Design For Life - Episode 3

Philippe Starck has now decided to give them a generic task to test and develop their way of thinking. In the next project he wants to see the thought behind magnificent, the real product that can be sold. So their brief is to design any product that is ethical, ecological, demographic for daily use and not electronic. He wants to see and feel the honesty, soul and morals they have as designers. His goal for them is to invent more than redesign due to the necessity and purpose of redesign.


Philippe Starck’s designs reflect mainly sustainability. He wants the students to learn that his briefs are very broad as for them to be creative and not design. He believes that creation is creativity and not speaking design. He doesn’t want this project to be a redesign of a chair. He states “I don’t want redo redo redo”. Starck wants them to create a product which satisfies ethics, ecology and is demographic like the wind up radio. So we see their journey into the discovery of an idea through visiting the environment and seeing how people interact with it and from there improving a product to help them but also experiencing first hand. E.g. one person sleeps as a homeless person.

The applicants have to have self believe and confidence as Tom Edison states “invention was 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration but getting things to work is where the stress lies”. Starck wants his student to be convincing through the role they play as a designer who they are designing for. So he has asked them to go to a circus and be one of them. Meaning he wants them to think a certain way, take a risk and have someone intrigued by it. He has unconventional methods as to measure performance in pitching an idea on every level not just presentation like capturing consumers attention when a product is manufactured and global.

It is a crucial idea that we experience and understand the needs of the people as designers. But they may not know what they need so we have to be them to know. Designers need to be, feel, act like our market. We get told that getting fully formed ideas in less than a week is possible. To Philippe Starck it is important to know every aspect of your design.