Karim Rashid, Globally Renown Industrial and Cultural Designer, to Address 2017 Material, Technology & Design Symposium @ CPA Fall Meeting

Described by Time magazine as the “most famous industrial designer in all the Americas,” Karim Rashid’s influence on modern design sensibility is greater than the sum of the parts- and there are a lot of parts- over 3000 designs in production, over 300 awards and work in over 40 countries.

Rashid tempers poetic design with manufacturing sensibilities. The approach is holistic, technical and unapologetically fresh. “I have always referred to my work as sensual minimalism , but also technorganic and infostethic. I try to always have some level, even a nuance, of originality or innovation in my work, whether it is a new material, new human behaviour, a new form, a new production method, a new market, a new message (be it wit, humour, emotion, meaning, social or political agenda), new experiences or completely new concepts. Design is our entire built landscape,” said Rashid.   

Through Rashid’s lens, panel processing is an example of design in a contemporary world where “function and material and form and performance and texture and colour and ease are all inseparable in a beauty object or space.” And yet, there are always opportunities to refine and improve. Rashid speaks of his desire to rid the world of nostalgia, to “enjoy, celebrate and experience the contemporary world without perpetual biases and subjective tastes.”

Read his manifesto below, and hear him in person at the Material, Technology & Design Symposium @ the CPA Fall Meeting

Today poetic design is based on a plethora of complex criteria: human experience, social behaviors, global, economic and political issues, physical and mental interaction, form, vision, and a rigorous understanding and desire for contemporary culture. Manufacturing is based on another collective group of criteria: capital investment, market share, production ease, dissemination, growth, distribution, maintenance, service, performance, quality, ecological issues and sustainability. The combination of these factors shape our objects, inform our forms, our physical space, visual culture and our contemporary human experience. These quantitative constructs shape business, identity, brand and value. This is the business of beauty. Every business should be completely concerned with beauty – it is after all a collective human need.