We’re counting down to the July 15 launch of our new content channel Why Design by looking back at some of the best posts from Lifework’s three-and-a-half-year run. Today, the celebration continues with a few selections from of our favorite interviews with some of the design industry’s most creative contributors.
“I was the new kid on the block and I knew a little bit about screen-printing. They really just needed them to put up around the buildings. There was another designer working with me at the time, his name was Phil Mitchell. I said, ‘Why don’t we just do an ear of corn? I will stick it in my mouth and you draw it.’ So we did. And I cut the stencils and we had the screens made and printed them after hours down in the basement because the fumes were pretty intense coming from the ink.” – Creative Director Steve Frykholm on his iconic Herman Miller Picnic posters
“In music, there are some songs that grab you the first time you hear them… but you may quickly tire of them. Other songs only bring you in after multiple listenings. In my architecture, I aspire to the latter. Standing up to multiple listenings means getting the details right.” – Architect Mark Jensen
“Since I began photographing, I have always insisted on being in front of the lens, becoming part of the construction of my images. Photography has become my therapy, an exclusive dialogue between myself and the camera where we push each other to a point of exhaustion, both emotionally and physically.” – Photographer Gabriela Herman
“In architecture, I am inspired by trying to solve — in the most fluid and elegant way that I can — the intricacies of the project created by the reality of the program, the site, the budget, and most importantly, those more ephemeral hopes and ideas that my clients often find hard to articulate. I take it as a compliment when someone looks at the finished product and assumes that there was no other solution.” - Architect, writer, and publisher Robert Kahn
“In the end, I’m always trying to create a memorable, if not powerful emotional experience. That explains the use of bold, sculptural forms, and the attempt to capture the sublime, particularly through interior spaces.” – Architect John Friedman
“…work is continuous with lifestyle. Today work clings to us wherever we are in the city via our phones and laptops. What is more important is that we can choose the atmosphere most conducive to our state of mind and current preoccupation. Choosing between going to the office to work and staying home to work is a flexible pleasure.” – Architect David Freeland
“…my real inspiration is the endless variety of everyday life.” – Architect Deborah Berke
“Many different things [inspire me]: it sounds like a cliché, but one of them is Nature. She has it all figured out: the light, the darkness, the textures and colors.” – Interior designer Magdalena Keck
“If I were to choose a constant inspiration, it would be the work of the mid-century modern masters. Richard Neutra, R.M. Schindler, and John Lautner, among others, were groundbreaking, daring, and elegant in their architectural responses. Schindler’s own home on Kings Road feels inspired and contemporary even by today’s standards. They represent not a style but rather a lifestyle that casts off the inessential. Their work is a refreshing model in the chaos of our media mania.” – Architect Leo Marmol
“One of the things that inspires me the most is when we get a simple idea and immediately see that something about it does not work. That is an opportunity to look at it in a new way or let it evolve into something we had never thought of. Designing is as much about letting go as it is about finding the new.” – Architect Eugene Stoltzfus
Photos linked to their sources
