Twelve different designers hand picked by the famous Phillpe Stark are invited to join him at his studio in France. Stark’s reality television series Design For Life gives these young designers the opportunity to win a six-month apprenticeship within his company.
After the initial introduction Stark hands down the first task to the students to get them thinking like a designer and so he can understand each students pattern of thought. The task is to collect two products that decipher between gender, functionality and ecology. Some students went for the more obvious approach such as nappies being non ecological, where others went for a more symbolic approach where a joystick is represented as a phallic symbol. Stark was impressed by out of the box thinking as opposed to the unimaginative results.
The next major brief was to create a product that’s is ethical, ecological, democratic, used on a daily basis and non-electric. We follow the remaining students along their journey of inspiration and how they come about their ideas. Some visited exhibitions while others felt more comfortable brainstorming ideas. Some results were t-shirts with a message and a water meter for within the home. At the end of the week Stark was less than impressed with the overall results as many were not technically products and many took the lazy approach. Due to this the brief for the week after was the same to improve what had already been set and again what was produced was not great but better than the week before. We learn of the students repairing their mistakes from the week before and how they go about this.
As the number of students drops the expectations and importance rise, as they focus on improving their projects we are provided into a insight of the different ways designers solve problems. The next step was to pitch their design to Jean Phillipe so he is able to make a prototype, although this is where many of the students realises there are some missing links within their design. Different methods were again shown in the students approach to design a logo and capture their product through one image. Some of the students spent time with the target market and other went to the general public to search for opinions.
The last two students were left and had different areas of their product to fix before their trip to the advertising agency. Mike needed to ‘beautify’ his magnetic tray and cutlery set and Isla needed to correct her branding and logo. In the end Stark loved the overall beauty of Isla’s products, which outweighed Mike’s advertising. I enjoyed observing the different approaches people took into their design making process. As young designers we are able to take the effective practices that achieve good results and apply this to our own.
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