Case study : Philippe Starck vs Grandpa Prateep Looking at old story seriously Good Design or Good Marketing.

During this New Year Holiday, I had the opportunity to visit my parents in Trat for a couple of days. It brought back the memory of my childhood such as the sounds of cooking, the smell of charcoal creative person, these experiences raise many questions for me in term of design in our commodity society today, where we call a civilized culture or may be a consumer culture?

Early morning on New Year day, January 1st 2011, the sound of morning had woken me up from my sleep. The sound that I have not heard for a long long time was the rooster sound. There is no need for an electrical alarm. Life was back to the basic needs.

After finished my morning routine, I came down and saw my father taking care of his garden. He had designed and created almost everything by himself starting from flower pots, hangers, shelves, planters, watering pots etc. and they work! Those designs are honest and have shown the truth as well as the appropriate use of materials to serve the functions with raw beauty. The designs have exhibited purely practical usage and the smart utilization of materials such as disposable, and recycle materials. Are they good designs? If yes, the following question would be, is my father a good designer? Is a practical design? Does the work of design have to be created by the educated designers? To answer those question, we have to find out a couple things first. For example,

What is design? What are the criteria of a good design and what is for? Who are the designers?

If the definition of design means a functional object which would help to make any tasks in daily life easier, then a good design would mean a designed object which is successfully used or served a particular purpose, wouldn't it? If the answer was yes, then my father would be an excellent designer who designed products to serve up the specific needs and concerned with use of materials which are friendly to the environment and can be found around him locally.

However in out commodity society today, only practical uses of the designed objects are not enough. Our design philosophies have been shaped by marketing and advertising to create customer's desires even with no needs for the use of products or do not practically functions as they are intended to be. There is much more complex design method than practical use when we are talking about profit.

What do you think about this design? Is this a good design or good marketing? 

As many of you know, this is the Lemons squeezer 'Juicy Salif', stainless steel, designed by Philippe Starck, made by Alessi, France/Italy, 1990s.

It is a metal lemon squeezer in the form of an inverted, elongated drop moulder with regular vertical grooves (forming a waving pattern) and standing on three, very tall, spider-like legs extending from the base.

Starck is an audacious designer. He realized that, by the 1980s, design had become a vehicle for consumption rather than merely the Bauhaus-influenced art of self-effacing functionality, or redesigning things to make them work better. The Juicy Salif lemon squeezer, a thing that doesn't work nearly as well as a traditional glass or plastic squeezer you can pick up anywhere less than a tenth the price, was designed for the sake of profited design. It fails to catch pips or pulp while its stiletto legs irreparably scratch your kitchen counter. Yes it is somehow, despite its pointlessness, an endearing and lovely thing. It blends the sci-fi aesthetic of a 1950s rocket with an elegantly extruded streamlining and the aluminium expressionism of Italian postwar coffee machines. It was the perfect accessory for the new kitchen aesthetic of steel and glass. Starck's Juicy Salif if the example of design for the sake of the designer - design as cult object rather than useful product.

In only 10 years, the Alessi Juicy Salif lemon squeezer has earned its place in the Olympus of design. It now stands among the divine Once the focus of heated debate and criticism for its supposedly impractical design, it now ranks with the historical greats at the MOMA in New York.

Well, according to the definition of design as practical objects, why many people are willing to spend a lot of money for this design which is not worked as it is supposed to be? Why the design has been successfully welcome both financially and respectfully?

"Starck, one of the most brilliant designers of his generation and, arguably, the man who has done more to elevate the idea of design than anyone else in the modern era, is paradoxically also responsible for the self-conscious museumification of the design object, the desire of design to be seen as art, which consequently negates any functional brief. The useful object finally becomes art object and receives a mandate to become useless." (Anonymous writer)

In my opinion, Starck is a very brilliant Deketor, who is very smart in marketing strategy and see the design as a window of the opportunity, especially in  this design. He understands his target groups and braves enough to put forward with his idea. It is not about practical function. It is about creating human desires in our consumer culture. In today world, fashion and lifestyle are everything, how the product makes you feel is how you judge whether you want to buy it or not. With this approach, he also has raised many questions and challenged many traditional ways of thinking and practicing design which would  have an impact to the field as a while which would be good or bad. As a result, I consider his philosophy is successfully transformed and executed in term of marketing and fame. However the younger designers have to understand his intention not merely following his fame by closing your eyes and trying to chasing the light.

With this particular piece, I do consider it neither a design product nor an art work as other critics. For me, art has much more complex meaning than merely beautiful form. Ir is just a beautiful useledd piece of metal with a good marketing strategy. Nonetheless, it is a fantastic piece of stretching and pushing the boundary as well as the limitation of design.

Now what's happened to my dad? Well...he has been enjoying his life. He may not be or never will be a "famous designer" but for me, he is a very good inventor/designer, who has been honest and respected the use of material, environment, and particularly himself and the world. The trip back to visit my folks this New Year holiday has reconfirmed my belief that being a good creative person is being a good human being with fresh and diverse perspectives including responsibility and honesty not only to yourself but others as well. However it is undeniable that we also need many more of creative minds that see things differently like Starck to make the wheel rolling...

Now what do you want to do and who do you want to be is up to you.