Tell
us about RASKL
We are an enthusiastic team of
designer-engineers who are working on an eclectic line of design pieces and
projects, while developing beautiful bespoke creations for a wide range of
clientele.
The team is made up of David Angus, Dan
Rose and more recently the addition of Brad Mole, a graduate from Northumbria
Uni 3D and Product Design.
We’ve officially been in business for 8
years now although David and Dan have been collaborating on various artistic
endeavours since around the turn of the century.
You’ve
recently been through a period of business review and reflection. What triggered this and how have you found
the process?
Basically
we’d been working very hard and not making much money. We knew we couldn’t do
this for ever, despite the nature of the work being very rewarding. So we
decided to take a very hard line on assessing the profitability of each new job
and set a few rules for ourselves about what type of work we would take on and
how to value it, while at the same time truly valuing ourselves and our
abilities and realising that people really want to invest in these.
It took
us a long time to grow into our roles as designers and to develop the
confidence apply the correct prices to our skills.
Another
massive change came through our acquisition of a CNC router a couple of years
ago. This has opened up a whole new world of design for us and most importantly
has reduced the cost of experimentation which is the most important freedom
required as a designer.
You
have collaborated with Studio Precept in the development of your new
brand. How did the relationship come
about?
We move
in the same circles and have a mutual respect for each other’s work. Precept
had been trying to persuade us to rebrand for years and deconstruction our
visual message. We trusted them implicitly but were concerned about the cost
and commitment to such a big project.
Explain
the process you adopted to tell them about your brand, business objectives,
what you envisaged the outcome to be, did they exceed your expectations?
We were really so impressed with
their methods for analysing what we stood for and how best to represent this.
Despite already having a friendly working relationship, they approached the
project with absolute professionalism and took the analysis extremely
seriously.
They displayed a profound insight into our company an understanding of our inner workings without actually having any experience in our trade apart from an enthusiasm for design in general.
We had no real mental image of what they might come up with, I certainly had a few desires but we tried to go in with an open mind.
Saying that the results were completely different to anything I expected but our expectations were certainly exceeded.
They displayed a profound insight into our company an understanding of our inner workings without actually having any experience in our trade apart from an enthusiasm for design in general.
We had no real mental image of what they might come up with, I certainly had a few desires but we tried to go in with an open mind.
Saying that the results were completely different to anything I expected but our expectations were certainly exceeded.
At first I had a real aversion to their
preferred approach, it did a lot of things that I’d told myself I wasn’t keen
on ‘on paper’ but in practise we’re delighted with the result. It subtly
represents sides of the business we were proud of but didn’t want to push as
our main selling point and even solved a problem I didn’t realise we had until
after the whole rebrand – that we needed to appear more gender neutral both in
our products and our branding.
One really interesting tool they had was to
spend a short time filming us at work, and interspersed this with clips found
on the Internet, along with a suitable soundtrack, to create a video that
encapsulated our “Brand Essence,” a short feel-good film that instills the same
emotions that we aspire to pass on to any potential customer investing in our
work/pieces/brand.
How
has the new brand impacted on your business, your motivation and how others perceive the company?
We
immediately come across so much more professionally when handing over any
literature or directing people to our website (a big part of this is also due
to photographer Richard Kenworthy who does a lot of work with Studio Precept).
We’ve
really taken the new brand to heart and I am certainly trying to design around
the brand and having the essence of this in mind while developing new products
and how they sit in relation to the brand.
This
evaluation has also filtered through to your products, you have honed and
refined your Agranda extending bench and Integra desk, how have you found that
process?
With the Agranda Bench, we’d designed this
years before we could make it, it was designed to be produced on a CNC machine
but we were limited to hand-crafting the bench in hardwood which was cost
prohibitive. The brand analysis coincided with the choice of new materials
required for use with the CNC machine, namely high-grade ply and high-pressure
laminate. Before the rebrand we might have made some very different choices to
‘Heritage Blue’ and rosewood.
In the case of the Integra desk, in a
previous life we may have decided to use a lower-cost fabric alternative to
leather, as we perhaps didn’t value ourselves highly enough to push a product
of uncompromised quality. Our rebrand has certainly given us the confidence to
go for the best materials and manufacture to the best of our abilities.
What
are the plans for the future?
We’re planning on getting a few more
interesting pieces of machinery to further stretch our abilities and have some
really exciting products planned for 2013.
Further down the line we’re aiming to
establish a presence in the international design world, both at exhibitions and
in design led shops.
At the very least if we can keep on doing
what we’re doing while maintaining our integrity we’ll be happy!
