Clerkenwell Design Week starts today! I’m super excited and will be there all week. If you’re planning on heading over, make sure you register here first. In the meantime, here’s an interview with Dome Studio, founded in 2014 by friends Tom Whiteway & Jonathan Blayney, they are one of the up-and-coming design brands exhibiting at Platform, CDW’s space for new talent… I for one can’t wait to see them there.
What’s the most important thing to know about you?
We hope to design enduring products that people will enjoy and won’t end up in landfill.
Tell me how you met and started working together.
We met whilst studying at Central Saint Martins. From the get go we were always interested in each other’s work, often helping to generate ideas and challenge each other. We spent all of our time in the workshops until we decided to start our own workshop which became the foundation for our studio. We did a couple of very big model making and prototyping projects for Tangerine Design Studio in London and the stress and challenge of having to deliver such large scale projects with very short deadlines (often less than two weeks) was in many ways a test bed to see how we worked together under pressure. We also realised we shared a love of jacket potatoes.
What inspires your work?
Many things, whether it is a technical diagram, a small detail on an industrial machine, a piece of art, something from the natural world or a building, we draw inspiration from many different subjects. Designers like Alvar Aalto, Achille Castiglioni, Tapio Wirkkala, Naoto Fukasawa and Thomas Heatherwick all have a space on the wall of our studio.
How does your design process work from initial concept to final product?
Usually one of us has a general idea about a project, a rough starting point. That can come from an experiment, an engineering principle, an image or often a completely bizarre idea. We work off each other, challenge ideas and methods, until usually we hit an “Oh, thats it” moment in the design phase. In the Cooper furniture range it was the design detail of the hollow leg, for the Clock it was the idea of the recessed petal shape. After that we set about figuring out how we are going to make that detail. In our work to date the design phase has often been overshadowed by the challenge of how to make that object exactly as we want it. Often we have designed and built our own machines in order to realise our ideas.
How does your relationship work – do you ever argue?
Us, argue ?!…Yeh, quite often. We both have pretty strong ideas on certain things but it is never personal. We only argue because we both want the best outcome. Usually a good night’s sleep is useful to make conclusions. We generally make a plan at the beginning of the week and then write tasks on post it notes that go on a big board. We then choose to do tasks that we prefer or are better at.
Tell me about a really good day in the life of Dome Studio and a really bad day.
A really good day is when we see our hard work pay off. When we have a physical object in our hands that has been an idea for so long and a technical challenge. Especially if it involves a factory visit – we love factories.
A bad day, (and we have had quite a number of these) is when you are let down by a manufacturer or client, especially when you are relying on that person to complete some work.
What defines good design?
The expression of something functional in a beautiful way.
What are you most proud of?
The fact that we have made it this far. It has been a difficult two years and we haven’t made it easy on ourselves but hopefully people will see our work and like it.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
Keep going. Eventually people will see your work if it’s good.
What advice would you give to a design graduate just starting out?
Learn how to make things, visit factories and familiarise yourself with different manufacturing processes. We strongly believe that in order to design good products you have to understand how they are made. But you knew that already, right?
What are you most looking forward to about exhibiting at Platform as part of CDW?
Getting feedback from the general public and from people in the industry. You spend all this time working away on projects, uncertain if people will even like them! We did New Designers last year and the experience was fantastic, hopefully CDW will be even better.
What else are you hoping to see while you’re there?
Lots of great design, of course!
And finally, what’s your favourite colour?
Stainless Steel.
Further reading for the especially geeky:
- pinterest :: pink
- feature :: making the invisible store of happiness
- interview :: ambrose vevers
- pinterest :: blue
This is a great design team with a great ambition and powerful products. They have only been operating for two years but their work expresses a different story. this is an inspiration.