(Originally published on the UMd.studio Journal, 23rd January 2016)
The Beazley Designs of the Year exhibition celebrates design that promotes or delivers change, enables access, extends design practice or captures the spirit of the year, and this year Unmade were honoured to be shortlisted in the Digital category. Graphic designer Clementine Maas talks about the process of designing Unmade's installation and considers the meaning of 'good design'.
What was the concept behind Unmade’s Designs of the Year installation?
The most exciting part of Unmade for people is always seeing the digital iPad interaction and how this translates into yarns and then to a physical garment. We wanted to create an installation that showed the whole Unmade process and demonstrated the concept. The design team came together to investigate the different ways we could show Unmade’s process and all of its components. We all gathered examples of visual merchandising and exhibition spaces that inspired us, particularly those that used yarn, fibres or wires to create an impactful, 3-dimensional space.
Kirsty [Unmade’s co-founder and Fashion Director] came up with the circuit board concept, of strands of yarn carrying digital information along the tracks, transforming it into a physical, knitted garment.
How did you translate the concept into a physical design?
We drew up some initial sketches, looking at lots of circuit board images, at the way the wires sweep around the board. The Grid Sweater is one of the most simple and striking representations of what we can do with Unmade’s software - and also the net, or web, of the design ties in nicely with the idea of the yarns being conduits of digital information.
We worked with specialist design and fabrication service 2MZ to manufacture the clear acrylic panels. Creating a structure strong enough to hold the panels of the sweater, yarn and cones securely in place was a challenge - particularly as the transparent acrylic meant there was nowhere to hide anything.
Unmade’s process can be complex to demonstrate to people - the design is created digitally, physically manufactured by machines, then assembled by hand. To illustrate this we incorporated two iPads into the display - one where visitors can co-create their own Grid Sweater, and another showing a video explainer of how the process works.
Tell us a little about the Designs of the Year exhibition space.
The new Design Museum was still being built while we were designing, so it was great to finally see the exhibition space at the install. I didn’t realise quite how amazing a space it would be. It’s a huge space, really bright and cavernous, with high ceilings and white walls, so I’m glad we went big with our installation.
The exhibition space was designed by All Things Studio. The display units are an unfinished plaster with a simple varnish. You can see the marks of the hands and tools that have constructed it. It’s a lovely way of showing off the materials and a reminder of the skilled, manual process that’s gone into constructing the space. The units have a bevelled edge to hold the display signage at exactly the right angle. It’s really simple, very well designed.
The display panels were about four metres high so we used a cherry picker to attach them to the wall. The entire exhibition is very thoughtfully curated and it was great to see how well our design fit with its neighbouring installations, digital drawing system, Joto, and smart nav for bicycles, Beeline.
What does ‘good design’ mean to you, and which Designs of the Year nominations stood out as examples of this?
Things can be ‘good design’ for different reasons. I think it depends but it should answer a question, or address a need or a feeling.
If you’re looking at the exhibition in the context of designs relating to the last year, then one of the best designs for me was the First Aid Kit for Refugees and NGOs [an open-source icon-based communication system designed by Buero Bauer]. The refugee crisis was one of the most pressing humanitarian issues of the past year, and the First Aid Kit was a really amazing iteration of graphic design as both a universal language, and as an emergency response. It was driven by need; it wasn’t self-indulgent, it was functional.
On a more personal level, I also really liked Craig Green’s installation [his SS15 collection]. For me, Green’s designs answer a lot of questions about what clothing should be - unisex, functional, but at the same time, looks amazing. They provoked a much more emotional reaction from me because they spoke to the way that I feel about fashion and clothing design.
Does good design have to look good?
I don’t think so - although if something is beautiful, that can sometimes elevate it to the status of good design. Sometimes the aesthetic is the primary function of something and that’s okay. One of the Designs of the Year that wasn’t beautiful to look at but was good design was Frank Kolkman’s Open Surgery project. It’s a fantastic solution to a problem [a low-cost DIY surgical robot which would, in theory, be able to carry out laparoscopic surgeries] executed in quite a sterile way. If you look closely, there are some very human design elements to it, like the Playstation 3 controller. It's familiar and ergonomic - it's a beautiful solution.
The Beazley Designs of the Year exhibition - featuring all of the nominated Designs of the Year - is at the Design Museum until 19 February 2017, and the overall winner will be announced on 26 January.
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Photography: Sasha Zyryaev