Trust Your Instinct

Fabio Novembre, in October a photo exhibition initiated by Lavazza on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the company’s calendar will open in Milan. You are art director of this exhibition, which combines works of some of the best-known photographers worldwide, as well as curator of the catalogue. What was the specific challenge, especially compared to your main fields of design?
Architecture and design have a visual impact even before you decide to interact with them. In fact we still communicate our work through pictures in spite of its three-dimensional potential. Still our daily cultural food on the internet is made up of images so that it’s quite impossible not to be interested in the great authors in this field. Being a photographer nowadays is basically about developing a very personal point of view, and this is what you‘re asked to do in all other fields related to creativity. The interest of Lavazza in photography reaches back 20 years, beyond any suspicion to be following trends. In fact, together with Pirelli in Italy, Lavazza has started a new way of communication, accepting every year a new challenge with a new photographer and trying to build a story that would represent their values. Trying to make this story as clear as possible was the task asked of me.
 

From the beginning you became known for your extraordinary, expressive and very personal designs as well as for being someone who likes to create and play with his own image. What does it mean for you to be a designer?
I am a designer exactly the same way I could be a photographer, a painter, or a musician. I’ve chosen a medium of communication that fits me quite comfortably and I use it to express my ideas, my visions, my love for life.
  

You started your career designing interiors before also turning to product design. What made you enter product design as well; where do you see interrelations or major differences between the two fields?
To answer your question I would like to quote Ernesto Nathan Rogers: “From the spoon to the town”. This is the slogan he created in 1952 in the Charta of Athens. He explained the typical approach of a Milanese architect, who designs a spoon, a chair, and a lamp and on the same day works on a skyscraper. I believe that approach still works.
 

Product design asks for a close cooperation with the client, the company, even more so if we are talking about a production in certain quantities. Looking at the specific and sometimes provocative appearance of your work: Has the attitude of companies in the field of design changed over the years? Have they become more open? And how much freedom do they leave you? 
What you say used to be very true, but now it is only partly. The market is saturated so that even companies don’t have real inputs to give to a designer. The success of an object is more unpredictable than it has ever been and we can only trust our instinct. Imagine that my Nemo has been Driade’s bestseller since the day we showed it at the Salone, and it’s quite a difficult piece... But of course we are not talking about the selling numbers of 20 years ago. The whole field is in a deep crisis and it’s up to designers and producers to find together a way to evolve.
  

For big companies, prominent “names” of designers have become as important as the product itself. How do you – taking into account the mentioned way you deal with your own image – think about the “star system” in design?
Of course I can only talk from a designer’s point of view, but I think that most of the times, there is more coherence in designers’ than in companies’ researches. I believe that the so-called “star system” is just people’s recognition of the efforts made by authors to develop new languages, new solutions, new visions.

In your blog ionoi.it you present a wide and playful range of what one could call cultural “spoils” – remarkable works by others from the field of fashion, product or graphic design, examples of design work recurring to art, comparisons of creative works seemingly circling around the same topic, postcards, quotations, etc. How much do you consider yourself a “collector” – of ideas, appearances? How would you describe the cultural cosmos that mainly influences you?
I’m culturally omnivorous and ionoi.it, my blog, is a clear example of my approach to life. Actually I would like to point out that io-noi means me-we: let’s call it my acceptance that there’s no me without we and that the whole world can be explained by linking things to each other. Between you and me there are only six degrees of separation, probably even less...

Talking about being culturally omnivorous: Does style matter to you, in the general sense of distinction within society and in the more specific sense of an underlying continuity between your works? How sexy should design be?
Unavoidably you develop your own approach to the project that can easily be defined as your specific style. But it’s not to be meant as a cage you build around yourself. You always have to trust your instinct to overcome fear of change; probably evolution is the perfect style. About being sexy, I just think that either you are or you’re not. It‘s not teachable.
  

In your blog one question showed up lately: „Is design a form of evolution?“ Is it? Where is it headed?
As I just said: evolution is the perfect style! And designers need to be stylish...