We must now move from designing objects to designing meanings, because the new values of design are not about producing more and more objects (the world is already overflowing with them) but instead to produce meanings and to focus more on the immaterial side of the product. We believe that design has to be more about making sense of the world around us and to provide and create the new services and strategies that are really needed. Also of course products, but those products will be directly related to meanings.

Murano - Community of glass specialists

Murano, Venice - Friday, June 17th, 2011

Murano is an island of Venice where many small glass companies are located. Many of these companies specialize in certain types of glass products. For example, stores which sells ornamental glass lighting, decorative mirrors and glass kitchenware can be easily found all over the Murano.

ADVICE FROM ITALIANS

Through-out our time in Italy we’ve been getting a lot of advice from from really wonderful people and very successful designers. I thought I’d write a quick blog to consolidate all of their words of wisdom.

“If I listen, I forget. If I see, I memorize. If I make, I understand” – Bruno Munari

REPLIES FROM RODRIGO RODRIQUES

FLOS, Milan - Saturday, June 11th, 2011
Interview with Rodrigo Rodriguez

On June 11th we visited the Italian lighting company FLOS. While there I was able to complete a short interview with the company’s CEO Rodrigo Rodriques. Here are the questions I asked and his paraphrased answers.

What made your father in law want to start his own company and why lighting?
He saw the signs of the market. He saw the need in the market and he saw the talent of the Italian designers.

Patrizia Scarzella's Lecture

ADI (Associazione per il Disegno Industriale), Milan - Monday, June 6th, 2011 







Alan, Michelle, Lindsay

Design Lecture by Patrizia Scarzella - Criticism is crucial to the development of design.

ADI(Associazione per il Disegno Industriale), Milan - Monday, June 6th, 2011 

“The most negative comment of a design by media is not to publish it.” – We never see negative comments in design magazines.

This lecture pointed out how rarely we see criticism on design magazines and other publications. It is apparent that publishers are afraid of offending readers who shared different opinions, which might affect the popularity of the magazine. Criticism is necessary for improvements in most cases, and certainly in design. As designers, it is difficult not to have personal attachment to the concept we have envisioned, but it is also important for us to stop defending our concepts for once, listen and actually take in any constructive criticism.

A Mini-Exhibit at C12 Studio Space

Cerano Dodici C12, Milan - Monday, June 6th, 2011

Welcoming poster on the door of Cerano Dodici C12 Studio Space

During a brief visit to Cerano Dodici, a collaborative space shared by a dozen young designers, I had a chance to get a glimpse of an interesting mini-exhibition of graphic design. These images are from Peter Oliver Davies' project "Pharmacy Ind" which were made as T-shirt designs for Pharmacy Industry.

Stefano Giovannoni: Embracing Archetypes

Stefano Giovannoni had many words of advice for our class when we visited him at his studio in Porta Genova. Perhaps the most interesting of his insights were his views on the importance of creating a connection between the product and its end user.




He explained how standardized products fail to make sense in a market of non-standardized consumers. Successful products are not then created through the use of shape or form, but an ability to be embedded with a connection to the user. He advised us not to fight the common product typologies that consumers are familiar with, but to augment them through a sense of playfulness. His Girotondo plate, for example, takes the most basic shape of the object type and attempts to connect to the consumer through the integration of a widely accessible symbol.



Mami, a series of pots, synthesizes archetypes in a harmonious way, connecting to the user through a sort of collective memory.

"With Mami, instead of designing a new form, I've tried to rediscover the pot that everybody has in their memory. Mami is granny’s pot, it is the archetype pot. […] Its derived from the traits in the collective memory correspond to the idea of the pot"

Here, Giovannoni focuses attention not on the form, but what the form represents, using the archetype itself as the basis of connection to the user.

What I gathered from this lecture was not to actively resist archetypes or the things society at large is familar with, but to find a way to make them your own -- It's not about making the product unique, but the connection the user has to that product.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

Uffizi Gallery, Florence - Monday, June 2nd

A very dramatic and passionate artist who's extreme temper and erratic behaviour came through in his art which inspired succeeding generations of followers all over Europe. 
Born in Caravaggio, Lombardy in Northern Italy, he moved to Rome in 1592 at the age of 21 where he worked on still life's until 1595 when his abilities were recognized by an eminent Cardinal, Francesco del Monte. Through the cardinals network he began to receive his first commissions, and became a celebrity nearly overnight. 
Caravaggio's fast and angry temper soon led to a string of arrests for abuse of the police, throwing artichokes at a waiter, carrying a sword in public and the list goes on yet his powerful contacts forced the magistrate to release him time and again.  It wasn't until he went to far,