Talking about creativitiy in times of crisis | Apartamento
INTRODUCTION
We’re talking about creativitiy in times of crisis. Participating in the conversation are: Fernando Amat, owner of the Vinçon stores and intertior designer, the entreprenuer of illumination, Xavier Marset, and Jordi Tío, the talented architect of the Casa Camper hotels in Barcelona and Berlin. The trio meet in the terrace of the Casa Camper hotel in Barcelona. A portrait artist from las Ramblas takes portraits with artist’s charcoal.
Apartamento: Let’s start by distinguishing the idea of creativity related to the business world and, on the other hand, creativity related to design. What are we talking about when we talk about creativity in these worlds?
Fernando Amat: I think nothing has changed at this moment, nothing new has arrived with this crisis. Perhaps, only something that has always been very evident has become moreso: the business world needs creativity and they acquire it through a designer. Now, to all those who forgot that for a while, here is somebody reminding them. Hire a good creative, a good designer.
Xavier Marset: This forms part of overall success.
F.A.: Or it is an ingredient. An ingredient that, well managed, can lead you to success. There are those who hire good designers or good publicists yet don’t succeed.
X.M.: Is it necessary to wait for a moment of crisis to go looking for creativity?
F.A.: No, evidently not. However, a lot of people took it quite easy for a few years, and did ok, so they thought that the investment wasn’t necessary.
X.M.: The market doesn’t value creativity.
F.A.: Creativity will become a product. The market will say “yes” or “no” to that product. Be it a catalogue, or any type of communication.
In a moment of crisis, you need to find an original point of view, new ways of looking. Do you agree?
Jordi Tió: The economic crisis and the product crisis are not the same. We must distinguish them. During economic crisis, products are unalterable. They work or they don’t, they can be afforded or not. This relates to what we call the product crisis. Now, we are in a period of economic crisis. The market kills the production of products by stopping their purchase. What it is clear is that all crises awaken the creative desire to create. Nevertheless, there has to be demand for this creativity so that products can be realised, no longer can it be as it was before, by pure voluntarism, or as it is happening right now, with so many students.
X.M.: Now is an era where there is an excess of creativity, but I would say that is a very bad creativity. There are a lot of people that call themselves creatives and reflect on what creativity is. But their ideas oppose what businesses finally choose and what the market finally accepts.
J.T.: I think that if there’s no demand, then it doesn’t work. There has to be demand to create viable design.
F.A.: You are looking at quite a lot of creativity that has not been demanded by the companies. Students proposing things.
X.M.: It is spontaneous creativity of a level that is less than mediocre. We are permanently rejecting ideas. Ideas of students that don’t know the market they face.
F.A.: There is a pattern in which, if you alter the result, it always turns out badly. The order must begin with the companies doing the research to detect what is needed or what may interest the market, at what price and the manner of distribution. Only then can it be commissioned to a designer, with all the necessary details. When the process of sensing what is needed begins with the designer, well, he becomes a very dangerous person making such decisions. This is one of the things that they don’t teach you in graphic design schools.
J.T.: In architecture, there are a lot of unknown architects that work with renowned architects only to work on official projects. In these projects, there can only be one winner. 99% of them won’t make any money. If they weren’t weren’t renowned, this wouldn’t be understood. It is like if you said: ‘We’re going to clean the streets of Barcelona, but we will only pay for one street’.
F.A.: What you can’t have is hundreds or thousands of people working on projects just for the sake of it.
Twenty or thirty years ago, design and the designer looked upon themselves as social agents. Recently, this has been to dilute a little. The new question now is: will the crisis install a concept of social responsibility concerning design?
J.T.: For who? The creative, the producer, the politician or the consumer? Because, in the end, when something happens, the creative is always sacrificed, I don’t know what’s happening. At the end of the day, it’s some kid that lives in a shared flat with five other people that costs 1,000€, but as he’s got his Mac, well, he’s in such a disguise that nobody cares about him. We have to go back to that order that was mentioned by Fernando. First demand, then creativity. Don’t go looking for that whole, as people say, “fisherman make their day in troubled waters” idea, which is what has happened so many times has with design.
I don’t know any creative that doesn’t give himself entirely to the project, nor one who doesn’t think about how much the product that he is designing will cost, or who is going to make it. This is inherent to the creative. One, when creating, is always seeking a social response in some sphere or other.
X.M.: But do you think that this crisis leads to a crisis of creativity? I don’t. I believe it’s quite the opposite.
F.A.: The crisis makes it possible for us to detect an apparent lack of creativity.
X.M.: Let’s be more precise. In a period of crisis you risk much less, from the point of view of an businessman. Because the responsibility of offering new products to the market in moments of crisis is so savage. On top of that, you have your distribution, etc.
F.A.: If you, as a businessman, detect an economic crisis, what you have to do is to commission the best designer that you can afford to design a product adapted to that period of crisis. A more competitive price or a lower price.
X.M.: Perhaps in moments of crisis you choose a kind of creativity that requires less risk, creativity...
You become more conservative?
F.A.: If the crisis requires a product of lower price, or even lesser quality, it is possible that it’s simply what you must to do to avoid bankruptcy.
X.M.: Or more likely a cheaper product becomes much more attractive to consumers in a period of crisis.
J.T.: Fernando is very American. This is his strength. He just explained very well what is fair play for businessmen. To take risks. When one says, ‘I’m going to make something’ he also says ‘I’m going to take a risk’. The businessman always takes this first risk. He puts down a sum of money, and commissions a specific job. Fair play from the beginning.
In regards to aesthetics, is it a trend to go back to classicism in times of crisis?
F.A.: Cyclically, as is normal in times of low creativity, you look back to eras that interest you more, one which has not yet been repeated already.
X.M.: At the beginning of a century, exactly where we are now, you only look to the past. You don’t take risks.
F.A.: For a few years you say ‘let’s make things that look like they’re from the ‘50s. When that’s over you say ‘we’ve already done the fifties, we may as well do things that look like they’re from the ‘60s, the ‘70s etc.’
X.M.: The design of today imitates the forms from the ‘50s. And everybody likes it.
Does this has something to do with economic difficulties?
X.M.: No, this always happens, it’s the beginning of the century. Do you really think that in times of crisis there is a crisis in creativity as well? To be honest, I’ve never heard that said.
Let’s talk about the meaning of creativity. There are two sides in creativity. One is the design side and the other is ‘lets be more creative to get this business in front. Let’s generate original ideas that will allow us to continue thinking ahead’.
F.A.: Perhaps this idea is more important as a way of thinking, not just concerning product design.
X.M.: That’s creativity. We live in a country in which the business world has sunk, because all the business is abroad. But the amount of creativity generated here is amazing. And what is also amazing is what the foreign markets understand of what it is done here. What we do is much better understood from abroad than in our environment of crisis. Here there is a certain pessimistic ambience, yet abroad people are extremely receptive to what we are doing. Basically, what have we done is we have turned our gaze outwards, where they are more sensitive to what is being done here. Barcelona is a wonderful place to live and do business. All the goods generated here are quite exportable. This is what we are living. It is very positive.
J.T.: There is this one moment where if you don’t fight with some courage, we don’t progress. This is very typical of what are discussing: the crisis, creativity and business. If you don’t throw yourself out there and take risks, the crisis will eat you alive. If you see it coming, and you understand it for what it is, you have to put yourself out there even more. That’s how the economic crisis is, all or nothing. The crisis forces you to be courageous. And one’s courage is all the integrity one has. In such moments, you have to seek shelter in your environment and rely on family, because you are taking risks and you need support.
This particular crisis is different to other crises of the past. Now we have to coexist with an acceleration of the economy, which in turn determines a savage consumerism where all products are disposable. Is this an opportunity to make long-lasting products or is it the opposite? Does the uncertainty of the economy oblige one to follow the train of ephemeral production?
X.M.: I think is an aberration consuming just because we live in consumerism. We have that very clear. I’ve was educated with the idea of acquiring few products, and good ones, of high quality, long-lasting. This is the opposite of what gets talked about in this era. I feel vomiting when I hear people talking about sustainability, for example when countries like the United States talk about sustainability. They are the largest consumerist country in the world, where you buy a product today and it’s disposable almost immediately. That’s the aberration. Where programmed obsolescence is employed, products have a have a certain time frame of durability. For example, every single piece of electronic goods. That’s unsustainable. It’s like we need to come back to who we really are, look back to other eras. Eat little, but well.
J.T.: If we’re talking seriosuly, I’m not prepared to answer this question. To answer it properly, many people from all around the world would have to sit down at an enormous table. When we talk about sustainability we are talking about limited resources, jobs, recycling, cost and ways of working. It would have to be a very honest table! Be careful when giving a designer the position of a missionary priest. To talk of designers as a solution to sustainability doesn’t make sense. It shows a lack of understanding of the topic we’re talking about. We have to make deals, have conventions, make sacrifices. You can’t be sustainable without sacrificing things. It’s not compatible! I don’t like it that these topics of sustainability are given to the people that call themselves designers.
F.A.: We always try to explain to our costumer that our bet is to try and make them buy a product of higher quality, normally at a higher price. However, this is something that is not happening at the moment. The people opt for a product at a lower price. Although these products last less, they help us to get out of the rut. Now isn’t the right moment, yet in the future, sustainability will be associated with a higher purchasing power.
J.T.: I’m a lover of the timeless products, because they give me some sort of memory. They transmit a certain something that I love. I love the idea of buying a table, putting inside my house and leaving it there, almost like a tattoo. I think that is a good thing, because you identify with that piece of furniture. It becomes a part of you.
Can businessmen of today afford to make products of quality or are they forced to produce or commercialise products with shorter life spans just because they sell better?
F.A.: Well, as always, in the market you have some groups that go in one direction and others that go in others. There will be the ones who place their bets on the lower costing products that are disposable and have limited life spans.
X.M.: We make products in the opposite way. Our customers live, coexist and die with them. People make our products theirs and they become a part of them. This is the beauty of it.
F.A.: Every now and then, I buy things as a consumer. But also, everything that I sell I previously bought. Maybe it’s that I’m a big shopper, but when I’m looking for the thousands of products that I have to purchase, sustainability comes into play, however, what has more weight is the emotional component. If I see a sustainable product and it doesn’t excite me, I simply won’t purchase it.
J.T.: There is a difference between a grocer and a merchant; the one that loves a product is a grocer and the one that is thinking about selling it is a merchant. The difference is sustainability. The grocer, if he likes the product, he will have in his home. The merchant won’t. He is all about “search, buy and sell.” With the merchant there is no excitement.
X.M.: However, in the case of Fernando it’s a mixture of the two.
F.A.: For me, the emotional factor is much more important, I’m sorry. Every month people come and offer me a new cardboard chair. Well, I never buy it. Because I don’t believe in it, because I wouldn’t have it in my home, because it’s not exciting for me, because I think of it as a trap.
And what about the emotional factor compared to more rational components like funcionality?
F.A.: This forms part of the emotion. When I see a product and it’s very rational, for me it’s very exciting, so everything joins into one. There is always the matter of sustainability alongside. If you were very demanding, then you should have the certificate for the wood of the beech tree stating its provenance from who knows where. I just give up.
X.M.: Fernando, when was the last time that you bought a chair for you, for your home, the last time you really incorporated an object into your home?
F.A.: Everything I bought, I’ve done it thinking that it could have a place in my home. If I can’t imagine it in my house, I don’t buy it.
X.M.: But you don’t buy things for your own home, do you? Because they don’t fit and you don’t need them.
F.A.: Well, perhaps here you could brag about sustainability. But as for the question of not wanting to throw away a chair because I found another one I like better; I was moved when I bought it in the first place. I have it in my home and I feel satisfied.
X.M.: The big mystery for producers is: how do they make someone that is on the same wavelength as them throw out something that they already have for something new that will last for another ten years?
F.A.: This has one foot in unsustainability. What you are proposing is throw something away even though it is still functional and for no reason. The unsustainable part here for example, is not repairing. In my house, I repair things a lot. When a heater breaks, I take it apart and try to fix it.
J.T.: Once he even fixed his daughter’s Mac that had a floppy disk stuck in it. He took it apart, took out the disk and put it back together again!
There is a website called ifixit. Do you know it?
F.A.: Yes I do. I had to buy some tools the other day and, with the help of this website I did it. What satisfaction! Anyway, the topic of sustainability is very slippery.
X.M.: Yes. It is a trend, it’s something to talk about. It seems to be very fashionable, which is something I don’t know very much about.
J.T.: It is also a very personal issue. Because, for example, I go to the supermarket and I try not to use plastic bags, or I don’t buy cans. This is a limited approach. But if we each wage our own little wars, it helps. This has to be done for sure, these little wars are very important. But soon there comes a big war, which is the one I mentioned earlier, where a lot of people have to sit down and talk.
F.A.: But this one will turn out to be only politics.
J.T.: No.
F.A.: Who is going to do it? Greenpeace?
J.T.: No. If politics don’t work, and Greenpeace neither, then the entire mankind will have sit down and make it work. The solutions are in the hands of the unpowerful.
POTENTIAL QUOTES
X.M.: At the beginning of a century, exactly where we are now, you only look to the past. You don’t take risks.
J.T.: The solutions are in the hands of the unpowerful.
F.A.: Everything I bought, I’ve done it thinking that it could have a place in my home. If I can’t imagine it in my house, I don’t buy it.
F.A.: Now isn’t the right moment, yet in the future, sustainability will be associated with a higher purchasing power.
J.T.: You can’t be sustainable without sacrificing things. It’s not compatible!
X.M.: It’s like we need to come back to who we really are, look back to other eras. Eat little, but well.
J.T.: If you don’t throw yourself out there and take risks, the crisis will eat you alive.
F.A.: This is one of the things that they don’t teach you in graphic design schools.
X.M.: We are permanently rejecting ideas. Ideas of students that don’t know the market they face.
F.A.: Hire a good creative, a good designer.
