Tobi had an unmatched ability to re-mix cultural artifacts, making objects that comment on our society and explore the notion of value. He was the master craftsman of humor, beauty, and wit. When Kegan and I started Design Glut, it was because we dreamed of creating conceptual objects with the kind of impact he achieved. His work sparked our imagination.

Boxcutter by Tobias Wong, 2002

Cokespoon #1 – a bronze casting of the ubiquitous pen cap dipped in gold

Doorstop – Concrete casting created in a Savoy vase, which then has to be unashamedly smashed in order to yield the form.

Camoflauge iPad case by Tobias Wong and Chelsea Briganti

I cannot believe I’ll never get to see a new idea from him, a brilliant nugget, something that alters my perception of the ordinary.

The first time we met him, in 2007, he was our hero and we were a couple of kids just out of school that could barely contain our excitement. Then and every time we’ve seen him since, we found him to be incredibly friendly and down-to-earth. Even though we only knew him casually, the news of his death is hitting me terribly hard. We wouldn’t be doing the kind of work we do if it weren’t for his influence. He was completely genius, unique, irreplaceable.

Thank you for the inspiration.

Kegan (left) and Tobi (right) outside the Wrong Store. Image via Core77

Design Glut is a very small company of 2 people. We’d gotten pretty comfortable with that, until our latest adventure. As we curated and organized a show during Design Week called Uncomfortable Conversations, all of a sudden we were working very closely with a group of 15 designers and 6 sponsors.

There were plenty of times when we found ourselves less-than-amused by the number of uncomfortable conversations we had to have to pull this thing off. It was a ton of work, but by rallying a group, we were able to make a statement of such greater magnitude and depth than we ever could have done on our own.

On May 16th, 400 people came out to the opening party. Uncomfortable and comfortable conversations were had. Conceptual design was appreciated. And we realized that Design Glut has the ability to bring together the design community IRL, not just on the internet, which is super exciting. Here’s a recap of the our first event – with more shows definitely to come!

In the gallery, a.k.a. an empty storefront in the Meatpacking District that we took over for a week.

photo by Jacob Krupnick

Chrissy Conant’s A2Zzz Pillows. Cuddle up with some Ambien.

Will Robison’s Kevin Carpet Bench. For an hour each day that the show was open, a fetishist was rolled up inside the carpet and show-goers were invited to sit on him. Here’s a series of pictures showing Julio, the human carpet, going in:

Will sitting on Julio.

photo by Jacob Krupnick

From left to right: Liz, Julio’s wife, Vincent, Julio’s adorable little baby boy, and Matthew Waldman of Nooka

photo by Jacob Krupnick

Demian Repucci’s Consumption dinnerware is decorated with infographics that describe the vast differences in food and water consumption around the world.

Vincent Lai’s Deterrent bag is reversible, allowing you to bust out some spikes on a would-be attacker.

Uncomfortable Typographic Situations by MSLK shows what can happen without proper kerning. Also a good litmus test for how dirty your mind is – different show-goers saw different things on first glance…

photo by Luke Escamilla

Body Function by Matthew Waldman. It’s uncomfortable. Enough said.

photo by Jacob Krupnick

Materious’ briefcase/paper shredder (cleverly titled In Case) is a must-have accessory for crooked CEOs.

photo by Luke Escamilla

Chi-Merica by Paul Loebach is a reconfiguration of his Half Mirror, putting an uncomfortable conversation about the ethics of furniture manufacturing out there. That’s the designer, caught nervously biting his nails.

photo by Ryan Heiser

Ana Linares’ It’s Not You / It’s Not Me necklaces are a conversation starter, but a relationship ender.

photo by Ryan Heiser

Which contrasts with Sruli Recht’s Garrote necklace/choker – a conversation starter, but a life ender.

Karl Zahn’s hanging lamp, Heavy, addresses the terror of the cartoon world – death by falling anvil.

And then there’s the Trashlight by Craighton Berman. What do you throw away? What dirty little secrets get hidden in those black plastic bags? If you think you have nothing to hide, or if you’re a bold exhibitionist, cast light on your refuse and put it out on display.

And the final theme of the show was uncomfortable conversations about touching. For those of you who find the subway too germy and and tightly packed, put on a pair of Andrew Haarsager’s Mind The Gap gloves. Should someone’s hand start to drift down the pole towards yours, you’ll be well-protected and ready to impale them.

If you’re the angry type (and New Yorkers tend to be), perhaps you should consider letting go of some of your grudges. Shaking hands with your enemies might seem too extreme a first step – so use Dominic Wilcox’ Pre-Handshake Handshake Device to get used to the motion.

photo by Ryan Heiser

We believe it’s the role of creatives to start the uncomfortable conversations that cause people to grow.

“A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.” – Timothy Ferriss

Inspired by the quote above, we challenged a group of designers to create something which provokes an uncomfortable yet important conversation. Participating designers were given complete freedom with the type of object they created, the materials they used, and the topic of the conversation they set out to provoke.

As a result, we have ended up with a wonderfully broad body of work – housewares and furniture, jewelry and fashion, graphics and video. Still, everything exhibited here has one thing in common: the desire to make you uncomfortable. It’s your turn to judge how well they succeed.

- Design Glut, Curators

What is your design philosophy, and what are you hoping to do with your work?

Bruce: We both teach, so Materious happens on the side, but it’s a big part of what we do. We’re most interested in projects that really say something, get some kind of debate going, but can still exist in a marketplace. The product form becomes the carrier for this message. Our work ranges from more commercial to more discursive. We’re probably more interested in the discursive stuff, but for us, that line is really interesting. Can you have something that’s discursive, critical, and still have it exist in the marketplace where more people have access to it? That’s the challenge.

How has teaching informed your design, and how has doing your own design work informed teaching?

Stephanie: It’s interesting to do both – it keeps you in different mindsets.

B: It keeps you fresh. We’re vetting a lot of the ideas for the book that we’re working on, the discursive design book, through the classroom. It forces us to articulate what we mean by this and figure out all the nitty gritty bits of it.

S: The structure and the language for the book came from the classroom, and trying to talk to students about what they’re doing. They’re not necessarily interested in solely doing commercial work. We both teach grad studios, and a lot of students don’t realize they can do non-commercial things. It’s interesting to be an advocate for that, and to put a language behind it.

Bruce, the program where you teach is pretty new, right?

B: Yeah. At the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, it’s not an industrial design program, it’s designed objects. It’s a nice opportunity to begin to rethink what design should be in the 21st century. We’re teaching the four fields of design: commercial, responsible, discursive, and experimental. A traditional industrial design program would focus mostly on the commercial aspect.

Progeny | 2005 | parent & child coat rack | prototype

How did you guys find each other and start Materious?

B: We met at a design conference – I saw her from across a crowded conference-room floor! It was the IDSA Midwest conference in 2003.

S: I think our first project together was in 2004. We did Progeny for a DWR competition here in Chicago. We put some entries together and that one was selected. That was our starting point. We got Best in Show that year, so we thought, “Let’s do something else!” We designed Cubby the following year, for the same competition, and it was really successful. It won Interior Design Magazine’s best accessory of the year.

Cubby | 2006 | coat hook & storage | coming soon from Charles & Marie

Wow, not a bad start! What’s the design community like here in Chicago?

B: There are a lot of designers in Chicago, but they’re not always so visible. I think that’s starting to change. The first DWR show was really a turning point. It was like, “Wow, look at all these people!” We just hadn’t seen them before.

S: Well, I would say we knew the industrial designers, but that DWR event was a really great mix of different professions – architecture, and interior, and graphics…

B: It was an interesting way to bring it all together. The IDSA Chicago chapter is very active and has done a good job of bringing the community together. The Object Design League is the biggest new venture – I think it has a lot of promise and momentum going. And Scott Wilson coming to Chicago is fantastic. He’s the biggest name individual designer in Chicago. It’s great to have him here.

S: Also, there’s more and more independent design events happening around NeoCon. The Guerilla Truck Show is another great event, similar to DWR in that it brings lots of designers and artists together every year, and it’s the 4th or 5th year that’s been happening.

Umbrellas for the Civil but Discontent Man | 2008 | manufactured by Kikkerland

Lately I’ve been seeing your umbrellas everywhere. Could you tell us about that project?

B: That’s the project which is doing the best from a commercial standpoint. We made the prototype, sent it to Kikkerland, and right away they said, “We love it,” and put it into production. It’s interesting, because some people say the umbrellas are very humorous and jokey…

S: But it didn’t come from that place.

B: Yeah, it was part of this series about aggression. Right now we’re trying to get Kikkerland to do the whole series. One of the battles with that project, and some of the other projects that we do, is, how do you keep the message there? Especially when it gets decontextualized and it’s now sitting over in a shop. The tag was really important – that was our opportunity to get our message across and make sure it’s not as much a Spencer’s Gifts kind of thing.

There’s a strange line between whether something is “conceptual” or “novelty.”

B: Consumers aren’t used to expecting a layer of meaning. Our interest is in discursive design – objects that give you something more. Yes it’s useful, usable, desirable, but what else? Our goal is to squeeze a little bit more out of the physical stuff. The name “Materious” is a word that’s not in circulation anymore, but it did mean “substance” and “substantive” – it’s got that dual meaning.

Forecast | 2005 | umbrella & stand with rain forecasting technology | concept prototype

You showed in Milan this year – what was that experience like?

S: We went to Milan last year and thought, “Oh, wouldn’t it be nice to show? Wouldn’t it be great?” But we didn’t actually think we could do it – it seemed like it would take years to put it together. And then this opportunity came up in January or February. It was kind of last minute!

B: There was a call for Tuttobene, which is a Dutch group that exhibits there every year. This year they decided that they were going to open it up to international designers. Tuttobene means “all together” or “all good” and it’s largely an environmentally-responsible show. While I wouldn’t classify our work as specifically environmentally-responsible, they wrote about environmental and social responsibility, and a lot of our work certainly deals with social issues.

What did you show?

B: We took these different authors as points of reference for the work. The umbrellas project came from an essay from Freud. And there was an essay from Karl Marx… Basically all the pieces related to a thinker. We had a stool there with the thinker’s name burned into the stool, and then the object itself.

Was it hard pulling it all together?

B: Well, our school, the SAIC, had three exhibitions there this year. Since we’re a new program, we’re sort of trying to come from behind. We identified Milan as a place that we want to be in order to jump to the head of the class. So I was already going. The logistics worked out really well.

S: And the knowledge that came from the other faculty members who had done it before was really helpful.

B: The biggest thing to know is, don’t send anything there through UPS or FedEx. Largely because the mafia still has a hand in it. They know you need this stuff, and they basically hold it up. You call them saying, “Where’s my stuff?” and you hear “Oh, it’s somewhere else.” If you ask them, “What can we do to speed this up?” and offer them a little money, they essentially “find” your package. The guy next to us was from Switzerland and his stuff was send by DHL – lost. The guy on the other side, from Canada, used FedEx – lost. So having done work with the school, we knew things like that. And it’s so much easier with a group show.

Progeny | 2005 | parent & child coat rack | prototype

Given all the expenses and the hassle, why is showing in Milan so important?

B: Milan is Milan – there’s nothing else like it. The entire year’s design press comes from that one event. That’s the world stage for design. Since there aren’t a lot of Americans there, people say, “Oh, there must not be much going on in America.” More designers need to do it – it would help American design. It is so helpful if there is a group show.

S: I think there are so many Americans who are interested in it. It would just take an organization, like Object Design League or someone else, to do it. And it helps if someone can speak Italian! But having gone through it once now, it feels very accessible.

What other advice do you have for independent designers trying to get footing?

S: Band up with other independent designers, and share stories, and share your knowledge with other people.

B: Yeah, I’m meeting with another independent designer today to talk, and another on Friday. It’s basically about banding together to say, “What do you know?” You can’t do design alone, if you want to be in the marketplace. You can do exhibitions and lots of interesting work, but ultimately you can’t get into the marketplace without a manufacturer and a retailer. Those are the three legs – without them all your business won’t stand. So you need to learn how that system works, who to talk to, and how to talk to them – that’s the biggest thing for independent designers.

We love the Chrissy Homeland Security® series, and are happy to announce that the Chrissy Homeland Security® Blanket is now available in our web store.

Chrissy Homeland Security® Blanket, 2004, 100% Virgin Wool, fits Queen and King

Do you have any particular methods for nourishing your creativity?

I watch TV. I do, and I admit it. I think I watch it in a different way from most people, particularly because my work has to do with pop culture. Ideas are fostered by being open, looking around, and trying to look at things you’ve looked at a million times in a fresh way.

I find it so important to go to museums and galleries, and I’ll talk to strangers on the subway. You never know where you’re going to get inspired. It’s a total mystery to me. I don’t know what sparked something like, “I’ll put myself in a jar!” I was having lunch with somebody. I know what I was doing. But I don’t know exactly when that little lighting bolt went off that said, “Yes! Make human caviar!”

Chrissy Caviar® – “Placed inside each jar there is, instead of fish roe, one of my eggs.”

Can you tell us about that project?

Chrissy Caviar®. I took fertility drugs, harvested my eggs, put them in jars, and created “human caviar”. It was about the human being as a brand, as a product. It was very important to me to execute it perfectly. I trademarked my DNA. I’m now a walking brand. The times I’ve been present at gallery openings, with this piece in particular, it’s brought forth a lot of emotion. Someone once told me that he contemplated the piece, got a hard on, and then had to go throw up.

I like how thoroughly you created the “brand”, right down to the the Chrissy Caviar® floaty pens. It’s a hilarious detail.

My work has a lot to do with my anxieties and fears, but I try to lighten it up, and not get too “woe is me”. It allows me to express some of my demons productively, in a way I think a lot of people can relate to.

Chrissy Caviar® – “Placed inside each jar there is, instead of fish roe, one of my eggs.”

Your body of work spans everything from painting to sculpture to design. Where did you start?

Mud pies and dandelions – those were the first materials I had available to me. I realized, “Hey, I can make cake out of dirt!” I used a rock as a base, and would carefully make the frosting. It was great. That was my first media. I slowly moved into wire, string, glue, popsicle sticks, more rocks, and then ultimately paint and clay.

Eventually I started to use more unusual materials, like parts of myself. I’m very interested in silicone rubber. My work is very personal, but also pulls from society and culture. My goal is to bring out thoughts that people might be normally a bit hesitant to reveal. To create a dialogue, or discussion, or argument before you go to lunch.

Chrissy Homeland Security® Choker Set, 2003, Plexiglas, Sterling Silver

Can you tell us about your Chrissy Homeland Security® pieces?

The idea was to utilize my fear after 9/11 in a productive way. The chokers came first. When you deconstruct the homeland security icon, and wear it as jewelry, it becomes something else. You can wear the orange piece around your neck, that says high, and people can interpret that in a few different ways.

The blankets came next, and then the wall piece. All in very different edition numbers. The necklaces are open, the blankets are an edition of 100, and the wall hanging is an edition of 6.

We love the blankets and are excited to have them as a new addition to our online store. Could you walk us through your process for developing them?

It was important for me to want this piece manufactured domestically, for obvious reasons. I created the design in Illustrator. Then, I met with a contact at Pendleton Mills, a very traditional company in Oregon. They weren’t sure they wanted to make that political statement…

I went in, and said, “I love my country, and this piece can be taken in a number of different ways. I’m not making a statement as much as I am raising a question. That is my main purpose.” They went ahead with the production of it.

The blankets are 100% wool, dry-cleanable, and 90″ x 90″. They fit a queen or king sized bed. Each blanket is signed and numbered on a customized utrasuede patch, which is sewn onto the corner, on the reverse side.

Chrissy Skin Rug, 2005. Silicone rubber, wood, glass, human hair, glass, magnets. (Images via Flickr and Saatchi Gallery Online)

One thing that really impresses me is the level of execution in all your projects.

Developing a piece is a process. This rug (Chrissy Skin Rug) took a year and a half to do. It took a lot of research, and trial and error. That’s a huge part of being an artist. You make something, and it’s not quite right, so you make it again. It’s closer, but it’s still not right. It’s interesting to go through all the variations: put something on, take something away, change this, tune that. The key is to make it communicate your idea. The interpretations can be different, but it has to communicate something, at least for a few seconds.

Teddy Chrissy (self-portrait), 2005, Stainless steel, polyester, acrylic fabric glue, blood (Image via Saatchi Gallery Online)

What advice do you have for other artists?

Realize that it’s not a race to get to the finish – it’s a lifelong calling. That’s the good news. You don’t have to be in a hurry. If you haven’t had a major retrospective at the Tate Modern by the time you’re 25, it’s OK. You’re not a lost cause.

You have to look for opportunity, and there is a fine line between being annoying and being persistent. That’s the part I don’t think anybody really likes. There is no perfect answer. Perseverance is a huge part of it, without being too caustic. The road to yes is lined with no’s.

Being that these are such uncertain times, the chances of monetary success are slim. It’s difficult. I don’t think making money should be the primary goal. If it is, that taints your purity. Then again, there is a real balance you have to strike between going for your career at all costs (never owning an iPod, nice clothes, a nice apartment, giving up on the idea of materialism, and maybe even a family) and the idea of being a responsible young adult. Finding a balance where you can support yourself, and continue to feed your soul and creativity, is a complex dance.

What has been your happiest moment?

I don’t know if I’ve had the happiest moment. I like to think it’s still to come! I have had some really satisfying moments, to think that all this effort has gotten me to a place where people are paying attention. Not that I don’t have my days or hours when I’m not happy… But I think we have the ability to change our path. If we find ourselves not doing so well one moment, we can choose to guide ourselves a different way. There is no reality – you make your own.

Why did you start Thwart Design?

A year out of school, I realized I really needed to have a creative outlet. I had a handful of friends that felt the same way, and I wanted to create a design collective as a venue for people to express their ideas and an avenue in which they could turn their vision into reality. The idea was to do something on the side that would be design for art sake. So I created Thwart Design – Thwart meaning to stop, put an end to, or to go around. It asks you to question design, and do something the opposite of it.

What I really liked about Thwart Design was just having a collective of creative people working together and supporting each other. In college you have this amazing collective energy. There is this driving peer network that really helps you be successful. I wanted to have that again.

What else did you notice, making the jump from school to the real world?

Like most art school graduates, I had unrealistic expectations when I finished school. I got really caught up in a hyperbolic design world that you read about in Wallpaper. The one with design rock-stars and these grand archetypes. With all due respect to design media, it represents a very small sliver of the design world. What they show is going to sell magazines, and struggling art school graduates toiling away in the trenches won’t.

When I graduated in 2002, I was going to do my own thing. Three months later, I had a ton of student loans and no income to pay for them. My needs changed, and I got a housewares job designing product for brands such as KitchenAid and Cuisinart. It was a good, senior position and gave me great experience in mass-market product design. But It wasn’t like I was Pablo Picasso, coming up with anything I wanted, and getting it manufactured.

That’s the real design world, though; those are the jobs that are out there and those are the jobs that round out your portfolio and help prepare you to launch your own projects. You learn a lot in those trenches. To no fault of Pratt’s, they don’t really set you up for the day-to-day of working in design. For the first year after graduating, I was definitely feeling my way around, independently, and in a way I’m thankful for that because I learned a lot about what I needed.

Tell us about your DWR projects.

In 2003 or 2004, I did a project called “Design Without Reach”. It parodied, and at the same time paid homage, to Design Within Reach. I took all these products of theirs and showed how to make them out of househole items – like a Tootsie-Pop version of the Nelson Clock. It did well on the blogs, got a lot of attention, and drew people into the website. At the time people were doing a lot of DIY stuff – I even got a few book offers – way more attention that I thought I was going to get.

Recently my fiancee and I produced a sequel called the “Tools for Dying” collection, because DWR was opening its Tools for Living stores in New York and California. I couldn’t resist.

You’ve also organized a few Thwart Design shows. How did that come about?

I used that momentum from the “Design Without Reach” project to book a show for ICFF in 2004. I called the Thwart Design contributors, and we had 2 1/2 months to create a cohesive show which ended up being called The Living Room. We set up a living room, and each product was a part of it. We had a couch, curtains, a mirror, lamps – all the essentials. Since it was a “living” room, all the things were either once living, or objects that were already dead and given another life. I made a ceramic vase that had a print of a bunch of dirt around it, so it was almost like replanting your flowers. It was a lot of fun, and cool to be a part of that ICFF world.

In 2007 I organized another show in Dumbo; a charity event. I took a bit different strategy in that I asked a bunch of designers to make sustainable green clocks for a competition called “Make Time for a Green Cause.” We held it at Spring gallery, and it was a great success. We had a ton of support – fifty local designers submitted clocks, and we auctioned them all off. All the money we raised went to this organization that would plant trees. We ended up planting something like 40,000 trees from the profits – it was a great event. I think that’s such a great feeling for people who get so stuck in their design-related day jobs that they don’t have the opportunity or time to participate in a show. To be able to facilitate that was really cool. Plus, I met my future wife at that show.

One of my favorite pieces is your clock, which I saw at Spring gallery.

Spring now produces my clocks for me, since demand was too high for me to continue making the clocks on my own. I used to make them myself until this one point; I remember it so vividly – I was living in Dumbo, my studio was in the Navy Yard, and I needed to drop off a shipment at Spring. I had this whole elaborate assembly line, where I was cutting pieces of molding, gluing them, clamping, and spray-mounting.

I stayed up all night making these clocks that needed to ship the next day. That night there was a torrential downpour, and I was on my bike, with two garbage bags full of boxed clocks, no sleep, riding my bike uphill back to Dumbo, hours before I had to go to work. It was a labor of love, but after that, I told Spring that I needed assistance, and they started working with an artisan in Vermont to manufacture my clock for me.

What are you working on now?

Since then I’ve done a few other products, and I’m working on some patterns and putting together a group show. Pretty recently, I manufactured a small run of a piggy banks that look like a pork chop. I actually scanned a pork chop, and then printed that image on ceramic. I had 50 of them made by these great potters in Greenpoint. That was something I had to invest a lot of money in, because of the printing on both sides and the lengthy and involved glazing process.

We love Rob’s Pork Chop piggy bank so much that we’ve put it up for sale exclusively in our webstore. $60, printed and glazed ceramic, handmade in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

I read your philosophy on your website, and it mentioned how you see yourselves as “DJs of design, sampling, mixing and spinning together from different sources to create something entirely unique.” I think that’s a fantastic analogy. Could you talk a little about that?

Christine: Well it kind of goes back to, there aren’t any new ideas. You can’t be truly original. Everything is built upon something that came before. So you have to take that into consideration when you’re creating something. Why start from scratch? Find a couple of things that are doing something well and bring them together and mix them up. Musicians sample sounds. We sample form, or color, or texture.

Alex: But it’s like the difference between a late-’90s Puff Daddy song and a really good Chemical Brothers song. We’ll take stuff, and sample it, and abstract it, rather than just sample the exact thing. We won’t take what we call the “Cast This” route, which is just taking something you find and casting it. That’s the Puff Daddy version.

In my opinion, in order for sampling to work well you have to go the “idea” route. If you’re going to copy something that already exists in the world, it can be really cool, but there has to be a conceptual reason behind it. Your version has to illuminate some deeper meaning in that common object.

Alex: I also think part of it is that casting is a very simple manufacturing method. For example, when you first learn to slip-cast porcelain, the first couple molds you’re going to make will be of something you have in your house. You’ll cast a tabasco bottle or something. And it will look pretty cool. But you shouldn’t think it’s anything more than that.

Christine: It’s an easy trap to fall into. An important part of “sampling” is “editing”. That’s what makes a great designer – someone who can really edit.

That’s where having two people helps.

Christine: Exactly.

Alex: And that’s another reason why it’s great to collaborate with other people. Say it’s the two of us collaborating with two others. It really makes it even better. You come up with some really good stuff together. I always enjoy it. We’re going to be collaborating with Scrapile on a furniture line for ICFF this year.

Christine: With the right people, you can get better, cooperative work.

Alex: The one person design “star”, or whatever the fuck they want to call it, pretty much puts out the same shit over and over again. Their stuff all looks the same.

Christine: And that’s definitely not what our work is about. We’re always thinking what would be most appropriate.

You started redstr/collective in 2003. What gave you the confidence to strike out on your own?

Christine: I don’t even know if it was confidence. We were just jobless, and we had nothing else to do, so we were like, “Might as well make our own stuff.”

Alex: I always tell people the same thing. Sheer stupidity. I really go with that. The other thing, too, is that we were given a good opportunity. At the time we were both freelancing for random people. Christine was working for Boym Patners, where she worked for 8 years or so.

Christine: I kind of knew the inside of the business, from them. They didn’t make any money on product design. They’d get $8 royalty checks. That doesn’t pay any bills. So they did all this exhibition design work. But it was interesting, they started doing the monuments and stuff then, and so it was like actually you could make a product, and sell it to a small base, and actually make some money. So it was like, well if they can do it… That kind of showed me that you can do your own stuff and make money. If you’re smart about it.

Alex: And after that, we met with Dave Alhadeff from The Future Perfect, just when he was starting his store. He had like one piece of furniture in there.

Christine: He wasn’t even open. Basically he needed to find people with stuff. Which was really key for us and for a lot of designers, because it brought a lot of people together. It was the right thing at the right time, and it just was great.

Alex: We didn’t even have anything produced, yet. We just had ideas and random prototypes and we didn’t know what we were going to do with it. We met with him, and he was like, “OK, I want this many of this product and this many of this product in 2 months.” And then, fuck, we had to make them.

Christine: It was a good problem to have.

Alex: We had the ambition, we had the background to do it, and then we were given an opportunity. Those three things, I think, were vital to how we started.

Christine: One of our first products was the barf bags. We went to ICFF one year, maybe 2002, and it was just really horrible. It made us kind of ill, and we wanted to make a statement about it.

Wow. I love that product, and it makes it even better to know that it was a reaction to ICFF.

Christine: Yeah. We just had to do something to respond to it.

Alex: Our attitude is, if we see something we don’t like, it’s better to not just talk shit about it but actually design something as a response.

Christine: All designers can talk shit. It’s easy to say, “That sucks,” or “I had that idea last year.”

I think that’s a great way to turn a negative into something positive – to actively respond. And then, once you guys were making things, how did you get the word out about your work?

Alex: A lot of us who were connected through The Future Perfect – Jason Miller, Tobias Wong, Scrapile, and others – started doing group shows together. And that was really important, because it drove people to see the work. And off of that was the press vehicle.

Christine: People were dying to see something new and interesting, so I like to think a lot of it happened because the work was just good. But at the same time, you have to know how to get it out there.

Alex: I think we all had the feeling, at that point, that it was a lot better to get attention for us collectively as a community or a movement. And then the work on its own, each individual piece and person, kind of stands out.

Do you think this community/group of designers you’ve been talking about still exists?

Alex: Some of the people are still around, and some of them have splintered off. I think the nature of the design business was a certain way between 2003 and 2006, and after 2006, the things going on in the economy have kind of caused people to go their own ways. There aren’t so many of these group shows. There aren’t so many of the sponsors that want to pay for these group shows. Everyone started struggling more just to pay rent, and that kind of put a damper on it.

It’s great that you brought up sponsors. Independent designers have to know how to approach that world and make them care about design. How did you guys get sponsors for your shows?

Alex: Sometimes we reached out, and sometimes people would come to us. A lot of times with the group shows, because they were done either through The Future Perfect or curated by Tobias Wong, there’d be a sponsor already in place.

Christine: Well anytime you’re throwing a party, you’ve gotta have liquor
, and you don’t want to pay for it. Alcohol sponsors are so easy to get. They’re whores.

Alex: A lot of times you can get the liquor sponsors not just to give you the free liquor but to pay for the invites, and staff, and bartenders and stuff.

Christine: And we’ve done some eco-products with sponsors that gave us new materials and asked us to do something with them. That’s always fun.

Alex: Getting sponsored isn’t just about having someone write you a check. Like Christine was saying, materials sponsors or vendors can pay for the production of things. We’ve done shows with Bettencourt Green Building Supplies, where they supplied all the materials. That helps the designers out a lot.

What do you consider to be your biggest success so far?

Christine: For me, probably the American Dollhouse show. We had a good body of work and it was a vision that we presented. I’m really proud of that. And also the cups, because we’ve gotten to sell them!

Alex: The cups have done really well. They’ve been in a lot of publications and magazines. The fact that the Brooklyn Museum and MoMA picked them up kind of made me the happiest. I think the cups combine everything we’ve learned both creatively and in terms of running a business.

So how did you get the word out about your first product?

I designed the “Handful of Plates” when I was in school in Holland. The plates were already in the press in Europe a lot before I graduated. Then I approached a manufacturer, and he wanted to pick it up right away. It was really easy, because he’d already seen the product and he knew it.

What’s your impression of US vs. European design? We’ve been asking a few people this question now, and it always seems to be a real hot-button issue.

I guess there’s a difference because there’s a cultural difference. I don’t think design is something that Americans grow up with. We do grow up with it. Especially in Holland. It’s such a designed country, it’s almost ridiculous, from the tiles, to signage to lampposts, post office boxes etc. So it’s going to be different. There’s a taste-level difference, and there’s a difference in understanding proportions, color, etc. There are good American designers and there is good American design, but there is less than there could be.

I think mostly it’s the design education in the US. Anyone can get into design school here. I don’t feel like the bar is very high. And it’s a different type of education, because of the amount of money it costs.

That was something interesting which came up when we interviewed Robert Langhorn, who teaches at Pratt. He mentioned how students here feel they have a certain entitlement to passing classes, because they’re paying so much money to attend.

Right. Teachers in the US are too afraid they’re going to offend someone. I think the first thing you need to learn is that any commentary on your design is not personal. It’s about your work. If everyone took everything that someone said personally, no one would function in this world. You shouldn’t be offended about that kind of criticism. You usually kind of get pissed off for about a second, and then you let it go.

Also, it seems like students get the chance to learn to have their own signature work. The schools kind of say, “Now you’re going to learn this,” and “Now you’re going to learn that.” The schedules are so tight students are always in school. They never have time for themselves to really think about their projects. Schools are open 24/7, so there’s no discipline enforced. There are no points when the school or the shop closes, so you have to stop working. Students just go 24/7. Which doesn’t teach you work ethic. It becomes this 24/7 thing.

I know I work a lot, but there’s a point where you just have to stop. My husband Jan works from 9 to 6 and then he’s done. The brain turns off, and he’s off looking for food or thinking about soccer or something else than working. And that’s much more what we learn to do in Holland. We had to – our school would close. It might seem like a little thing, but you actually learn to think very rationally and very quickly. You’re more orderly. You maybe even come to better conclusions about your designs, since you’re not constantly in front of your work. By pulling away ideas come as well.

I’m going to segue that into another question I have: Do you have any advice for someone trying to strike out on their own and start a business?

Yeah. Be honest to yourself. Figure out if you can really do it. If you can really push yourself to work every day. Maybe try freelancing first, and see how that goes. If you’re going to start on your own, you need capital. Or you need to know you have freelance jobs that can support you. Little gigs here and there that have nothing to do with your own stuff.

Living off royalties is hard. You need a lot of royalties to make it work. Another way is to sell your own pieces. But that isn’t easy right away, either, because you need to invest first. A lot of people have this romantic idea of working for yourself. But it’s not really like that.

Yes, I think you learn that really quickly.

In a certain sense it is, because you do set your own schedule. But you still have to call people between 9 and 6. And we work with Europe a lot, so we need to get things out as early in our day as possible. Even though you’re on your own, you are still going to end up on a schedule.

You also have to be honest about if you really have the skills to work on your own. Figure out what you’re really good at, and what your signature is. What you do and what you don’t do. Maybe you do it all. But there is always a certain way in which you do things.

I think in order to compete, you have to have something that you can sell as your strength, something to set you apart from the crowd.

Not necessarily. I think some people have good enough connections and they do well even though their work is not that interesting. There are always things out there which don’t seem competitive. There are these moments when you don’t really agree that someone’s design is that interesting or that innovative, but you still see it everywhere. Some people are just really, really good business people. Then again it probably is good that I don’t always like everything out there, then I would have nothing to design anymore and it would seem even more useless to design more objects.

What has been your biggest success?

About three years ago, the rings took off, and basically my normal life as a designer was over. The rings gained a lot of momentum and are still going. The glasses are also doing really well, but I think the rings were more innovative at the time they came out.

You’ve worked with manufacturers and distributors, as well as manufacturing and distributing your products on your own. What do you see as the pros and cons of each route?

You learn a lot when you do your own distribution and manufacturing. I did everything for the rings myself. Because of that experience, when I work with companies now, I know what’s going on behind the scenes. Or what’s not going on… If you’ve never sold your own stuff, it’s harder to understand the different cultures and how people buy or don’t buy. Another thing is that even though a store might be so prestigious and great, they’re often hard to deal with.

At the same time, if you don’t have to learn these lessons and you find manufacturers for everything, and you’re happy with the way everything goes, then by all means go that route. The pro of working with a manufacturer is you don’t have to do anything, and you get royalties. The cons are that you might miss out on learning some things.

Can you give us any details about what’s on the horizon for you?

Well, more products are coming out for the Dutch company that did the Treehooked. They asked us to do some new pieces. As well as an older piece that has finally been taken into production by another company. More soon on that. And we’ve been asked to do an interior for Art Basel in Miami as well as 5th Avenue for Christmas. As well as possibly consulting for a Design Centre in NYC.

How did Citizen:Citizen begin?

When we started, the idea was to bring British design over to America. I was working with two business partners. The thinking behind it was that America was a bit backward. We felt that they were 10 years behind what was going on in Europe, as far as the advancement of design and object culture.

It probably still is.

It’s certainly not where Europe is. That’s a whole bigger conversation, though. But the general premise was that we could bring what we saw in Europe, particularly what was going on in London, and cross-pollinate it. One of the ideas was to hopefully open a gallery in Brooklyn, and bring what was going on in the eastern part of London over to New York. And then conversely, take what was going on in Brooklyn and cross-pollinate it back to Europe.

That was the initial notion. So we set up a gallery in New York and brought over some Frederickson Stallard pieces. About a year later, my business partners decided that they wanted to get day jobs. It was really left to me to understand whether I wanted to keep Citizen or walk away from it. And if I did keep it, what would it be?

I realized that I was most passionate about the objects in the collection which were more conceptual. They were really commenting on themselves, or the history of the material, or their context within the culture. From that moment, it was very apparent where I wanted the company to go. I started working with Tobias Wong, and we brought in Cory Ingram, who did the Crude perfume. We collaborated with Jimmy Jane. There was a whole raft of new designers and artists.

Where are you positioning Citizen:Citizen?

I think we’re very consciously commercial. We’re not ashamed of that. I think a lot of art galleries pretend they’re not commercial, but in my mind Wal-Mart and Gagosian are not that dissimilar. On one level, they’re really not.

We’ve landed, curiously, in-between these two worlds. We’re not quite a manufacturing agent. We’re not just coming in with a lot of money and a lot of expertise in making and selling, although there is expertise in making and selling. And we’re not the artist. But then, we are.

You’re not not the artist.

We are living in a middle ground, between artist and producer. We do both. And maybe that’s a good thing. I have been both an artist and a maker, so I understand the problems on both sides.

What stores have been doing well for you?

Well, you have to work with what’s in the market. There’s a huge difference between the stores that we sell to and the store that we will build. At the moment, the stores which we’ve built have been pop-up stores. Whether it be the pharmacy space that we built down in Los Angeles, or the mini-market that we collaborated on here in San Francisco.

If you think about a store, it is a context for the objects. Citizen’s about these objects, and you’re providing them with a context. A store is also about selling, and there’s all kinds of psychology behind that. Wal-Mart has store psychologists determining the whole layout, determining where the bread counter goes, etc. They do whole scientific studies on spending patterns.

Of course, none of us smaller stores are that sophisticated. And yet, we do have an understanding that the aesthetic, the interior, and the way people go around it will probably affect their decision to buy. It’s affecting their belief in you, and therefore their belief in the objects.

For us, one of the things that is really challenging is finding the right context to sell the objects. On one level, we’re commenting on consumption, overconsumption, and global capital. But we’re not just deriding it, we’re also participating in it.

Wholesaling your objects poses an interesting challenge, because you’re handing your objects off to someone else and hoping that they carry your brand message on correctly to the customer.

Yeah, it has to translate, doesn’t it? We’re doing something so fucking difficult, in many ways. We’re very commercial, but in some respects it’s not overt. We’re walking a very confusing line. I’ve always thought of us more as a fashion brand than anything else. We’re definitely not a giftware supplier, like Areaware or Charles & Marie. I’m not dismissing what they do, but that’s not our intention. I could go and do that, but I don’t want to. We’re trying to do something cultural.

The whole point of Citizen:Citizen is that you could take our object and put it in one of those giftware companies. It could exist there. But then it would be a really different object. I’ve provided a different lens through which you look at it. When you place the Citizen:Citizen lens over something, it hopefully illuminates new ways of seeing the ordinary.

There’s nothing more poetic than when you see the ordinary afresh. Whether it be through a wonderful teacher at school, or through your own personal development. Or through art, maybe something moves you. Or through culture. You go to another country and suddenly you realize a lot more about your own country when you come home. You have these moments of mild enlightenment.

What we’re trying to do with our objects is to create that paradigm shift.

Can you tell us about any new objects that will be coming out?

I’ve just been speaking to a guy called Tomas Kral. He’s taking these very standard glass objects, such as ketchup bottles and jam jars, and re-valuing them through manipulations like etching and cutting. He’s taking the ordinary and making it extraordinary. It’s also very interesting from a recycling standpoint.

Going back to the conversation of American vs. European design, what do you think is going on there?

There’s a huge gap. And it is not being filled and it is not being supported and it is not being sponsored. With all the will in the world, 100 underpaid creatives in Brooklyn are not necessarily going to change that. Change has got to be systemic and it has got to come from within the institutions. The concept of design has to be broadened and the whole discourse about design has to open up.

In many ways, there’s been a lot more design going on here in the US. It’s just very commercial. It’s going on within Apple and Gap and Williams Sonoma and Pottery Barn. And the Genentechs of this area, all the genetic engineering companies are incredibly design-heavy. All the Silicon Valley companies are incredibly design-heavy.

If you look to the last revolution, which was the industrial revolution in Northern Europe circa 1800, then a comporably-scaled revolution is taking place 20 miles south of here [San Francisco]. Design is often linked with huge cultural shifts. If you look at design in Victorian times, it was because of new technologies: steam power, the smelting of steel, new materials which became available, new distribution systems…

Design does not sit like a kind of crust on top of culture. It’s deeply embedded. When we get these huge shifts, then we’ll get huge shifts in design. The next huge shift is an understanding of what sustainability is. Tha
t’s a great opportunity. But government needs to fund it. They can give tax breaks, or they can institutionalize it, or they can put it out to private contract. If they can invent the atomic bomb, then they can do new power systems. I look at design in this much bigger place.