I worked on 'USA Today' as a topic for while. I tried to do something on hand chairs, chairs that look like hands. I really tried. But some topics are not truly universal.
I live in a craftsman house, but I'm a big fan of modernist and mid-century furniture and architecture, too. But my dream is to do a truly original chair design, something that is all these different things but is my own, too.
Certainly, Doctor. Let's talk about your chair. Victorian?
Usability methods are like sandpapering a chair. If you are making a chair, the sandpaper can make it smoother. But no amount of sandpaper will turn a chair into a table.
I want people to love to sit in my chairs. You gotta want the people to buy it because they love it.
Chairs are like sculpture.
Every other piece of industrial design is a pot or a dish or something insignificant. But when you have a chair, it's like a sculpture of a person: it's alive. It's big. You can't miss it. It's a 'look at me!' item.
Most industrial designers do a bottle or a pen or a computer - things that go right past your eye. When you see a chair, it's almost like a person. It's this great big thing in front of you. It hits you more.
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.
Well the most successful of course was this Polypropylene chair.
What would a chair look like if your knees bent the other way?
