Three Layer Cake

Who:  Alexander Taylor
When:  first met him in January 2007
Where:  2nd Floor, Stylepark in residence, Hahnenstraße 6, Cologne, Germany

About:  Born in Co. Durham in 1975, England, his love of the outdoors, the mountains, and skiing is hard-wired into his system, apparently just as is his ability to produce award-winning design pieces.  He graduated from Nottingham Trent University with a degree in Furniture and Product design in 1999, and after a brief time working for architects and self producing, his Antlers design (2003) was put into production by Thorsten van Elten.  The 'Antlers' coat hook won the Elle Decoration Home Accessory of the Year Award.  He then successively produced award-winning designs for Established & Sons, Fold Lights (2005) and for Zanotta as a E&Y Zanotta co-edition, the Butterfly Table 695 (2006).  Alexander was named Elle Decoration Young designer of the Year in 2005, and his Fold Lights family was named best in Lighting the same year.  Recently, the Fold Lights family was chosen for inclusion in the collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art, and his Butterfly Table 695 was awarded a prestigious 2006 Good Design Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design.  An incredibly nice, easy to talk to, and design-savvy guy, if you see him around, do take the chance to shake his hand and have a brief chat.  You won’t regret it.  [Next stop, Milan in April]
 

Your design philosophy.  What would the intro to the chapter on Alexander Taylor in the “Big Book of Design” say?  I am still pretty early in my career, and to answer this, I think experience is key.  I couldn’t profess to having had a philosophy when I started out.  Just as maybe a style comes through or a process while you’re working, a philosophy just evolves.  As you do more work I think it starts to become evident and you start to understand why you do certain things and why you go a certain way and that becomes a philosophy…  I’m not changing my philosophy really but my philosophy is developing as I’m learning more in the industry. 

This is the same format with the other producers, but there’s a difference in how much the larger companies can invest.  With an established Italian company like Zanotta, I don’t have the same involvement as I have with Thorsten, although principally the design format is the same.  I have a relationship with Martino Zanotta and meet and discuss my work with him whenever possible.  Zanotta has their manufacturing team and they take your concept and development work and then you see drawings for approval then should there be prototypes they would also be made.  The next time you see your design is on the exhibition stand.  And you don’t necessarily have regular contact with the bigger company except maybe if there is news for your piece for example if it wins an award, like the Butterfly table, obviously they call you and let you know.  Although it is a contrast with my relationship with Thorsten, with whom I also became personal friends, I do enjoy the very business-like side of working with a bigger company.  With Established & Sons, I’ve also been there from the start, so I’ve seen the company evolve, and was very involved in my first product. 

 
You mentioned that with a company that has more money to invest in production, you can change the way you design.  What do you mean?  I don’t think it’s a license to change your design.  You shouldn’t change the way you design, but if you can invest more in tooling and materials, you can obviously consider different types of products.

How has the transition from design school to design professional been?  Thorsten was your first manufacturer you said earlier.  How did that come about?  I met Thorsten after he did a talk at a design forum.  I went up to him afterwards and introduced myself and asked if I could show him my work.  I had worked for architects and designed kitchens and things like that, but in these situations, the people you really want to work for don’t always have a great deal of money to pay you, so I worked for six days a week and with designing kitchens I could earn enough money to live in London.  While I was doing that, I put down a few ideas to show Thorsten.

The first design I did for him was a light.  Although it was launched in his first collection it never went further because we were all learning then about production, margins, materials, and everything.  It wasn’t commercially viable.  So we knocked it on the head quite soon.  At the same time, I had another product that we were working on, the Antlers, and that worked both in terms of design and production.

What was the turning point for you?  The Antlers were my break in terms of working with a manufacturer.  That was the catalyst.  Although I self-produced and supplied for others, I wanted to get out of that.  So when the Antlers were shown in Milan, it gave me the start to see a couple of shows myself, a little after Thorsten took Antlers on, E&Y came and that was a nice break.  I had two manufacturers, then Established & Sons really helped launch me on to the International scene. 

What was the most important thing school taught you?
To just get on with it, because we weren’t lucky in that we didn’t have amazing guest lecturers or anything like that to really add to what we were doing.  I spent the first two years partying and the last year I just treated it like a job.  I went from nine to five, did what I had to do, and that was it.
 

What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned from the business world? I’m constantly learning about the structure of how the industry works from the business point of view.  I don’t really have a business head, but I try to break it down and work it out rationally.
 

What role does being a designer play in your life?  I don’t have a design studio where people come to work, I work for myself, so I really have to be careful.  When I first started doing this, I set myself a 5 year plan.  I had to be making a living within 5 years, not doing bits and pieces here, but with serious products out there.  A designer’s income is often royalty-based, and some people say it’s impossible to earn a living with royalties, but I disagree.  You have to design the right products for the right people, and I believe that royalties should be my core income and that’s the direction it’s going.  If you get a few products out there, it does take the pressure off of looking for that big break. I’ve been lucky that I’ve got 3 or 4 products out there with manufacturers that I’m happy to be involved with, so I’m happy to be past that initial stage, but I’m always thinking about the next big thing, the next design I can show, I’m always thinking about products.  It can take over. 

So are you designing every day, or…
I don’t sit down every single day and try to work on design.  It very much comes in waves.  If a couple of things click and I do intensive time working on my portfolio, I could have a couple of good weeks and do my designing for the year.  Other times I do guest lecturing, some teaching, I might be involved in private commissions or getting things produced for people, my own paperwork.  I try not to beat myself up over it if I don’t design every day.  As soon as I find I have to force a design, I stop.  It should be fun to create a design you really like.  As soon as you start to have a headache over it, it’s time to stop.  The teaching helps, although it does kind of drain you.  In some ways though, it’s quite rewarding.

 
I found out from you in Cologne that you like Big Brother.  One of the most important parts of Big Brother is the environment.  In Italy, the Big Brother house is always a very highly-styled interior.  How would you design a Big Brother interior?  Which elements do you think are the most important in a house for encouraging interaction?  Our Big Brother house is pretty garish, not even like a stage set, like a lab for experiments which is what it is trying to achieve I guess.  There’s no element of comfort in ours anymore and they are making it harder and harder.  It’s very harsh, and I think I would go about it the way I would design my home (but then it would be too easy for the contestants).  I like familiarity, if there are things people can relate to, things that would make them feel good.  It has to be comfortable.  I don’t want to live in a museum, and I can’t with my little boy anyway!  I’d obviously go for the furniture angle, but I think people need contrasts—  I’d choose old and new. 

 
What about your own home.  You were telling me that you just moved from Islington to...
Yes, we moved from a small 1.5 bedroom flat in Islington to a five bedroom Victorian townhouse on the South East coast.  Because of the property prices in London, there was really nowhere we could move up to a bigger house within the radius we wanted, so for the same money, we got so much more house by moving here, and quality of life is fantastic.  For my own home, my wife is in the fashion industry so she has nice prints and fabrics that offset more contemporary pieces, but then she also has more traditional things.  We used to joke that we’d have one side of the house old and one side new, and I think that’s probably true in every sense.  You need more traditional things to offset the more clinical contemporary look.  We only moved six months ago, so it’s still a work in progress.  We don’t have a big amount of nice furniture (yet!)

If you had to choose just one trade fair to attend each year, which would it be and why?  It’d have to be Milan, really.  It’s nice because everybody goes.  Maybe the novelty will wear off after I’ve been going for twenty years.  I like to go and catch up with people and meet new friends I’ve made in the industry.  I don’t see it as the place to try and go do business as a designer with a manufacturer, but then I’m not one to go and push new ideas anyway and I don’t think it’s the right place to do that.  I think people have the misconception that they’ll take their portfolio to Milan and meet companies and make deals.  I don’t worry about seeing every single party and every single piece of design, I go support friends and enjoy it for a few days in the industry.

Which three items would you place in a time capsule today that say the most about you and the times we live in?  A digital camera full of photographs and a full battery;  Fold Light because it’s my smallest product;  A daily paper—I read the Guardian every day.  It’s a very nicely designed paper.
 

What motivates you?  I guess this has changed a bit since having a family, but it’s a great experience when you see someone buying your work.  I used to have a studio behind Thorsten’s store, so I could see what was going on and I could see when my product sold.  That used to really motivate me, and I think that now it’s changing.  I want pieces that are going to be around for a long time.  And then there’s the Museum aspect.  After getting a piece in a Museum, I want to get more pieces in more Museums. 

Which food best describes your design style?  What was it five years ago?  What would you like it to be in five years?  I guess something like a sandwich in a way because it would be great to design the perfect sandwich.  It’s just something that most people have every day.  It’s something you can always improve on and can always do it better.  It’s not just a set dish with a set format, you don’t have to think about. 

I probably lived on sandwiches five years ago.  In five years, a really big sandwich…<laughter>  or maybe lobster and oyster! 

The first thing you notice in a restaurant?
The atmosphere. 

Eating what food brings back the best memories and why?
Last week, in the Alps, I had some Orangina which brought back memories of family camping holidays in the South of France.  I remember having Orangina then when you couldn’t get it in the UK, and I remembered when we went to the hypermarket and brought it out to the baking heat. 

The last piece of furniture/object/art you put in your home?
Actually an old school children’s chair for our little boy from an antiques market. 

No home is complete without…
I actually think I like a home when it’s been lived in, with people in it and there are things happening and there’s noise.  I don’t really like being home alone.

You’ll always pick up a magazine if ____________________ is on the cover

I don’t know if it’s about what’s on the cover…I’m not one for magazines really.  I don’t really discriminate, I pick anything up and put it back down after a few seconds.  Having said that, I read the Guardian and am attracted to it for its design.  I think it’s the best looking paper on the rack and when something is designed well and looks nice, people automatically want to pick it up and read it.

You’re most proud of your collection of…
I’m actually most proud of my prototypes!  I only have one of most of them, apart from the Fold lights of which I have about a dozen of the different processes on the way to the finished one, and I still have an unfolded butterfly table in acrylic.  The prototypes are just really nice things to have as a sort of reminder of my progression through the years.  They’re nice to have around.  My wife and I decided to spend some of the money from our wedding gifts to invest in prototypes, so we had the August sofa made and covered in leather.  We’re really happy with that.