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The Student Life an ongoing journal by Donald Lehman |
....who is Donald Lehman? |
June 30, 2002  by Donald Lehman I think it was around 3:00 in the morning last June when I decided that no matter what, I would have an ID internship this summer. Spending a few days working from 10pm to 10am ripping up old carpet to make way for vinyl composite tiling (or as we like to call in the business, VCT) helps speed up that decision process. This summer I have landed in New York. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday finds me at Benza, a small design company that produces low-tech household accessories such as vases, clocks, and lamps. When I mean small, I mean 3-people-work-full-time-and-one-isn’t-a-designer small. But don’t think they can’t compete. They have a full range of customers from the MoMA Design Store to Delia’s. And they have been getting a fair amount of press as well. Benza is owned and operated by Giovanni Pellone and Bridget Means. They design some of the products and all of the graphic design but also handle sales, marketing, finding manufactures, and shipping. Basically, they handle every aspect of the business. Say you want to know about felt and different ways to handle its production; a 20-minute talk on how they figured out how to use it is just around the divider. Want to know about dealing with setting up a new product line? Feedback on some ideas you have sketched out? You get the idea. It’s very convenient to be around knowledgeable people who are willing to talk about their experiences with you. My job consists of helping out around the studio and working on a design project that they have given me. Studio work has varied anywhere from building models to the occasional box building for products that are ready to be shipped (When I said they handled every aspect of the business, I meant it.) Model making at Benza has been refreshingly low-tech. Instead of the full-featured model shops that I am used to having at my disposal at RIT, Benza has a band saw, a table saw, a drill press, and an Exact-O knife. The spray booth is a box fan attached to the back of a board hanging out a window that would bring a smile to MacGyver’s face. Some of the ways Giovanni has worked around the lack of power tools have been quite good. Take for example one of the vases he’s working on: a cylindrical glass vase surrounded by thick gauge wire. My first thought on mocking this up would be to make a jig and bend all the wire pieces on it and then figure some way to attach it to the vase. I’m figuring that would be about 8 hours for one model that would probably look like crap. Giovanni instead instructed us to cut out the forms on vinyl sheets and then outline them with black tape in the thickness of the wire. Same effect, half the time. The other part of my time at Benza is used to work on my design project, which is to design a vase. Let’s not lie to ourselves here; there hasn’t been a major revolution in vase technology since Grog invented the first vase for his girlfriend way back at the beginning of human existence. Likewise with all of Benza’s products, they all have been perfected years ago and there are no major functional improvements to be made. So instead Benza strives to add commentary about our daily lives to their objects. Take for example the Unit Desk clock. The form is basically a 2.5-inch cube on top of 4 legs. No big deal, but why is it like that? The cube is supposed to represent one standard unit of time that busy people sometimes have the tendency to measure their lives by. I find myself liking their products a lot more when I know the meaning behind them. I’m applying this same sort of thinking to the vase and it’s been leading me in some interesting directions. In the very least I come away with a fresh perspective on design that I have not been taught at RIT and lots of good experience. But, if all the planets align and I’m wearing my lucky boxers the vase will actually go into production. Sure beats ripping up carpet. “I Can’t Believe She Cast A @#$%ing Basement” Design of the Month Club: Transient Spaces Okay, so here’s the basic set-up for this one: My friend Nate and I were doing a little museum hopping one day and were finishing the day with the Guggenheim solely on the fact I had never been there before and I’m a big fan of Frank Lloyd Wright. The museums itself was in a transitional stage between exhibits so only a couple of the floors were open. One of those was the 7th floor that was hosting Rachel Whiteread’s Transient Spaces. We walk in, and the only things there are two white, room-sized sculptures. Great, someone made a gigantic block. Just as we’re ready to leave I caught one of the description cards. Dear God. These aren’t gigantic blocks. These are plaster casts of rooms. Entire rooms. I’m talking imprints of doors, light switches, windows. We walked around them again in awe. You saw the room in a completely different way. Every incidental light switch was now key to the entire sculpture. I still can’t get over the basement stairs she cast. |
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