Irreverent Objects
Beyond Golden Rainbow Table by Las Ánimas (image: courtesy of Las Ánimas).
There is a tendency for design, as a discipline, to lean towards seriousness.
In Ten Principles for Good Design, Dieter Rams invites us to value minimalist, no fuss, clearly defined objects. Furniture, appliances and lighting are frequently praised for their utility, elegance, beauty or tactility, whilst elements of surprise, visual wit or charm are often presented as secondary - an extra or an add on. However, does this view disregard an important element of living with objects? Designers such as Alessandro Mendini, Inga Sempé or Jaime Hayon have long shown that the objects we live with may incorporate space for whimsy or irreverence – traits that can lend personality or character to a space. So why is humour, so often praised in other areas of culture, not given the same scope of attention in design?
To examine this theme, Disegno was invited by Interiors from Spain and ICEX, an organisation within Spain’s Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism, to assemble a panel of Spanish designers to discuss their approaches to weaving irreverence and humour into their work. Participating in the conversation were: Marta Ayala Herrera, a product and interior designer based in Barcelona; Iñaki Albistur, one half of Arquimaña, an architecture and design studio from San Sebastián co-founded by Albistur and Raquel Ares; industrial designer Inma Bermudez, who works from her studio in Valencia; and Pablo Párraga, who together with his wife Trini Salamanca, runs creative agency Las Ánimas from Seville.
The conversation ranged from the emotive power of a well-judged joke to the healing power of laughter with friends, via memes on moodboards, asking your children for creative input, and the balance that needs to be considered to make an object functional as well as delightful. Humour, it transpires, is an essential tool in any designer’s kitbag, from creating a connection between an object and its user, to managing the stresses and strains of a career in the creative industries.
Entreplanta Lighting by Marta Ayala Herrera (image: Yuichi Kimur, courtesy of Marta Ayala Herrera).
Disegno What makes you laugh, and how do you bring that to your practice?
Marta Ayala Herrera There are many things that make me laugh. I make jokes about my life. I share a lot of memes as well. I like to build moodboards with pretty details of materials, but also something that makes me laugh or something ironic. When you are trying to create something, you get into this mode where you take yourself really seriously. It's good to use these things as a strategy to see that your job isn't that serious.
Iñaki Albistur Unexpected things – the typical situations of daily life that sometimes suddenly become surreal – are very funny to me. Also irony and surprise. We work a lot with irony and double meanings [in the studio].
Inma Bermudez Nowadays, my kids are the ones that make me laugh most. They’re very small, three and six, so they have a different outlook on life. It's not always easy to to bring that sense of humour at work, but I like to try. I think objects communicate to people and it’s nice when there is more communication than that which is purely functional. But you can’t always get that.
Pablo Párraga What Inma said is true: sometimes your daily work doesn't leave space for you to introduce that sense of humour or, as Iñaki said, for playing with irony. But living in a very sunny place like Seville, it's difficult to avoid joyfulness or happiness in the design we make. When my wife and I began Las Ánimas, we were living in Madrid, and the speed and frenzied energy of the city affected us and also somehow our design work, it was a bit darker and with sober colours. But when we relocated to Seville, little by little, we realised that it was very difficult for us to escape from this humour or joy.
Arquimaña’s Tiritas stool created for the exhibition Nine Ways of Sitting by Moduz Elkartea (image: Estudio Primo, courtesy of Arquimaña).
Disegno Do you think that it's important, as a designer, to have a sense of humour?
Pablo I think that in any creative field, no matter whether it's writing, composition, filmmaking or visual arts, a sense of humour (which I see as the ability to look at things with ingenuity, positivity and hope) is what makes things develop. Through all the crises, wars, pandemic lockdowns, the use and sense of humour is what makes human beings go further and look at things from another perspective.
Iñaki It's like a language – you have to speak it and speak it well to communicate. So I think it's important for everyone.
Inma I don't think it’s important. I mean, I know many designers who don't have a good sense of humour, and they’re still good designers. Humour is important to survive, because life is hard and you need to bring some humour. If not, you die. But in terms of designing, I can be very competent and a very dark person. I would appreciate it if there were more humour in the world, but there isn’t.
Marta From my point of view, humour is a skill to live your life with, but not to be a designer. Like Pablo, I also come from the south, from Córdoba, and we were raised with this same joy, this way of life, that he described. You need humour as a tool to live your life and to achieve good things.
“Humour is the language and joy is a feeling, and feelings are what you use to connect with people.”
Disegno There are many ways that you can use humour in design – it can be something like a visual gag, or a pun in the name of an object. Do you have any favourite ways of working with irreverence in your design?
Pablo Sometimes I ask my children, “What do you think about this, do you think we can make it more interesting?” and they answer with the most crazy things. Sometimes a client is giving you a hard time: it's like, “I want this this way. I want this that way.” For example, we were sketching a big cupboard for a contemporary art gallery here in Seville, but they asked us for several options, which can sometimes be a bad idea. When you give options to the client, you're lost. And my eldest kid told me, “Hey, Daddy, I think maybe it's too big, you should put more legs on.” So we started drafting and, by the end, the cupboard had 100 legs. That kind of sense of humour that only kids have is another perspective, another point of view.
Inma A design doesn't need to be funny, but you can bring a smile to people's faces. I remember in 2011, we presented a collection called Metropolis for Lladró of six typologies of flower vases, boxes, lamps, etc. [To display the collection] we created a 3x1.5m city [made using] the flower vases in different colours. Every day when I was at the fair I was observing people, and they were going into the booth, looking around, and coming out with big smiles. It was nothing funny, but it was such a big thing and very precise with all its vases as big skyscrapers. There are many ways to bring a smile to people's faces. Another recent example taken to the other extreme is Nu, a collection of faucets we created for Roca. We hid the hot and cold signs under the handle, so when you open the tap you see the two dots, and then you see a big smile created by the cylindrical shape of the faucet. The idea is to give the user a big smile in the morning or before they go to bed. It's a nice way to communicate the object to the customer.
Iñaki We like working with out-of-context objects. For example, making a stool in the form of a Band-Aid, or sports rackets that are lamps. But I must admit that sometimes it's dangerous – there's a fine balance between that [type of design] and not making an elegant object. You have to be very careful. And it's not always humour – I think it's more the expression of joy. Humour is the language and joy is a feeling, and feelings are what you use to connect with people.
Marta For me, a sense of humour, or joy, or being a bit irreverent, is really important when it comes to working with somebody else. Whether it's teamwork, or when you are presenting a concept to a client, if you can find the right spot to make a joke, it makes the relationship closer. It's a good thing to use as a communication tool. Five or six years ago, I designed the furniture for the flagship store of a Spanish clothing brand for young girls. The concept for the store was inspired by 80s playgrounds, the ones with the really colourful metal tubes. We ended up designing huge metal racks in the shapes of smiles and winking eyes that you could see from outside the store. It was really nice to take that literal spirit of a brand that was full of joy, and put it into the furniture.
Nu by Inma Bermudez for Roca. (image: Roca, courtesy of Inma Bermudez).
Disegno This theme of communication, laughter and joy sounds like a central part of how you're all working as designers.
Iñaki Emotions are key to communicate and make a feeling of belonging for the user about an object. Maybe it can be disgust, or anger, but that's an emotion, too. And emotions, I think, are key for objects.
Marta Design has many faces, many functions that you can use, and one of them is to communicate humour and irony. These concepts are like a language for many people.
Inma In graphic design, humour is a very powerful tool. Messages land when they catch your attention, because they're funny and easy to read. In product design, it's good to have deeper messages, but sometimes it's just about function and being well produced. In graphic design and marketing, humour has more power to create an impact.
“Design has many faces, many functions that you can use, and one of them is to communicate humour and irony.”
Disegno Do you think there is this perception that because a design isn't serious, it's not taken seriously?
Inma You cannot use humour as a tool every time. Imagine your house being filled with products that make you laugh. Currently, we are working on a project where we are trying to avoid exactly this. We have a starting point that is fun, but we don't want to use all these methods [of humour] in all of the products, because then it gets too much. It isn't unexpected anymore. It's good to have humour, but only in small doses.
Iñaki You shouldn't have to force it. If it works you can use it, but if you can see it's not appropriate, you don't have to use it.
Marta I agree that it should be organic and not forced. I also believe that sometimes humour is underrated. If you want to be taken seriously, especially when you’re starting out in the design field, or in your professional career in general, sometimes you need to avoid humour and making jokes if you want to be taken seriously.,
Pablo That's true. Sometimes, a sense of humour can be misunderstood. When you create decorative arts or furniture, you're sometimes looking to put a smile on the face of the user, but there are so many things behind that, such as ergonomics, usability, functionality. As Iñaki said, you have to balance using humour and not becoming repetitive. I'm not going to put a smile in every design I make. Sometimes the humour, or happiness or joyfulness, comes with the details – you're trying to make something very emotional or deep, and the use of colours makes it a little bit funnier. But it isn't that you're looking to make jokes with your designs every time.
This article was Made for ICEX.
Words Disegno
Photographs courtesy of the designers
