eric on s+arck

Eric, my design manager took me out to some BBQ last week in Shekou. Apparently Barrack Obama's brother owns the place, but I couldn't get any firm evidence on that. I asked Eric about his time in Paris designing under Phillipe Starck, a famous industrial designer. Here are some quick snippets of what I could remember.

On process: Everyone in the studio would do 100 sketches, afterwhat Starck would review each one. He would rarely pick one sketch in its entirety. He might highlight bits and pieces for refinement. Sometimes after a review he would say it all was no good and come back after lunch and show a concept that would literally make you bow down to him. haha, that part was funny. He said he did this quite often. Eric said he was able to consolidate all the greatness from the 100s of sketches into the final design in a very short amount of time.

The environment: He let creatives be creative, explore yourself, he let your creative mind able to flow.

Getting the job: After Eric passed the interview process, starck asked him if he could start after lunch. Eric said he was like "ahhhh wow, YES I can." After lunch stark presented him with his first task and possibly his last. He had to make a flying lamp from a helium balloon, mylar, light bulb and battery. If he could make it fly, light on out in the courtyard he would get the job.

Eric said he was very confident with his prototyping skills, so he was not worried at all. While making his flying lamp he asked for some help. He needed to secure two large pieces of mylar together with double stick tape. After asking the studio designers no one said anything. It was an awkward moment, him standing in the middle of the starck studio and no one acknowledging his existence. Luckily he had a friend there and he came back to help. He asked his friend why no one would respond to him. His friend said don't worry about it right now. He helped him and went back to his seat.

Eric passed, his flying mylar lamp worked great, he was now working at the most prestigious studio in Paris. He later asked why no on would help him, his friend says, when Starck hires he fires, so Eric was replacing someone, and no one was happy that he was there. Turns out he didn't fire anyone, but this was his first introduction into the lifestyle, Eric put a lot of emphasis on the culture of the process, a very cultural process.

Poor timing: Eric came into the studio at a bad time, starcks wife had cancer, was dying, very sad and emotional.

Starcks Strength and Weakness: Stark did actually design, he was great at that, but what he really excelled at and what's most genius about him is his communication. The way he sells himself, markets himself, he was very successful in that way. Eric said Starck never really had the engineering prowess to do something really great, he always wanted this element. To be great, in the history books next to Tesla, Eisenstein, Morse, etc. Eric said he really needed the relationship of a big company with lots of R&D time/money to do that. The great ideas where there, it was just about the proper funds and timing. It just never worked out that way.