Name: Brainstorm Design 2019: Design in Focus: the Best for the Most for the Least
Uploaded: 2019-03-21
Duration: 12 min 3 s
Description: What can we as designers and creatives learn from the Eameses that might apply to the challenges we face today?

I'm the youngest of the five grand children of Charles and Ray. Hold on, we'll do a different graphic, there. Charles and Ray, as extraordinary as they were as designers, they were even more wonderful as grand parents. When they wanted to design a chair, they didn't wanna make it once, they wanted to create a delivery system so that they could make it a 100, 000 times. So when they worked together, they would start at their own home, tried a few other ideas, make a few prototypes. And then they will take the ideas to the office and then make a few thousand. And then when it reached about ten thousands, they were ready to ship off everything to Herman Miller who would start scaling at up to a 100, 000 chairs. The way they looked at it, was we wanted to make the best product for the most people for the least amount of money. One, the reason they like designing chairs, it was architecture, they can hold in that hand. You can control all the decision, you can make it in- house, you can design the prototype, you can do the graphics for the advertising and so everything was contained in one place. As opposed if you are designing a building, you have a mason, a plumber, a painter, they wanna to be able to control all the choices. This is the most important diagram I'm going to share with you today. This is how Charles and Ray explain the design process to their client. The first circle was what they wanted to accomplish with the office. The second one was the client itself. But there was always a third circle. It was society as a whole and you needed to focus your attention And your time to the part that overlap for all three. So for Herman Miller, it was making a sustainable chair. For IBM, it was to help people get over their fear of computers and that actually computers could aid people, not it be a detriment. For the Indian government, when the Nauru government came to Charles and Ray and were very concerned about the possibility of Cultures getting eclipsed by Western Civilization, it was creating the national and [ INAUDIBLE ] design in Amanabad. For the US government, when they wanted to bridge the communication gap with Russia it was doing glimpses of the USA in Moscow Now, what i always enjoyed was watching Charles and Ray work on a problem. They were very elliptical even as they asked the questions of what they would be accomplishing. I've heard a lot over these last two days about getting to the core problem. So the lounge sharing Ottoman that you see, when they were designing that, they said they were designing seating. They did not say they were designing a chair, because if they said that they would be eliminating the Ottoman even before they thought of it. The chair on the right was from a, they were looking lots of materials at the time they were designing chairs. Aluminum, molded plywood, plastic, fiberglass. But I also to think of trios rise disrupters because they were looking at other objects being made and what materials were being used and I think everyone will recognize once I say this that they noticed shopping cards the gross fee store using wirerod could be another material to make that share chair. The details are not the details. They make the product it will in the end be these details that gives the product that's life. That's a very important piece to it. For Charles and Ray, you practice quality by doing it. And it was also not how pretty something looked. It's whether it worked. And there was always the importance of the appropriateness of the solution to the problem. Now, when Charles and Ray got married, they moved to Los Angeles so they wouldn't know anyone and they could focus producing the designs that Charles and Errol had won at MOMA. Now when they started making these prototypes of these molded plywood chairs. What's interesting is they made a very important discovery, that how something is made influences its design. So they quickly realized, they normally had to make the prototypes, they had to make the machines that made the prototypes. And also please note, you notice a lot of those chairs have three legs? Charles and Ray thought that made a more stable chair, it would be better for the user until they tested it out and people don't know how to get out of the three legged chair, they would fall over. Charles Ray didn't worry about that, while those people would call failure, they would just call one last misconception This is Ray, working on the back patio of the Eames' house, working on a toy design. Charles and Ray felt that toys were preludes to serious ideas. They designed toys like the house of cards, the little toys, this one, the toy. They also collected toys from cultures and societies and from countries around the world For example Faith from Japan to Europe to Mexico, to India, when they went on their trips, they felt that they could learn a lot by another culture just by the toys, and by the folk art collected by the society. And they could see the materials that were getting used, they could see the color pallets. And so that's actually what we're archiving today. The other thing that's interesting about this photograph is that Charles and Ray, there's actually very few drawings when they worked on a project because they liked to mock up the idea as soon as possible in the material. They didn't just jot something on a napkin. They actually acted on it immediately and wanted to start building it. Cuz if it's in your head it's gonna be different than what's in my head but if we are starting to put the idea together they always thought you get there more quickly and more successfully. Now, Charles Ray as I said were extra ordinary grand parents we thought everyone's grand parents made three screen slide shows in movies like powers of ten, they share whatever they are working on Charles died when I was 12 and [ UNKNOWN ] died when I was 22. I'm often asked what one of my earliest memory as spending time with them? [ UNKNOWN ] earliest one is going out to dinner with them and having coming back from dinner and we had had a vegetable soup called borscht. And so we're walking back and Charles turns me and said what do you think of dinner? And I said, I didn't like it very much. He turned to me again. He said, how would you have done things differently? Which meant if you were gonna complain about something you better have another solution. It was also very empowering. I felt I was listened to. It also taught me to think about what Tim Brown was saying. Stepping back and thinking about the constraints of what that chef was going through. I didn't even know what the ingredients were. But Charles and I talked about it and said we couldn't make marsh potatoes and [ UNKNOWN ] salad. Maybe it was the chef's grandmother's birthday and he was thinking about her. But talked to me about working within constrain. When you were Charles and Ray you were always learning. Now he's Charles and Ray during the building of their home, case study house number eight. Arts and architecture magazine in Los Angeles was developing a program called the case study house which was to see how the advances made during the war effort could be applied to the returning GIs in the housing crisis that would be coming up. So Charles [ UNKNOWN ] made themselves their own client. And in this case, yes, it only took six weeks to build the house, but it took three and a half years to get the parts. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Charles and Ray would often say we don't do art, we solve problems. Also, they also wanted culture and society to reach a point that there wasn't a separate word for art, it was just simply a part of your life. This is the aims house today. Now Ray came to design from painting, and Charles came to it from architecture. But they both felt, whether it's a house or film or chair, it must have a structural concept. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] When they worked on a problem, that was something they wanted to solve, or something that someone came to them and ask them to help solve. So working with Herman Miller, the interest was making a sustainable chair that could be mass produced, as I said, 100, 000 times. So to do that The would have to scale lab and keep looking at how to make the parts each of the weak points stronger and use more and more sustainable materials. Charles Ray by the 1970s was realizing the impact on the enviroment with the production of the furniture. So that's why the side chair started giving the short mouths are not glued on, they're cast in the form. Ray herself discontinued the use of rosewood because when she heard the impact on the Amazon Forest with the harvesting of the wood, and she told us as the next generation, when it can come back as a sustainable material bring it back, but for a while there's only cherry and walnut that was used on the launch chair and ottoman for about 10 or 15 years Now, whenever Charles and Ray worked with one of their clients, what they always said it was always important to focus on what they called the guest- host relationship. It means whether you are a doctor, an architect, a sculptor. Your job is to anticipate the needs of your client before they even thought of them. Now this is the IBM Pavillion at the 1964 World's Fair. And IBM came to them and said, people are afraid of computers and they think there's witchcraft in them and there's something sinister is going on. How do we get through this? So at the world's fair, there was an exhibit down below on the lower level of the pavilion showing the beauty of mathematics, a world of numbers and beyond. And up above was a multi screen presentation showing how computers were gonna help us solve these problems as they were getting more complex as populations were growing Transportation, business, and everything [ UNKNOWN ] more and more interconnected. This is that same exhibit today. It's in Michigan. When Charles [ UNKNOWN ] designed an exhibit, they knew you can't show everything on a subject but you could show nine or ten things that get someone excited in that they wanted to learn more. They also said, you only show what you understand. And they also said, you know what you have to excite the ten year old child, but you also can't embarrass the professional in the field. One of their last projects was powers of ten. Again back to the idea of trying to show how everything is connected. Because what concerned them is having grandchildren, it is hard to understand something you can't visualized. So, they decided they could show how everything is connected from the smallest to the largest by distance. I think this film has become even more relevant today because Charles Ray always said we need to be comfortable in change, but I really believe we need to be comfortable changing scale. It's not about how big something is, it's how big something is next to something else. And I'm noticing with my own children That everything looks the same on the screen to them, and they're not used to understanding how much bigger something is next to something else. So we as [ UNKNOWN ] office have been doing workshops not just in the classroom, but also in the boardroom, because it's back to what Tim said. You really have to step back. You have to think about are you seeing the whole situation or just a symptom? Eventually everything connects people ideas objects the quality of the connections is the key to the quality per se [ UNKNOWN ] they never delegated understanding they join working hard [ UNKNOWN ] pleasure in working hard they were very supported they did not worry about failure they work in their life [ UNKNOWN ] When the stamps came out, it was really interesting. People realized, they designed the [ UNKNOWN ] but I didn't know they made that film. If you notice when you look at all the different areas they explored, in everything you participate it, you sat in the chair, you watched the film, you played with the toys. That's what's extraordinary about their work. So Charles and Ray shifted scales easily from something from a personal project to maybe a global solution in order for everyone to have the best for the most for the least, thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Brainstorm Design 2019: Design in Focus: the Best for the Most for the Least

Design

What can we as designers and creatives learn from the Eameses that might apply to the challenges we face today?