designswarm thoughts

Not surprisingly, answers to my call for feedback about design in Montreal haven’t been pouring in so it was greatly refreshing to hear from Mike Giles at Furnicreations. He was lovely enough to talk to me about some of the great and more difficult things about working as a designer in Montreal.

1. Thank you Mike for speaking with me, could you describe yourself and Furni’s work briefly?

Furni started about 4 years ago as a partnership between Devin Barrette and myself, I like to think that I have the ideas and Devin makes them a reality. Devin’s the one with formal cabinetmaking training, I’m just a student of the school of life. Over the past year and a half Furni has released two collections of limited edition, hand made, design driven home “accents” and slowly but surely is starting to get recognized on the international design circuit”

2. How long have you been working professionally in Montreal ?

Furni’s been around as a custom woodworking shop for about 4 years but we’ve only been offering “in-house” designs to the general public for about 18 months…..

3. Do you have any event or anecdote that is representative of your experience working in Montreal?

Working in Montreal is funny, we’ve got stores that carry our products in as far away places as Australia and Taiwan but only two stores in town who carry our designs….I guess Montreal is a tough cookie to crack.

4. Do you consider design to be well understood in Montreal?

I believe it’s well understood, there are tons of stylish restaurants, bars and boutique hotels but there is still only a small market of people who are actually buying design driven products.

5. In your opinion, what key designers have shaped the design scene in Montreal?

I apologize for my ignorance, but we spend so much time in the workshop that I am unable to follow much of Montreal design….. I’ve been exposed to some work by Doyon and Rivest and I also like the collective called “RITA” who are doing some really interesting stuff.

6. What is missing from the Montreal design scene?

Exposure and boutiques and people who are willing to spend money on design driven articles!!!

7. What would you say is the hardest thing about working in design in Montreal?
The fact that there are very few outlets for our work.

8. What would you say is the best thing about working in design in Montreal?

That I am inspired by it’s architecture and aesthetics everyday (just take a ride on the metro or go to Ile St-Helene!)

9. Where do the opportunities lie for the future of design in Montreal?

Things can only go up, I’ve been noticing small design articles in the local weekly’s over the past few months and great sites like Créativité Montréal seem to be popping up more frequently…

10. If you had the choice to work somewhere else, where would it be?

I just got back from a trip to England so London is on top of my list right now, of course New York is high ranking also, and I’ve always had a thing for San Francisco…..but the grass is always greener….

I’ll be speaking tonight at Montreal’s very own Pecha Kucha about my Good Night Lamp project, how it came about, where it’s at now, and why on earth it’s still not out there!

Update: Here are the slides from that night’s presentation. Enjoy!

• Radio silence | Economist.com
  whatever happened to RFID, it was supposed to save the world!
  (tags: RFID trends technology)
• debalie: cultureel politiek debat centrum Worldchat 7080 :
  “The future of money” debate at Platform 21 in Amsterdam with some great people attending.
  (tags: Amsterdam conference culture)
• La vie en rose | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited
  Article about the use of pink as a traditional way to attempt to attract a female audience for products and services.
  (tags: feminism product design service)
• Can’t have it? stick it!
  Brilliant idea, as someone who’s allergic to dogs, this could be fab
  (tags: product design)

In my spare time (ha!) I’ve been helping put together a Hardcore Hardware Hacking workshop. On the weekend of the 21-22 of July, 15 hardware hackers will get to have fun with Massimo Banzi and Matt Biddulph, who will do demos and hand out cool toys with which to hack! We’ll do an open presentation on the sunday of all the projects.

All details HERE.

Spread the word!

• Police use Facebook to douse party plans
  Social networking sites: remember kids! adults can sign up too :)
  (tags: web2.0 social network)
• Welcome to jorg&olif: Dutch City Bikes
  If you want to make me insanely happy, get me a Dutch bike iI can carry with me everywhere.
  (tags: Netherlands product design travel)

Brilliant. Spam I can’t understand. I love the occasional english bit “Buy strong”!
(Thought it was dutch, turned out to be German, thanks Robert!)

“Meine Damen und Herren
hier eine Information, die Sie nicht missachten sollten. Dieses voellig unbeachtete Filmunternehmen hat momentan eine Bewertung von lediglich 400.000 ˆ. Am 19.05.2007 strahlte ARTE die Dokumentation „Hannibal ueber die Alpen aus“. Kronos erziehlt Gewinn an den heraus resultierenden Erloesen in einem Umfang, der weit ueber der gegenwaertigen Kapitalisierung liegt. Marktgeruechte besagen, dass ein renomierter Sender kurz vor der Vergabe von Auftraegen fuer eine komplette Serie von Dokumentationen in 6 Teilen steht.

Investment Recommendation: Strong` Buy! STRONG` BUY!!!

Disclaimer: Diese Anlageempfehlung wurde vom Versender auf der Grundlage oeffentlich zugaenglichen Informationen erstellt. Der Versender hat keine Aktien des empfohlenen Unternehmens. Der Versender erhaelt eine marktuebliche Kommission.”

Although this might seem trivial, I find this really interesting. This video, promoting a dutch language school by “teaching” the audience swear words, actually doesn’t touch upon what’s so unique about them in the first place: references to diseases. Because of their long history of self-preservation and survival, the worst thing to say to someone at the time was to wish them cancer or syphilis.

This dilution of their own cultural uniqueness to cater to an international audience is really fascinating. Afraid of being misunderstood, they would rather revert to teaching how to say “asshole” then “may you be struck with gangrene”.

Language separated from culture.

• Jamie Oliver: Recipes: Tagliatelle with tomato, spinach and ricotta
  Nice recipe but i wish he would put in cooking times for things… my spinach were nowhere near cooked enough
  (tags: recipes food)

A small child walks out of the front door of a big house in a quiet suburban area of Montreal.
I walk by.

Child - Madame!
Me - Oui?
Child - Je t’aime!

I wandered into downtown yesterday, in the bitter cold (it was around 13 degrees celcius, I haven’t felt that since my dutch winter many months ago) and bumped into what appeared to be the beginning of a week-long celebration of “fashion and design”. Another use of the word design. Interesting, i thought.

As I walked along McGill College avenue (which had been closed off for the event), they were still setting things up. A huge fashion stage took most of the space. A few over-tanned youngsters were giving out free Gillette razors, American express had a corporate booth, makeup stations were giving free makeup advice, massages, etc.

Scattered around the site Sid Lee a wellknown marketing agency in town, and communications partner of designmontreal, had attempted to get the point across that Montreal had been awarded the UNESCO city of design status for 2007.

Tall monolith-like boxes acted as billboards to explain this. The first one attempted to deconstruct the design of famous architectural landscapes in Montreal. Describing a step by step design process of the Olympic stadium (a structure better known for it’s failures, notably it’s dysfunctional roof) and Habitat 67 to name just 2.

The next one caught my eye as I had seen the design online. Bright large stickers covered the entire surface of the billboard with “le design c’est…” (design is…) and left the rest to the public. So far the public’s reaction was “design is the new esperanto”, “design is ugly”, “design is nothing”, etc.. In the middle of the monolith though there was an unfolded pizza box, with “the pizza will arrive cold” drawn on it and a written short story of a pizza delivery boy and his fight through traffic among a beautiful city he has learnt to ignore.

This was somewhat of a strange mixture. It wanted to be an attempt at user-generated /public opinion content but with the guerilla-style advertising pizza box taped in the middle it was hard to tell what we were supposed to look at or if we should even participate. As I wrote about last week, in light of the AIGA talk, it’s always good to set some rules if you want people to get involved. Otherwise, well, that’s what you get. Crapucopia.

Esperanto indeed, a language which everyone should talk and understand, but noone really does.

I had the pleasure of meeting very briefly Boris Anthony at Xtech in Paris. He’s an interaction designer working and living in Montreal and these days is organising the local edition of Pecha Kucha. I think he feels, like me that there must be more to design that what we are made to believe or to see.

I hope I get a chance to speak to him more about this soon. In anycase I’ll be there, presenting the Good Night Lamp project which is slowly but surely, being put together. Hope to see you there!

I had dinner last night with a good friend of mine, Valérie Sangin, a photographer who specialises in creative portraits and of course we had to catch up and I got her to share some of her experience, working in Montreal.

Things weren’t that peachy. Talented to bits, and very creative, she has been freelancing for the past few years, working as a wedding photographer during summer times to pay the bills. A bitter sweet experience studying at Concordia university made her realise she wasn’t interested in photography in the world of art. “There were no criteria you could operate on. Things are so subjective, it completely depended on the mood of the tutor to determine if she would like the work or not”.

After her studies, she opened a studio with some friends from school which was quite successful. She appeared in a movie. She organised the photoshoots for “A makeover story”-type of television show for a well-known Quebec TV channel. But nothing would ever come out of it. When she met professionals in the TV industry, they already had their own photographers. There is no space for new professionals in the city. The community is small and stays small with it’s own superstars and idols. As she pointed out, when there’s only 50 people who do the same thing, there’s only competition for the few jobs around, no sense of camaraderie.

She’s now back to freelancing on her own and finds the environment difficult. “I hate having to fight for the right to do what I want to do” she cries out, “it doesn’t make sense to spend 90% of my time trying to find work that will take me a few hours to actually do. A photoshoot isn’t that long after all”.

We also spoke about former friends and colleagues, noting that most of them now have completely changed career paths, working in jobs completely unrelated to design. “People just give up” she told me.

She remains ambitious and optimistic though. When I asked her where she sees herself in 5 years, she answered “I’d like to be a creative portrait photographer for celebrities. Like Annie Leibovitz, but I want total control over the photoshoot”.

• Dopplr Blog » News, discussion and design chat about Dopplr
  lovely news and travel blog of the mega-famous Dopplr :) yes i’m biased, sue me.
  (tags: travel web2.0 blog service)

As I walked back from breakfast at Café Eldorado, (I could have sworn there was another nice breakfast place on Mont-Royal), I walked past Le Point-Vert on St-Laurent and figured I would start my search for everything design in Montreal by buying Design Lines a so called “Ultimate guide to design in the city”.

It was fascinated to see that by design, of course what they meant was (and this is on the front cover so i’m not exaggerating here) shops, bars, restaurants, galleries and architecture. Notice anything? They are talking about places, showrooms, not actual projects or content. I was curious as to why that was. Isn’t there anything interesting going on here?

Most of what I found were either buildings (more architecture, and let’s be clear I love that field, but is that all we have?) or, lots of furniture manufacturers / stores, shops that sell other people’s stuff (mostly italian design of course). Once in a while you’d notice “more recently, he’s opened his first office in London”, or “he now lives between New York and London”. Then all throughout the different articles, there would be a constant mention of international designers whose work would be on display: “from the five continents”.

The only highlight of this booklet was a slim 5 page article on “My space”, local designers describing their favorite spots in town. At last, local stuff! Who were they?

1. Stéphanie Cardinal of Huma design+architecture
2. Anouk Pennel & Raphael Daudelin for Studio Feed
3. Gilles Saucier for Saucier & Perrotte, architects
4. Erratum designers Frédéric Galliot & Vincent Hauspy (2 former classmates hurrah!)
5. Axel Morgenthaler , lighting designer ( a former guest for one of my undergrad thesis presentations)

So some of them were architects, some unfindable on Google and some I personally already met. Slim pickings considering how many people graduate from a “design course” each year. Makes you wonder, where do they all end up?

As I wandered back slowly downtown, pondering all of this, I thought I’d drop by the latest Montreal pride: it’s national library. Like Mitterand’s it has it’s problems. This one loses it’s windows apparently…so much for architecture.

Other than that it’s a lovely airy building with a hell of a lot of people wandering in it’s aisles. You’d swear people never heard of the internet ;)
I walked up 2 floors to their arts section to flip through some design books. Imagine my surprise when I realised that there wasn’t a design section! Architecture, Painting, Urban design, etc… no design, theory of design, industrial design, nothing!

I thought that was really a testament to how much has to be done still to educate the public to the value of design as a field, not some sticker you can put on anything and everything that looks pretty or is “hesselig” as the dutch would say.

Indeed a strange task i have chosen for the month.

• Royal College of Art- The Great exhibition
  Grand title for the Summer show of the RCA. I unfortunately can’t make it this year but will follow the reports on we-make-money-not-art of course. very curious about the Design interactions course obviously.
  (tags: interaction design exhibition)
• This Ain’t No Disco
  Lovely collection of creative agencies work environments
  (tags: interior design corporations)