March 2008

Proportions and Design

     After I put a fresh sheet of paper on my board, there follows a first step of plotting out of all the given dimensions of which I am aware so that any later proportional decisions will be in agreement with reality.  For example, the floor line represents Earth to me; where the design stops and the world begins. 

     In the case of a seating design, I should know exactly what the target deck height will be.  The deck height is that level in the front elevation where the underside of the seat cushion and the sofa body rail meet.  Most factories have a standard deck height that is evolved from the choice of spring construction, the desired seat cushion thickness, in stock purchased leg lengths, and the lifestyle targeted customer, i.e.; casual contemporary customers sit lower on thicker cushions, and traditional buyers select more formal and often thinner boxed seat cushions thus a much higher overall seating height.  The depth and overall height and width can then be extrapolated based on only a few beginning dimensions.  

    Years ago, sofas had to have three cushions.  That skewed everything resulting in narrowed arms that weren't in correct proportion to the rest of the sofa or a sofa that might not fit in an elevator or center in front of the picture window in the U.S. typical home.  About 1974, the influence of metro markets made commonplace the two-cushion sofa that allowed big wide arms that people instinctively wanted but couldn't have.  In truth, the only time any adult voluntarily used the center cushion was during large family gatherings.  

    I have found that when designing for metric manufacturing there are as many opportunities for the numbers to "sing" as when using the more arbitrary "Royal" system of measure. Oddly enough, that is entirely consistent with what I believe to be true of good proportions - that visual elements will have to end up wherever they belong no matter what method of calculation is employed and the numbers will add up on an abacus, a slide rule, or a sundial.  Again, if it doesn't look right when you’re done, then clearly something was flawed in the approach used.  One can say that Scarlet Johannsen and George Clooney have excellent facial and body proportions viewed from any angle symmetrical balanced and "right."  Maury Futorion once told me that, Marilyn Monroe had "Perfect Proportions."   His example communicated to me perfectly what he wanted to see in his furnishings.  

    In case design, it is a similar situation in that most factories have a standard "box" or dresser size that can be adjusted somewhat but, drawer depths, etc. are less often changed due to concerns of "high costing" of special items a term applied to any prototypes that aren't dead standard in every dimension.  Proportions are a vital determinant in the way the finished products will be judged and I suspect most consumers are blithely unaware just how important proportions are to them, saying, "I'll know the right piece when I see it."   

    The Greek designers mastered proportions a long time ago and boiled them down to the "Golden Mean;" a ratio-matic equation or rule that can be used to give the ideal remaining dimensions of any mass or shape based on a given dimension.  The Nautilus shell is a compelling example of a very curvilinear object that seems to comply with the basic tenets of this "law."  I have experimented with using it and I still try not to break it, but it seems to me that proportions are more like music than math and that things either look right or they don't.  In fact, the ancient Greeks had no actual numbers to work with, using letters instead to represent values, and absolutely no concept of "Zero" so they employed rope calculators to lay out things like perimeters, column centers, etc. using proportional methods to get around underlying mathematical limitations. Mistakes in proportions are easy for me to see in a faulty design, standing out starkly like sour notes played with extra emphasis.   

    Rhythm is as important in a design as it is in a work song.  For example, determining the right size and number of cuts in a dental molding means more than merely dividing the overall length of the wood piece so that it comes out an even or odd number of complete blocks, it also means counting drawer pulls and posts and also aligning drawer sides and centers with those cuts in an harmonic way.  

    The human body suggests to us a lot of the things we think of as proportions such as the fact that the pupils of our eyes are located midway between the chin and the top of the head or that the bottom of the nose is halfway between the chin and the eyes and the mouth is halfway between the bottom of the nose and the chin.

     This methodical subdivision of facial elements is no doubt not an accident.  I personally think we can see that our reality, in fundamental ways, has been arranged/constructed/created according to certain laws of existence and the bulk of good design throughout time has always been based on these same natural principles of proportion.  If you’re planning on copying another designer, good old Mother Nature is an unbeatable source of divine inspiration. 

    At some point early in a design career, I think the very good designers accept a realization that a lot of important dimensional choices aren't going to be entirely up to them.   Instead, the look will need to end up coming out "right" if it's going to be a hit, whatever that dimension turns out to be.    

     References by designers through the ages to visits from design muses or angels at crucial moments in their career shouldn't be dismissed as outright flights of fantasy but instead should be considered as perhaps one of the completely natural ways by which beauty will express itself in our world.

 February 2008

The Chance of a Lifetime

     The North American furniture marketplace is about to go through a profound transformation, the eventual nature of which I suspect most observers are still unaware.  That transformation will be from a high volume importer selling to domestic credit customers to small volume exporter shipping all over the planet to anyone with cash to spend.  Our currency has lost a lot of its value in a steady way for years now, and recent events have dramatically demonstrated that loss in value to foreigners.  As countries like China watch the relative values of their currency and ours adjust to each other, we will likely soon see Chinese exporters losing interest in getting paid in borrowed U.S. dollars and insist instead on being paid in cash Euros.  The old pattern of U.S. labor being automatically considered overpriced in the world market is breaking fast as huge employers like Airbus and Volkswagen shop U.S. locations for new factories.  A thirty percent drop in the U.S. dollar "float" is hugely important in world trade. Like it or not, the resultant changes are underway as you read this. 

    If I personally had a U.S. based furniture factory to feed, I would right now be researching the export opportunities for said factory to see if there is a way I could personally gain from this sea change.   The real deal is, borrowed U.S. dollars will be paid back by even lower valued future U.S. dollars so either the lending rate has to go up or U.S. stores will need to pay cash based on Euros or deal with wholesale import price sheets being updated four times a year at least. 

    This presents a very interesting possibility.  If a number of clever U.S manufacturers worked with the right designers to develop a complimentary line of well-styled European oak and leather items, they could then intensively shop that combined line to the best retail channels for North American export trade and end up partnered long term.  The missing link in this distribution chain is a massive UK warehousing concern to break containers and transship orders from multiple U.S. exporters out of one location.  The wide freight train service through the Chunnel makes continental distribution quite feasible from the UK.  European retailers won't want to buy whole unbroken container quantities of anything in order to see what lines they like if they can avoid it. Also, they will want to see if the quality is both acceptable and consistent before committing to volume business.  With a warehouse program of limited finishes and leathers, a lot of furniture can be channeled to fill big orders from the continent.

   There once was a scheme wherein you could buy a luxury car to order in Europe, take delivery at the factory, then drive it all over Europe and return home with a used vehicle.  The cost of the entire trip was defrayed due to the new car duties and import fees avoided.  I wonder if that can be done today by Foreign visitors to the U.S. if they arrange to buy the furniture they desire, then use it in their hotel room, and then have it shipped home as used furnishings?

   Of course, Chinese furniture exporters won't be idle for a minute.  But what can they do to respond?  They are faced with an impending big downturn in U.S. orders for numerous reasons. Let's look at a few of the big ones.     

   The biggest challenge facing continued Chinese/U.S. trade is the relative value of U.S. money compared to Chinese currency.  The Chinese have long been accused of holding down the value of the Yuan in world markets so that their exports seemed a better deal to her trading partners.  Many have long wondered how China could sell her furniture so cheaply.  Meanwhile, China has amassed huge reserves of foreign currencies, notably U.S. dollars, as the result of spewing a veritable cornucopia of export items around the world annually for well over a decade.   

   Critical mass has been reached, and the resulting exponential bell curve is being reached as the market forever more Chinese exports is rapidly becoming satisfied.  The U.S. mortgage market mess is resulting in nearly empty Lowe's and Home Depots as "flippers" by the droves drop their pending plans to buy, fix up, and sell, anymore houses until this thing shakes itself out.  That means an almost instantaneous drying up in the ceiling fan and outdoor living departments - both clearly export strongholds.  No interest and no payments for three years as a sub-prime way of selling whole households of new furniture is drying up the same as sub-prime mortgages are.   Demand for "carved up Euro-Traditional" in your choice of either black oak or black cherry finish is steadily swinging back to less fussy styling where cheap labor isn't such an advantage and lighter clearer finishes that feature the wood's grain make the liberal use of "export putty" less of a profit maker.

   World distribution of furniture is still being reworked.  The opportunity for a consortium of U. S. manufacturers to share the significant costs of marketing their goods in the world market place is too good to pass up.  The customers are out there and concerned about their perceived over-dependence in Chinese goods. What do they do if suddenly the leaders in Beijing shift their emphasis to military development and away from exports?  In the United States, workers are hungry for meaningful jobs and there still exists a big pool of skilled experienced furniture workers ready to go back to work in new and efficiently roboticized factories with great lighting and fresh sharp tools with which to work.  The right products flowing out of domestic factories isn't an out-of-date concept, it's exactly the right way to see the current situation and opportunity.  For the smartest U.S. management teams looking for a strategy that recognizes and incorporates the sudden new realities, nothing else makes any sense.

 January 2008

Attendance at Markets

     I have spent a tremendous amount of my time and money attending regional and national furniture and office products markets over the years of my design career.  In looking back, I have to question the value of that investment to me and/or to the industry.

      My first major event was the Chicago winter market of 1969.  Five of us left the Campus of Kendall College in Grand Rapids early on a clear Saturday morning to drive to Chicago down I-94 just inland from the Lake Michigan coast.  As luck would have it, we become trapped in one of those infamous "lake effect" blizzards that have plagued southwest Michigan since woolly mammoths wandered about.  What a huge amount of energy went into getting everyone delivered that needed to get to 666 Lake Shore Drive or the Merchandise Mart along the Chicago River that day!  

     I bring that up because, when they throw a market, literally thousands of innocent folks are forced into attending - many against their will. People travel in their personal cars hundreds of miles to pay special market rates for utterly average rooms and meals.  The new designs are introduced there so the worn out sales reps and their weary managers must walk the exhausted buyers through the room settings and product circles repeatedly for endless days of showroom strolling.  Take it from me, few things are as tiring and wearing as twelve-hour days bragging and haggling and four-hour nights eating and drinking late and rising early to start all over again.

      Let me admit that I loved attending markets as a factory staff designer in those first years after college.  You could pass by the fronts of a few hundred showrooms in a few days on foot within a four square blocks of downtown High Point and see pretty well what the current flavor of furniture design was in the USA - at least that week.  Today, there are literally thousands of showrooms and fifty thousand people working them each day spread all over a ten-square-mile area representing fifty nations or more. The depressing part is, they are all making essentially the same designs at similar prices. Creativity has never been less important and things like comfort, durability, and good proportions are ignored most of the time today.  There is always a pendulum swing in the opposite direction when the extreme is reached and I see change in the general design direction coming anytime.

      Buy yourself a pair of classy looking but also COMFORTABLE shoes!   Sadly, comfort has to come in a close second.  For some reason, designers are wont to wear negative tilt earth shoes, or Swedish orthopedic clogs, or square-toed sloths - whatever are the most self conscious, over-priced, and butt ugliest shoes they can find. I suspect some of these shoes are actually bad for their owner's feet, but they look unreasonably supportive or really over designed so we buy ‘em and we wear ’em - big mistake! 

    Freelance Designers are hardly a welcome distraction from the first order of market business which, over-simplified, is, "We're here to sell, not to buy.” Still, markets are where you can meet with the entire management team all at once which is probably how you will find yourself rooked into attending.   If you can manage it, you’ll stay away and enjoy the break from client calls for a nice long week.  Some designers actually look forward to spending time at market and get the chance to "Schmooze" with industry notables.  Not me. 

      I have seen a trend away from keeping the same junior and middle management people in their positions for very long.  In fact, the people I work with are top management types with only a little longer tenure behind them.  Back in the day, furniture folks stayed where they were, showrooms had the same lettering out front for twenty-five years or more, and even the same shoeshine guys worked markets year after year.  Today, you probably won't get to know many market folks for very long.

    For busy designers, markets are a special challenge because you will be sent from pillar to post keeping appointments at opposite ends of the complex only minutes apart by clients that don't even know you are working for anyone else (try your level best to keep it that way). Your portfolio can't be stuffed with everything you brought with you.  That means going back and forth to your vehicle to rearrange your bag for your next presentation meeting. Leaving artwork behind with your clients at market isn't the best way to go. Many times, the artwork will get lost, mangled, or mislabeled.  If you are persuasive, you can get your customers to leave their new design picks with you so you can mail them to their home offices after market.  

   I always ask for a designer's courtesy pass when I have appointments with clients in a new building.  They already have me on their list or the registration people then call up the showroom and bother my busy contact for confirmation that I am, indeed, expected.   A friend in one showroom advised me that a lot of designers apply for a buyer's pass ahead of market - they give them out like candy with little in the way of security checks and they are accepted at buildings all over town.  I'm not saying that is the kosher way to do business but it is evidently a big time saver for a lot of designers.  Mean time, building security people still seem to not want me to ask for a designer pass for some reason, but, perversely, I still do.  

   You need to appear to keep yourself available even when it looks like you may be needed in two places at once. I appeared to have eaten a breakfast, a brunch, two lunches and two dinners all in one day at a winter market years ago in San Francisco.  The food and accommodations at markets will be pricey, but can be of considerable quality in towns like Chicago and San Francisco but then again not so much so in places like Las Vegas, Atlanta, Dallas, High Point, and Tupelo.  If you keep going back year after year, you do eventually discover special places where you can get a nice room and good food at a fair price, but not so quickly or so very easily.

    Cell phones and Garmin type directional devices are a huge help in keeping to your schedule or with massaging it.  Remember, if you are going to be even five minutes late, it's best to inform your contact with an accurate estimate of your ETA.  And if you’re going to be really late, reschedule the meeting if possible.  The pace of markets is incredible for your clients and treating them like they need a break is always wise.  Keep your presentations interesting, pleasant, brief, and effective.  Sometimes major commitments are made and big breaks happen.  That is the seductive promise of market; one hopes to come home with a major business trophy of some sort to show for all the effort.  A new client?  A juicy assignment?  Too often nothing really vital is achieved at markets.  A meeting with unharried clients after the market is over and in their own offices will be much better for both of you! 

December, 2007

You are reading the first line of the first entry in a new design blog.  I call it a "DESIGN" blog because, within it, we will explore the world of design across time and, in the process, we'll create a fat bank of easily referenced design subjects intended to assist in raising the state of the art and the science of design. One day not far down the road, I can see this becoming a popular forum for the discussion of design related issues.  For now, it will begin as a well-informed, useful point of reference for designers of all kinds.

 Designing For Overseas Clients 

    For no particular reason I have determined to begin with some skill sets that you will need before you can hope to successfully design for exporters. I had no preconceptions before I began my first project for an exporter with a factory in Taiwan.  The experience was truly a mind blowing one for me.  Unfortunately, I took precious few steps to prepare myself before I left LAX on China Airlines. A quick trip to the library for a few books on Taiwan travel and a few evenings spent surfing the net in an attempt to soak up some savvy quickly were my only preparations.  Looking back, I wish I had been able to read an article like this before I was already under contract and legally obligated to keep up my end of the bargain. 

    I will list a few things a designer should consider before attempting to negotiate a design contract.  First, there is the very real possibility of disagreement between you and your client.  You need to keep in mind that U.S. law firms will be in a tough spot when representing you in many Asian nations.  Beyond the mere difficulties of travel to and from China, few have well-established relations with any Asian law firms.  On the other hand, foreign exporters can use legions of domestic lawyers and the full weight of U.S. law to pursue their rights versus yours in this country.  It is amazing the hoops you might be expected to leap through, including a few flaming ones, that should give you considerable pause.  One maker of large inflatable novelties (think moonwalk air tents) demanded that I confirm in clear writing that I would take full legal responsibility for any and all product liabilities related to my new designs in U.S. courts.  I asked if I would have complete control over the materials and methods of manufacture and, when informed I wouldn't, I took a hike on those negotiations in the eleventh hour.  My point is, it is better to be wary of anything that looks or smells at all dangerous in writing, because, believe me, it is.  Clearly, you should consult a lawyer and listen to him regarding trouble spots in any contracts, especially international contracts. 

    Travel to Asia is difficult and demanding.  I always try to negotiate business class tickets for two.  Tourist class tickets will make the experience far worse in nearly every way.  The seating grid in steerage is so-o-o-o tight that basic health considerations like inadequate leg circulation, poor air quality, accumulated body odors, lines for restrooms, etc., can become critical for some folks and at the very least annoying to everyone else for a very long flight!  I could go on about increased airport security, long lines, delays, etc.   

     Suffice to say, you are probably not going to be prepared for ground travel after you land in the far east.  The traffic is horrendous 24 hours a day and then it gets really bad during the rush hours of six a.m. to noon and from one pm to seven-thirty at night.  Parking is ridiculous.  Your local contacts will drive you around through National Geographic style narrow street scenes until you feel half worn out by the time you start your day.  Meals will be an adventure; I kid you not.  They go on through forty courses of strangeness.  Sitting on the floor on a thin pad with nothing at all satisfying to eat, we learned to wrap our bits of mystery meat in sesame leaves then dunk the bundles in one of the variety of crazy tasting sauces provided. Within mere days, the ubiquitous MacDonald's start looking better and better to a Yankee eye. 

     Designing for container shipping is a special challenge for the designer because the product will need to be as dense as possible to increase the number of units that can be stuffed into a container.  You need to know if it will be high cube or standard dimension container so the capacity for various box sizes can be calculated.  That number, if too low, might be very important.  When the selling price is computed, container yield is one of the parameters that will determine the price and, obviously, the profitability of each item.  KD or "knock down" construction is the most common way of compressing products to fit a container.  Other ways include stacking and or nesting as in dining chairs and graduated sizes of items that, like Russian eggs, fit one inside the next on and on.  Gross weight is seldom a problem, but the container has to be carefully loaded to place the heaviest strongest products in such a way that they can bear the down force of weight inside the container and keep the rest of the load where it belongs.  Sometimes poorly loaded containers full of odd-sized and badly wrapped items are unsealed, and you would think the container had been turned over repeatedly with everything inside in a huge pile and damaged in some way all due to shifting and self-destructive loads. 

     Translating your thought processes from English measurements to Metric isn't quite as straightforward as it may seem since materials will be available in different sizes and gauges of thickness than you are accustomed to.  Keep in mind that their fasteners and other hardware were developed under a different overall system. Some clever, almost instinctive finessing may be required to get the natural proportions and flowing looks demanded in today's U.S. market. Working in steel is pleasant compared to wood products, which are milled to a metric yield system.  Our curious Colonial era sawmill approach results in calling 1 1/8" thick lumber, four-quarter (4/4) rough which is really 7/8" thick after planing (it actually makes sense, sort of, I will take the time to explain it one day).  

    Business dinner drinking is usually way over the top with repeated toasts followed by the Chinese words, "Kam Pai," which means "bottoms up" in Irish.  I once asked my host what the shot glass full of dark green liquid was sitting on my plate and after being told it was "Liver Tea” I instantly proposed a toast, "to Liver Tea, and the pursuit of happiness!" Of course I did it upstanding with a flourish and I am sure a little loudly.  There followed a prolonged and somewhat painful silence while they confabbed with the translator over what I had meant.  English slang puns and wordplay humor in general are totally lost on all but the slickest Asian/English speaker. 

     Translators can be a big problem, especially amateur self-taught translators.  Usually, it falls to that staff member thought to be the best English speaker working in any particular office.  A professional translator can be a huge help in quickly getting ideas and concepts back and forth across the table in one piece.  I have had translators say things to me during a prolonged passage like, "This man is awful, he treats me badly, do you have a job for me in the U.S.?"  Keep in mind how utterly boring some meetings can be in English.  Now try the same meeting while jet-lagged stretched out three times as long to accomplish far less.   I have thought more than once, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, when traveling in Asia, we had a fluent Chinese translator traveling with us unbeknownst to the clients?”  Of course you might discover that they are, in fact, talking horribly about you.  Actually trying to pull it off would be something straight out of an "I Love Lucy” sketch.  If you really tried to, it would be sure to backfire in some hilarious way.  Still, the thought occurs nonetheless. 

    Your customers have spent a lot of moolah to drag you halfway around the world, and they will be sure to arrange your workdays so that they get maximum value out of your hide in return.  Expect to spend the hours from seven a.m. to ten or eleven p.m. busy either in endless and tedious meetings, taking factory tours, revising AutoCAD files, or in cranking out sketches, sometimes while they talk about you with raised voices in the next office. 

    Little things, like showing the soles of your shoes to your hosts by crossing your legs or feet, could easily tick them off and be interpreted as an ignorant or disrespectful gesture on your part.  And don't expect Asian men to give you much room on the sidewalk unless they know you. Your "space," as you like to think of it, doesn't really concern them.  Little children may point at you on the street and say something like, "What's that?" in Chinese to their parents. When you look about you, it seems like everyone is talking on the cell phone with everyone else all at the same time.  Important businessmen have assistants standing by to take most of their cell calls for them. Otherwise, expect frequent phone interruptions throughout all but the most important meetings.  For some reason, the most annoying ring tones are politely accepted.  You might get to hear the openings notes of the Chinese version of "Baby Got Back" six times in one hour.

     You will be listened to carefully and lots of notes will be taken.  I'm not sure what they do with these notes, I suspect they are thrown away after meetings and that they only take them in the first place because some visiting U.S. business "Guru" told them to take lots of notes and never told them what to do with them.  You will also be required to submit numerous reports on the progress of your work and, if the contract is particularly big, a "design wrangler" may be retained to pay you rhythmic visits to get updates on your "progress."  Many Asians will make an attempt at being polite in their dealings with you, however all are not equally skilled at this.  You might hear something like, "Your comments were especially insightful and you have our utmost admiration for your knowledge on this subject.  Unfortunately, what you say is impossible."

     AutoCAD is the common language of export design engineering today.  One of the real beauties of AutoCAD is that it gives both sides a legal document they can refer to should things break down between client and designer.  For example, if component parts don't fit each other when they get unpacked from the container on this side of the big pond, there will be hell to pay once the guilty party is discerned.  AutoCAD isn't the best medium for translating handwork, ornate carvings, compound curves, etc., but it does eliminate a lot of the variation that artistic interpretation can introduce.

     Payments can be done electronically.  I have to say that getting paid what I am owed hasn't been a problem yet.  Nowadays, though, a designer has to ask himself, "Might I prefer getting paid in yuan or shekels or what not?" Have no fear, it's like asking if Chinese restaurants really serve dog meat, the answer is, yes of course they do, but dog meat is far costlier than almost any other meat they might offer you so you will never have it served to you instead of pork or beef.  Likewise, few exporters will offer to pay you in yuan instead of U.S. dollars as in the next few years that could be a nice little inflation hedge.   

     Reading emails originating overseas can often be a mixture of challenge, aggravation, and some times out loud laughter.  English is the most expressive, if not the easiest language to learn, and Chinese is, for sure, one of the most difficult languages to master - at least for English speakers. Using a computerized translator for your emails is almost impossible - or it was the last time I tried to use one.  If your client has an experienced U.S. based product/merchandise manager, many of these problems can be neutralized or reduced for you with their assistance.  

    I can't predict what the future will bring, but the current level of design work being carried on between the U.S. and China might not expand greatly as it's really huge right now.  I know the number of design cats toting rolled-up drawing "logs" on red eye flights between L.A and places like Guangdong Province is crazy today.  A surprising number of them have established second homes there, and many are considering moving the wife and kids over one day to cut down on the time spent flying and maybe the dollars spent on U.S. taxes.  I am told there is already a small "ex-PAT" colony of foreign designers now living full time in Guangdong Province. 

    My personal favorite among overseas nations to work in is South Korea. The Korean people are the main attraction for me; they are a genuine pleasure to work with - very real as individuals and, on average, quite intelligent.  The South Korean's respect for solid engineering and elegant design were important to me as a designer for that is my stock in trade. I would personally try to avoid any design client that isn't making top quality design, product safety, and refined beauty their most important goals in hiring you.  If the speed and quantity of your output is the most important thing to them, that could be no better than a sentence to life on a treadmill and best left to "Iron man" competitors and not creative artists. 

    If after reading this you think I have over looked something important that you believe should be considered by other designers that are finding themselves in this spot, please write to Pat Waldron at pdwaldron@yadtel.net  and give me your input.  Thanks, and good luck!