Have you ever been to the show in Milan?

No I haven’t actually, not as a spectator or an exhibitor. Two of my colleagues from Farm, our collective, went last year with the council. They recommended it; I’d have gone if I had been selected.

Hopefully I will be showing some pendant lights and some small side tables, they will be an extension of the fluting work I have already done. It will probably incorporate a floral pattern and consist entirely of cardboard. Similar to the stuff I have already done, but new prototypes. I have now finally developed a process that will enable them to be made by a machine, which is something I have been struggling with quite a lot. When I first did the pieces, they were for university and I did them entirely by hand. The pendant lights show off the potential for the process quite well because the light coming through it looks nice, it shows up the corrugations. It projects the pattern onto nearby walls.

 

I hear that there is more of an industry focus to Milan. I think I am going to be presenting my work to potential retailers and manufacturers as opposed to a personal consumption market. I hope to show everybody that I have got these pieces and that they can be manufactured, and I think it is just really about spreading the process a little further. It has been featured in Design Week last summer; I think it could be a fairly significant move in terms of promoting sustainability and the potential diversity in the process. I think people associate sustainability with boring, limited design and I want to show people that there is more potential out there.

The cardboard material used is to a large extent recycled. All the excess material gets recycled in turn. I’m trying to aim these products at rather an exclusive end of the market to try and elevate these materials to a different level. It shows that you could recycle these pieces quite easily. The significance of these items goes towards the promotion of designing with some form of sustainable specification. There are people who are very pedantic about eco-friendly design, and they would probably write-off my product if they found out I used PVA. I don’t think it has got be that strict. It is just about getting people to think, and realise that it is possible to do a little bit more with the eco-friendly material. Hopefully at some point within the next decade there will be a big move towards eco-friendly design. People are starting to get interested in it and it is kicking off already. If everyone could design with some form of positive specification, whether it is a sustainable material or some form of positive message to the user, if every design incorporated that it would be for the better. It doesn’t have to be total, it doesn’t have to be strict. Some level of consideration is needed, designers have got more responsibility than most realise.

I’ve been to new designers and 100% East with Farm. I’ve never done anything quite as trade-based as Milan will be. It started with New Designers, and if you get selected by your college it is guaranteed your stuff will get noticed. From that came everything else, all the offers started to come in. So from that early point you realise how important it is to make the most of the opportunity because these shows can cost a lot of money. I want to talk to people who have been there before, particularly to Salone Satellite, and learn from them how to approach it.

 

It has taken me a while to achieve these developments in the fluting process, so I want to continue with that side of things. I’ve got the laptop case (as seen in the above photo) and I think the possibilities for this approach are never-ending. I’m not going to cut that short after Milan. I feel any success so far has been through cardboard and I do want to diversify at some point, so it will be like starting again. It will almost be like a new semester at university for me after Milan. Hopefully I will have a process sorted for the fluting process and let people carry on with that while I focus on whatever else is next.

I’m a new member. I graduated last summer and joined around then. I went to the awards in December, which was basically a networking session for me and made me realise that it was very worthwhile to develop an involvement in Hidden Art.