Despite my wife being a designer – and a bloody good one – quite a lot of the people who work within that discipline get right on my tits.
It’s not the work they produce, it’s the over–inflated justification, rationale and success they continuously claim that makes me want to kill.
I know planners have an amazing capacity to talk complete and utter bollocks, but when you hear the shit people like Peter Arnell spout in the name of ‘design strategy’, you know designers are in a different league.
Anyway, I recently read an interview with a guy called Kenneth Grange that reminded me not everyone in the design industry acts this way.
OK, given he’s 82 years of age, it’s fair to say he’s hardly part of the modern design scene, however given he’s possibly one of the most influential designers of the past 50 years – even though you probably have never heard of him, as I hadn’t till I read his article – he’s more than worth listening to, if only to remember that designers often create the sort of long-lasting solutions, adland can only dream about.
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GRANGE’S DESIGN FOR LIVING
Kenneth Grange is the most influential designer you’ve never heard of. says Rachel Cooke in The Observer.
The 82year old is determinedly modest about his creations which include such iconic objects as the `968 Kodak Instamatic camera, the Kenwood Chef, the London Taxi [which he remodelled in 1997] and – his personal favourite – the Intercity 125 train.
“I was only supposed to redesign the paintwork” he recalls, “… but for my own amusement I decided to have a go at the shame too. It was a bloody nerve to be honest. If I’d been on the British Rail Board I’d have told me to piss off”.
But the new, aerodynamic shape made the trains more efficient – and 35 years on, they are still running.
Now he’s working on his first chair design.
It will, he promises, be “bloody comfortable … modern furniture is always too low and getting off it is a bugger”.
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If only more people in design – and adland – could be more like him, both in terms of his ability to create inspirational, iconic and effective work and his wonderfully down-to-earth and modest attitude.
Mr Grange, I salute you and I hope the design industry bow down to you.
PS: Lauren, this is the article I mentioned to you on Twitter