Africa fades in and out of the limelight pretty regularly. Reporters report on the awful deaths and killings in the Middle East but reports on the thousands dying from AIDs, war and famine every week are fading and distant. Africa is a thorn in the western worlds side, a technicality that is only of importance because it’s so big on the map; it’s hard to miss. I may be getting cynical but it’s hard to be optimistic when not even the media, who seem to be constantly obsessed with morbid tragedy and death, won’t even go near it. As designers we are constantly debating what we can bring to Africa in terms of design and teaching. How do we educate and improve the lives of millions of people who’s culture and history is so different from our own? It’s becoming more and more obvious that we can’t just turn up and implement a wonderfully expensive and advanced new design solution, only for it to spectacularly fail because we haven’t taken into account who we are designing for. It’s time for us to look up from our sketch pads and brainstorms and ask; What can WE learn from Africa?
The ‘no brand’ brand
Branding is ‘the’ buzzword of the 21st Century. It is the consumer’s bible by which we live by to distinguish what is ‘right’ about certain products and services and what is ‘wrong’. Branding is there to create a connection with our inner selves, and just as we as humans are infinitely varied and different, so too are the brands that we are exposed to. Yet what if you turned your back on brands, or at least say you have. If a brand is a corporate identity, are you not in effect turning your back on identifying yourself to the general public? With the debut opening of the first Muji store in the New York Time Building at the end of the year I think it’s a fitting time to introduce the American public to the consumer antithesis, the ‘no brand’ brand.
A lady, sitting next to Raymond Loewy (many call him the father of Industrial Design) at dinner, struck up a conversation.
‘Why’, she asked ‘did you put two Xs in Exxon?’
‘Why ask?’ he asked
‘Because’, she said, ‘I couldn’t help noticing’
‘Well’, he responded, ‘that’s the answer.’
Source: Alan Fletcher’s brilliant book The Art of Looking Sideways. If there was ever a quote best expressing the brand that is Muji, this would be it. Yes I called Muji a brand so before you double take and make sure your reading the same article let me tell you a bit about Muji.
Muji is essentially a lifestyle shop, specializing in providing simple, affordable goods while considering production and environmental impact, selling everything from wall mounted CD players to a re-used yarn elephant cuddly toy. The company is huge in Japan, with over 285 shops and 3400 employees and a range of offspring within its primary business including Cafe Muji, Meal Muji, Muji Campsite, Muji Opticians and Muji+Infill, an “off-the-peg architect designed open plan, energy efficient house”. Muji is all about minimalism, avoidance of waste in packaging and production and a strict no-logo policy. Even the name Muji is derived from the much longer ‘Mujirushi Ryōhin’, which translates as ‘No brand, quality goods’.
The great quote with Raymond Loewy is a perfect example of why Muji’s success is growing exponentially and why I can’t stop being drawn into one of the 3 shops in London every time I’m there. This corporate entity from a different land, exotic, mysterious with its indecipherable Japanese product descriptions, sucks you in like a fly to light. Normally the only readable text in the shop is the name outside although for the Japanese, the store must be like an Ikea. A lifestyle that you buy into with affordable solutions for modern living. In the West the identity of the company changes dramatically, it truly lives up to it’s name as a ‘no brand’ brand so, inadvertently yet entirely understandable, Muji has made a brand out of no brand. Why? Simple, human nature. As a human being, we remember things by association. We remember that the last time I saw someone wearing a hooded top was that violent youth in the bar the other night, or the last pair of Doc Martins I saw were worn loose, by a guy with a shaved head and a swastika tattoo. We brand things by associations in our lives which are often played up by the companies and retailers themselves through promotion and advertising. You can argue the ‘no brand’ brand allows an openness in interpretation and association so you may brand Muji as an environmentally aware retailer, the next guy sees it as a Japanese company with a philosophy synonymous with ancient Oriental teachings or for someone else as the guys that sell those cool T-shirts that come in 10cm cube packaging.
The real question is whether a ‘no brand’ brand is more beneficial than a ‘brand’ brand? This is of course entirely contextual. For a company, a brand is beneficial in making money and provides them with a consumer base who care about what it means to buy certain items whether it’s clothing or electronics. Yet, people grow up and move on, as do their tastes and ideals. I know a lot of people who refuse to wear obviously, physically branded clothing because as much as the clothes may be top quality workmanship, the brand association doesn’t fit into who they are as a person or they don’t feel clothes need to say anything about them as a person. This is the audience of the ‘no brand’ brand or at least it tries to be. Brands evolve over time, often exploiting certain aspects of their character to form a niche market. A good example is American Apparel. Over time their vertical integration system of manufacture, distribution and promotion has become synonymous with being sweat shop free and environmentally conscious.
In our visually saturated environment, simplifying can often physically ‘de-brand’ something. Anonymous design, as promoted by the Super Normal Exhibition, is a very powerful factor in creating something that is embraced and used, rather than idolized or displayed. Yet there needs to be a degree of availability and accessibility to the idea that means people don’t aspire to this type of design and feel they need to belong a certain type of ‘design conscious’ class. A good example of this paradox is Japanese design studio, plus minus zero, helmed by superstar Japanese designer Nauto Fukasawa. The products available exude simplicity and elegance, but due mainly to it’s availability, the design still only caters for the ‘design conscious’ or those who appreciate the ideals and design theory offered by Fukasawa. Hopefully retailers like Muji, who combine simplicity and accessibility will pave the way for a new conscious consumer, who know what they want, and know where to go to get it.
One morning I was standing in a Muji shop on Carnaby Street in London’s Soho District, inspecting the huge variety in stationary on offer. I picked up every single tool and was in awe at how simple, yet beautiful they were, when from behind me in stormed a young Japanese girl, in her mid 20′s, grabbing a big handful of a very specific ball point pens as she moved past me, walked straight to the counter, payed and walked straight out. It was at that point I realized the success of Muji in providing people what they need, rather than what they think they need.
Needless to say I bought at least 3 of those pens.
Giving ‘design’ the middle finger
Recently I walked into a very well known and established design shop while in Amsterdam called Frozen Fountain. Built in the old part of town, it stands right on the edge of a canal, busy with a variety of boats chugging by like cars on a busy urban street. The converted house extends high into the cold dutch air with high ceilings and a second floor as you move to the rear of the shop only accessible via an ‘interesting’ flight of stairs. The walk to the end of the shop takes you through room after room of design classics. The ‘Ooo..’ factor is high here. Everything needs to be sat on and inspected. Designers names are written down and exchanged. Expensive books are picked up, flicked through and put down. You know, the usual.
Except as I was walking around there were two pieces of furniture which kept glaring at me through the jungle of metal, plastic and fabric. Something didn’t quite work about them, it didn’t fit, they didn’t fit. In fact I hadn’t even noticed them at first, and ended up walking straight past them even though they were easily the biggest pieces in the shop. I did the usual, you know, walked around them, stroked their wood exterior, moved moving parts, all like a wannabe motor enthusiast kicking his tires to make himself look ‘in the know’. Putting it straight; these pieces just didn’t fit here, but I didn’t know why, I just couldn’t place it…
Designing the Super Normal
In the first few weeks of April I had the opportunity to go to the Milan Design Week and run around the city manically trying to find and look at everything there was to see. Whether it was fate or pure luck I don’t know but I managed to wonder into La Triennale di Milano where there was a large grey banner hanging over the entrance prevailing the start of the Super Normal exhibition conceived and curated by Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa. The reason I subsequently got so excited and proceeded to drag the rest of my group into a small white room on the 1st floor of the building was partly due to this great article by Kevin McCullagh on the issue of a trend of disaffection towards design. It’s a fascinating read that I will leave to you to interpret as you will, but one thing stood out amongst the article; the Super Normal.
Design is Art’s lost child
Recently I had to get my car MOT’ed and pay it’s road tax which meant having to check it in at a mechanics and basically wait to hear what they can find at fault with it. (Yeh, I know I’m cynical). While I waited I spent a quiet morning in a small park just sitting on a bench, thinking, meditating if you will. I have just completed my second year of University studying Industrial Design and my brain was having trouble couping with having nothing to think about so before I knew it I found myself trying to slot design as a practice into the grand scheme of things. Highly debatable I know but take my observation as opinion.
First let’s look at art. I recently read an interesting Internet chat conversation that inspired one of the debaters, H.X Sin, to write a book. The transcript is called The Dialog of Art and reads almost like a friendly debate between a teacher and his/her questioning student. Something that struck me was the argument that the definition of art is expression with impression only accounting for thought. This makes perfect sense but limits art to being a solely human contribution, something that nothing in the world around us can produce as we are the only species or living thing that is self aware. So art is an expression of an impression. Reading the transcript may give you a more detailed opinion on the matter, but what interested me was how this idea applies to design.
Design, for me, was always classed as separate from art for the simply reason that art is an individual activity that resonates as an opinion on something from the point of view of the artist. Design is meant for the people. You, me, everyone. Not that art isn’t for the people, it just doesn’t cater for what the people want or need, it caters for what the people have a freedom to see, hear etc. Yet, if art is an expression of an impression, does design not fall into that category as well? In design we identify problems, some more serious (depending on your views) or detailed than others; ‘global warming’ compared to ‘how can I bend this piece of plywood into a chair?’, and we use our impression of those problems to come up with solutions which we express through artifacts, instances, images and more. A good example would be ‘Design for the Third World’. It is all too obvious how different designers opinions on ideas and solutions differ depending on the impression that the problem has made on them. Often it is difficult for designers to work on ideas that they don’t like which is purely based on their idea or impression of the problem differing from others. At the end of the day the director of a project is the artist, ordering and instructing their work colleagues like paint and a brush over a canvas. Of course his colleagues may influence their impression, and that is most often the case, but there is a reason why so many of the design superstars of today work alone. I always hear a lot of talk about arts influence on design but I don’t think we should dismiss designs influence on art and the importance of the relationship between the two of them.