Good design gives you pleasure and improves the quality of all our lives through products that work well, are affordable and look beautiful.
Sir Terence Conran.
Hear hear.
The more I research content for my blog, the more I come across emerging, creative brands who focus on one single discipline or craft. Weaving, glass blowing, woodworking, dyeing, block printing etc etc. They shun the mass-produced goods spilling out of the factories in China (they are not the only ones).
Listening to Terence Conran speak at his newly-opened Design Museum (http://designmuseum.org) the other day, reminded me of a fundamental fact. We really are very very good at design in this country. Whether designing it, buying it, promoting it or using it.
OK, so the Chinese may be bigger, he asked, but are they better?!
Design is optimism….. it is looking ahead to educate, inspire, enlighten the future generation and to make a difference to the world around us.
This post is not about the new Design Museum per se. It reflects on Conran’s vision, which is today manifest by the number of emerging makers out there and the high quality of their goods (watch this space for more on those). Go to any design festival and you’ll see what I mean – some mentioned here in a previous post http://www.mirandavedral.com/2016/06/clerkenwell-design-week/.
The photographs show you the centre of this optimism, this “cathedral of design” as he refers to his new space.
