KBIS 2010/ As if 2008 didn't happen

I didn't make it to KBIS this year, but judging by the New York Times assessment in their story "A Sea of Bliss," I saw everything three years ago. I thought the industry had finally stopped focusing on all those multiple shower-heads, but according to the article they appear to have made a return this year. So much for water conservation!

Of course, it is also possible that this is the writer's first attendance at the show and she was overwhelmed by all the spouting water. In home furnishing trends - just as in politics, it is important to consider the source and draw your own conclusions.

"Green Builder" Home of the Year

An article on Treehugger.com explains why the Zeta Communities Net Zero Energy Urban Prefab may just be the modular home manufacturer that survives. Winner of Green Builder's 2009 Home of the Year, Treehugger suggests: "These guys are building what appears to be well designed, relatively conventional modular housing with off-the-shelf technologies, with what appears to be the financial backing to make it through this recession and position itself for the recovery."

Sincerely "Green"

I remember how disappointed I was at the 2008 Greenbuild that so few booths displayed the spirit of sustainability - I got a serious "greenwashing" vibe after attending the show. (The Antron booth was the exception.)

Designer Joey Roth really gets it though . . . he arrived at a recent New York International Gift Fair with a sketch pad, saw and hammer and made his booth from the scraps of the other attendees. Now that is what I call the proper spirit of the movement.

OH DEER!

I keep running into validations of my trend report, but none amuse me nearly as much as a little coda I added about deer themes. They just keep appearing!

I find the wildlife collages that artist Jason LaFerrera makes out of old maps both amusing and lovely. They are available on etsy.

Moving towards the Middle

According to an article in Furniture Today, Rachel Ashwell of the popular Shabby Chic brand. . . "also believes the recession has rekindled a spiritual quest to 'get back to the basics, the core values, family, things that people think are important. I think that people are appreciating products that have style and long-lastingness. They're reaching out for stuff they can pass on to their children.' "

Her new lower priced upholstery line and case goods appear to be a move to the middle of the market - down from her now bankrupt couture stores and upscale from the products still available at Target. Miles Talbott is offering the upholstery in the new line and Guildmaster is offering case goods.

It remains to be seen whether this portends a return to that long forgotten middle in all things home furnishings?

Virtual Milan III - The Brutal Vessel

With the help of Google, I came across at least three different versions of this brutal, rough and earthy look in vessels being show at Milan. Made of various composite materials that always seemed to include resin, I'm not sure of the statement this trend is making, but this young designer wants us to "focus on simplicity and confront our views of modern civilization."

This series is individually sand cast by dutch design studio sjoerd jonkers. As opposed to the vessels in the previous post, this anthropological look does not make me want to touch, and that may just be the point?? At the end of the day, except for people that are terminally trendy, we prefer to live with beautiful things.

Virtual Milan II -Beauty of the Natural

Design can be thoughtful, natural and beautiful as are the vessels made of a bio-composite of flour, agricultural waste and limestone. The tactility of these classically-shaped vessels is visceral even just seeing the images on screen. These vessels from Formafantasma offer a hint to the colors that we will find comfortable in our interior environments moving forward - the limestone palette is moving to even softer warm neutrals with just a hint of delicate natural color.

Formafantasma showed at Spazio Rossana Orlandi, which seems to be the venue for the hottest looks at the fair - it goes to the top of the list for the next real trip to Milan.

Salon del Mobile - Virtually

I spent some time this afternoon at the Milan Furniture Fair - virtually that is. I found much of the "much hyped" contemporary furniture to be "more of the same." I comfort myself in knowing that virtually I don't have to travel through the miles of corridors of bad Italian stuff that is necessary when you are there in person - but I'm not sure that makes up for missing the dinners in wonderful out of the way places outside of Milan proper. The most interesting thing that I found was the current issue of "The David Report" and I include a quote from that to make us stop and think and put the design business into perspective:

"Why can’t products be allowed to collect memories like
good leather chair, why don’t we accept the patina of
usage like a loved skateboard, when will we accept aging
as life’s rich story, like a prized broach our grandmother
left us, or the lines of our grand father’s face, of a life
well lived!

Whilst our perceived redemption has been our recent
passion for sustainability and energy efficiency, this has
come from the expense of surplus, and for the majority
who remain in a state of abundant denial. We have to
face the fact, that as with climate change, we are at a
tipping point when the equilibrium is lost, and like our
current economic crisis, the currency of good design is
devalued by a tsunami of rapid change when everything
good or bad is submerged and becomes equally contaminated
and loses its relevance."

He too, questions the sheer volume of new chair designs that are annually created for this fair and others around the world. Can our creative energies be better spent?

Robi Renzi shows us how - he has captured the spirit of the times in the above design called Armadiature made of salvaged parts and shown at an exhibition space at the fair. See more images and close-ups at Mocoloco.

The Milan fair has become so important that even the Wall Street Journal has their say on what is hot at the fair this year.

Leveraging Brand

I have often wondered why more simpatico brands did not get together in their promotional efforts, as "W" Hotels and Design Miami/Basel announced today at Salon del Mobile in Milan. Such a perfect pairing should be advantageous for both parties.

What is Sustainable?

The site: Treehugger features the eclectic Dutch design firm droog's offering at Salone del Mobile. Their presentations have often seemed simply "odd" to me, but this I get - with the thought that "there is enough stuff in the world already" they collected left-overs and created something new with what they discovered to offer for sale at the fair. droog blogs from Milan during the fair.

I totally concur with droog, there is enough stuff in the world. I was often asked when I left the corporate world why I didn't go into business "selling stuff." My response was always "there is enough stuff," I would rather help those already in business further develop and sell what is rather than create more stuff or yet another store front. Of course, that didn't stop others from opening more and more store fronts thinking the boom would never end - many of these spaces now empty shells.

On a related topic, Art Basel in Miami showed photography in one of these empty, dark and cavernous spaces, the show was depressing after having shown in tents with great natural lighting in previous years - but, I guess that is a form of adaptive reuse. Another show used an old factory, again with great natural clerestory lighting - to me a much more appealing venue for art than empty mall space. Natural lighting - much better for showing product and green as well.

Story is your differentiator

Today, consumer expect both great aesthetics and excellent quality from your products- so neither can be counted on to separate you from your competitors. In the light of strong product offering, story and brand have become more important, that is why I created a presentation for Coverings in 2009 entitled "What is your Story?" Recently I came across an interesting white paper that reinforces the need for an authentic story to support your business and brand in today's marketplace: Authentic Brands Live Their Story! Does Yours?

The Wisdom of Crowds

Like anything else the media hypes - the incessant chatter of Twitter is driving me bonkers. I am sure at the end of the day, some usefulness will come of the latest internet obsession, but not yet - certainly not yet for our industry. I was directed to a site called Trendsmap which bills itself as "Real-time Twitter trends," to find that people were tweeting about the Kardasians - SO not interesting to me. Obviously, the show was on and the younger generation expects to be interactive with their media and Twitter is how they interact??? So looking at how to engage your customer is important for every industry, even if Twitter is not the venue at this point.

In these travels through the internet, I did find an interesting new idea that marries tweeting with the "wiki" concept. An engineer in Finland has created a way to capture the wisdom of crowds that can be immediately useful. TrendWiki "engages your networks to study problems of interest and communicates the results to the decision makers and experts." Watch Elina Hiltunen explain her program at the European Futurists Conference Lucerne 2009.

Color draws Customers

In product development, we talk about "color" all the time - even if we are talking about hundreds of variations on beige. An article on ABC news gives us just a little history on the consumers' interest in color:

"In the early 1980s, the Gap became the first major retailer to show clothes folded on tables, not hangers, to show people the colors"

Now we know, we owe our color awareness to the GAP and our own ability to manipulate color on our computers adds to this awareness everyday. But, what is more important is the fact that the Gap uses color to draw customers into the store to buy their most important product - jeans. Jeans are mainly variations on a shade with slight variety in shape. Reminds me of our industry... yes - variations on beige sell just like jeans, but you have to draw attention to your offering in someway because everyone offers the same beiges. As Gap shows, carefully selected and featured color is a powerful tool to do just that.

Cloud Computing begets "Cloud Design" ...???

It's a stretch...a rather tenuous connection, but Interni has a feature called Designing Clouds in their March issue. The Italian tile manufacturer Caselgrande is celebrating their 50th anniversary with a "Ceramic Cloud" designed by the Japanese designer, Kengo Kuma. Or...is this design's preparation for THE END heralded to come in 2012 by an assortment of fanatics?

From the Casalgrande website: "The first event is the “Casalgrande Ceramic Cloud”, a combination of architecture and land art, designed by Kengo Kuma and made by Casalgrande Padana, under an agreement with the Municipality of Casalgrande. The work, the first one to be made by the great Japanese architect in Italy, is well under way and will be finished before next summer.

Set in a communal green area of over 2,8000 square metres, the installation is located on the new Strada Pedemontana next to the company’s production site, with such spectacular landmark acting as the Eastern Gate to the regional ceramic district.

The work is an unusual three-dimensional construction that experiments with innovative applications of the latest-generation ceramic units. Entirely made of special, large glazed stoneware tiles mechanically anchored to a specially-designed metal frame, the construction is over 40 metres large and 7 metres high and looks like an architectural object of refined elegance intended to symbolically mark a traditional productive region which is deeply bonded to the culture of design."

Immerse yourself in pictures

Tracking trends is all about filling up that hard drive with impressions and one of the ways I have discovered is to "watch" the pages of Interni magazine flip by. Since I don't speak or read Italian, I let the images intrigue me and they are stunning. I have way too many bookmarks on my computer to track, so these pages keep me up to date - so that I can factor in the influence of the Euro-sector on our marketplace.