The Original and The Another

Most of my time still spend on industrial design, for home furnishing, appliance or for some public furniture and architecture fittings. When we look around, we found usually the competitor is ourselves. And this does not implicate that we are the best one available, we are among the very good ones but we can't say and we are not the best.

As I often tell the designers or engineers who works for me or work with me, I do not require the best one to work for me, in stead, I am willing to work for the best one. And one does not need to be best to deliver excellent jobs, especially I still prefer people to work as a team rather than play individually. But what does not need?

The decision! The decision to be excellent!

The picture illustrate the Pinna M Wine Rack, one of my most recognizable designs. I designed it in early 2006, with the original Pinna, and file the design pattern in US and EC and got the pattern approved in mid 2007. The Pinna M is a diversion but close resemble of the original Pinna, which still sells well, particular in Italy.

It was originally a commissioned work from a wooden product manufacturer to design something unique, requiring high skill (obvious to avoid common competitors), and can be finished in exceptional quality to ask for premium. I receive the request, looked at my desk where somehow an empty wine glass was there, so I say "OK, I will do a wine rack!", and the design is finished practically in minutes.

I must admit I am not a genius, I read slow, and often need to read twice or more to remember something I want to remember. Come to design, I often spend a lot of time just to cooking the idea in my mind, sometimes months before the vague picture became clear and I can start to draw or to draft it. So I got lucky with the Pinna wine rack? Not really!

I have made a decision to design a wine rack, so I ask the common specification of the wood cutting from the manufacturer, the width, the thickness and the length and so on. At the same time, I am also determined to defy the common, be different and useful in more than one way. And I really have little choice but to settle on what I eventually designed.

Is it easy, yes, for this one. Because the common wine rack/storage were all around a horizontal display or shelf, which when the system builds up, you don't really know what you have there. Going horizontally, you always require more space, so the decision to be different gives me a clear direction - to go vertically. And with the limitation on wood, the purpose to also display the wine label, I arrived at what I designed. And when look back, this is really easy. And the difficult part, make the right decision to be original and different, and make sense.