IDS 2012 Profile: Karim Rashid
ids profile: karim rashidcanada
(Jan.27.12)
If anyone needed proof that design is an extension of the designer, Karim Rashid's colourful and prolific design work would be it.
A perfect mirror to his personal energy, his portfolio now contains thousands of designs in production across the globe.
And just like his products, he's an amazingly electric iconoclast — as ebullient in his writing as he in his designs. No wonder he can rock anything from turntables to the colour pink.
You have over 3,000 designs in production. Do you have (a) particular favourite(s)-- or do you love them all equally?
It is difficult to have a favorite because I tend to always have my newest work in mind. But I will say I am partial to the Doride lamp I designed for Artemide last year. I originally designed this concept when I was 20 years old at Carleton University so it took almost 30 years for it to become a commercial reality. I like how the object can change form perpetually depending on the angle and perspective you have of it.
You work on a global scale in ov different countries. Do you find we're moving towards one more universal design sensibility, or are markets still individual and discrete?
I am actually now working in 43 countries! (only another 160 to go - haha) I was always a believer in universal design, that good design must work for a 10 year old and an 80 year old, regardless of culture, creed, or other. I find that since design is mass-produced that it must cross these demographics, but interior design is where I have more of an opportunity to marry or reflect the context and culture of the place.
My universal design is as broad as globalization itself. As our world shrinks we become more aware of the world around us, we communicate globally, we mix and in turn we will eventually have one global culture made up of individual objective minds that are not repressed by race, religion, or creed. We live in a Borderless world now — all creative disciplines are blurring, merging, hybridizing.
Pink factors heavily in your design palette — which we love. What's the impulse behind it?
I love pink and techno colors that have a vibrancy and energy of our digital world. There are really millions of colors that the eye can differentiate, but my bias tends towards pink, white, black, lime, cyan — colors that are an extension of the digital age, CMYK. But the beauty of this farrago in life is the broad diversity and choice of everything.
There are artists that became so acutely intensive and experimental and investigative with color like Yves Klein as well as Rothko. They spent most of their lives investigating color. For me that is impossible because I am designing products, accessories, cosmetics, furniture, interiors, buildings, so I cannot devote my life to only the examination of colorism but it definitely is an opportunity to shift an object or space, to change it perpetually and to imbue some life into our grey world.
What are you most excited for at IDS?
Im looking forward to DJIng. My last gig was in Tel Aviv where I am designing a hotel now. So maybe someone in Toronto will give me a hotel project too. I'm pulling together tracks and inspiration now as I write this interview. Music affords me to concentrate, be inspired, dream, imagine, and become completely engrossed in what I am working on or can remove me completely from my daily life and take me into another realm like meditation. It is an essential part of my being.
What are you working on right now?
I am currently working on multiple condominiums in Miami with the Related Group, a boutique hotel in Tel Aviv in the Bauhaus white district, a 600 room hotel in Bangkok, a dental office in Calgary, hotels in Hamburg and New York, as well as new designs for Alessi, Artemide, Nambe, Bitossi, B-Line, Vondom, Softline, Tonelli, packaging for Unilever, a line of kitchen accessories for SiliconeZone, a large collection of furniture for BoConcept, Denmark, a winter coat for Peuterey, Italy, appliances for Gorenje, glasses for Coca-Cola, food packaging in Korea, wedding rings for outer space marriages for a Polish company, several art shows in Ukraine and New York, and many other projects globally. I just designed some skateboard decks, kitchens with Aran, Italy, a new vodka bottle, a media lab at Queens University, a new boutique in New York for Agatha Ruiz della Prada and released the new bobble water jug for Target and Walmart.
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