Timorous Beasties

What motivated you to make your Hotch Blotch collection?

Digital Technology and a love of making a mess.

 

What was your favourite part of working on the project?

 

The whole thing was good fun, from boiling up Irish Moss to making Marbled paper, mistakes, scanning, cutting repeats, layering textures, splattering paint on glue resistant paper.....getting samples made up, tweaking, making repeats work for upholstery.

 

As a designer, what is your favourite and least favourite thing about digital technology?

 

Digital technology is good for certain things, and affects us all in many ways, from photography, working on computers, websites..etc.

Digital technology for fabric is good for using lots of colour and making large repeats, but the best thing is its minimum order - 1M.

Worst thing is like every other process, things can go wrong!

 

What excites you most about working as a designer?

 

One can dream.

 

What are you working on at the moment?

 

I've hit a brick wall, you have any ideas?

 

What do you have on your desk?

 

Too many things to list.

What's the soundtrack to your studio?

 

Don't know, someone has left the radio on, although I'm revisiting a lot of Beck at the moment.

 

Who or what are your top 3 influences on your work?

 

Air, Fire and Water.

 

Who is your dream collaborator?

A robot, but a really good looking one.

 

What would be your ideal project?

What I'm doing.

Timorous Beastie's work will be on display as part of Create:Digital at the National Glass Centre Sunderland, 5 October-10 November 2013. 

 

Part of Northern Design Festival 2013.

Michael Young

Sunderland-born designer Michael Young has been based in Hong Kong since 2006.  Since then he has worked with organisations and manufacturers across the Republic of China to develop products from watches to cars. 

Michael’s Skirt Vase will feature in Design Event’s forthcoming Create:Digital exhibition.  The vase was made as part of a range called Co-constructions, in collaboration with Tittot. Tittot are a Taiwan-based glass manufacturer, specialising in the ancient and labour-intensive process of lost wax casting.

 

What motivated you to make the Co-constructions series with Tittot?

Learning a new technique and their enthusiasm to try out new things with me!

 

What was your favourite part of working on the project?

Hanging out with Mr Wang [of Tittot], he knows a lot and through this is very Zen.  Their factory is also amazing…unreal and full of artisans that are very talented.

 

As a designer, what is your favourite and least favourite thing about digital technology?

Favourite:  I guess is [that] I think fast, so that works for me ... you can always turn it off to ponder

 

Least favourite:  I don't know what to do without it now … I used to ponder a lot.

 

What excites you most about working as a designer? 

There is always an unknown turn around the corner which keeps me wondering. 

 

What are you working on at the moment?

We just finished a car which launches on Bondi Beach same time as your show opens [this October], a restaurant in Paris and some public toilets in People’s Square Beijing, and some other bits.

 

What do you have on your desk? 

Embarrassing ….  iMac, MacBook Air, iPad Mini, iPhone 5, iPhone 4, cell phone, Viz, eyewear I should be wearing, Belgian beer, old coffee, scale rule, keyboard, 3 computer mice, Sioux Lakota headdress.

 

What’s the soundtrack in your studio? 

Right now it’s anything from Clouds Taste Metallic [Flaming Lips album].

 

Who or what are the top 3 influences on your work?  

Fear, love and boredom. 

 

Who is your dream collaborator?

I don't have one really, it would not be a person it would be a brand, things have changed … I’m re-launching an old watch of mine and we realised we do not need salesmen, we need young guys who know who to make stuff viral on the www … weird.

 

What would be your ideal project?

A new electric car right now … we just brought an old Moke car back to market and are ready for a new car that can benefit from what we learnt. 

 

Michael’s Skirt Vase will be on display as part of Create:Digital at the National Glass Centre Sunderland, 5 October-10 November 2013. 

Part of Northern Design Festival 2013.