Everyday Design 2：Design Making

Is it a must to use our brains when designing? Not necessarily.
For designers, it is even more free and fun using their hands first, then their brains, and find out the answers directly during the production process.

Young concrete art designer Stefan said, “Every time I really look forward to how the final products will look after demoulding. The anticipation brings me pleasure.”

Stefan loves mixing different materials with his concrete art design. He describes that the process is like cooking as we need to use our hands to adjust the concrete art recipes into ones that suit our tastes.

Paper engineer and designer Soilworm said, “When you make something by hand, you will have more room to reconsider during the process, which will induce even more possibilities.”

Soilworm and his years-long partner Michael have all along insisted in handling every production step on their own. The more experiences accumulated, the further the techniques can break away from the limitations, which enables them to walk further.

Toy designer Lego said, “The pleasure of hand making things is that you can create something that doesn’t exist in real life, or creatures which I think they will exist in the future.”

Lego and her husband Lewa are both vinyl toy designers. They gain inspiration from the surrealist worlds in their hearts, and turn surreal creatures into art collectibles. Each work has its own original story and even contains the couple’s thoughts on real life.

Architecture conservator FUNG Wai-keung said, “If new techniques can be suitably integrated with traditional crafts, the crafts will possibly become art.”

FUNG is well versed in the craft of terrazzo. He hit it off with Stefan, and the latter turned the creative ideas which FUNG could not realise into handicrafts using new techniques, which has brought new opportunities to this endangered traditional craft.

Maria, Programme Manager of Makerbay Foundation, said, “Neither do you need to be equipped with all production skills at the beginning, nor learning through designing. By helping and sharing with one another, everyone can be a designer, or a maker.”

Through sharing tools, ideas, production skills and experiences, people from different fields can inspire, exchange with and contribute ideas to one another, letting those with ideas put their designs into practice instead of getting stuck in the stage of thinking.



Producer: Manfred CHOW