I want people to love to sit in my chairs. You gotta want the people to buy it because they love it.
Most designers work up to a peak. They do some great stuff, and then it's just junk.
Most industrial designers do a bottle or a pen or a computer - things that go right past your eye. When you see a chair, it's almost like a person. It's this great big thing in front of you. It hits you more.
A chair, it's like a sculpture. It starts as a thought and then becomes an idea, something I might think about for years. When the time is right, I express it on paper, usually as a simple line in space. Finally, it takes shape.
I do a lot of work on computers, but I am so practiced in drawing that I can draw it full size, and you can take the measurements off my drawings. It's like drafting, but it's a work of art - a really beautiful drawing.
Every other piece of industrial design is a pot or a dish or something insignificant. But when you have a chair, it's like a sculpture of a person: it's alive. It's big. You can't miss it. It's a 'look at me!' item.
To keep the edge, you just keep doing something new. I'm not gonna say that working is easy, but while I'm doing it, I'm just a happy little moron - that's how my girlfriend describes me. The fact that nothing might happen with those things is not the point. The point is, I'm doing new things, and I have a good feeling in my soul.
