Are you an Artist?

Whilst doing a bit of browsing on my topic of "Are you a Designer?" I found this interesting blog post that is questioning the difference between Designers and Artist. Reading the comments below is just as interesting. Do you agree? What is the division between an Artist and a Designer? Or even I suppose, The difference between somebody working in manufacture for example and a Designer?

http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/designers-are-not-artists

Konstantin Grcic - Umbrella

A fun piece here designed back in 2006. Taking an existing product and making an almost un-noticable change in order to make a difference. This Umbrella caught my eye as I tried to establish what I would utilise the modifiction for? What would you us it for?

Taken from his website it says:

Sometimes it‘s more difficult to resist than to act. As designers we‘re easily tempted to renew, replace or change things. One of the virtues of working with Japanese no-brand Muji is using what already exists, simplifying, even leaving things alone, creating objects that blend into the environment rather than making a strong mark.This idea is exemplified in the umbrella project we did as part of our long standing collaboration. The only intervention we made to an existing umbrella is drilling a hole into the end of the handle.

Project assistant: Alexander Löhr (KGID)
Producer: Muji

Konstantin Grcic - CRASH

A piece that caught my eye is this chair, called CRASH. This was a piece Konstantin worked on in 2010 in conjunction with the british designers of Establised & Sons. It is a rather simple piece that focuses on the way we treat manufacture when designing things. well, at least, thats what I understand he was aiming to do. Taken from his website it says:

The key characteristics of CRASH are its generous dimensions; it is wide and spacious ... and extremely comfortable. To crash out is a nice English expression which comes to mind.
Something I’ve been concerned with for years is the way how upholstered furniture is made. There is a huge industry out there producing endless upholstered furniture all made in the same banal way; glueing foam onto cheap wooden structures, then stapling fabric over it. CRASH consists of the same elements, a supporting structure, a piece of foam and the fabric cover. However, we do not bond these elements together. There is a supporting framework made of tubular steel, very simple and straightforward and a loose piece of moulded foam that gets pushed over the frame. The fabric finishes everything off, it is streched over the foam like a jumper.

Project assistant: Pauline Deltour (KGID)
Producer: Established & Sons

However, this description was not the reason I was drawn to the chair. The simple reason was that to me he had taken a beanbag and made a simple change which makes it so much better. A beanbag, although it deforms easily to fit your body… it is convex! Useless… you just roll off! What we need more of  is concave beanbags. That would be problem solved in my opinion. You do get them, but you also still get the useless convex versions.

Turns out that this chair is not of beanbag construction at all, but it brought this issue to my attention anyway. And also, I think it is a nice looking chair and looks like it does well what many chairs do not; it looks comfy to sit on! Would love to see some of his chairs for real.

Konstantin Grcic - Some examples

I said that I would focus on a product or two and go into them in a wee bit more detail, however, whilst looking into his portfolio of work i found more than just a few that are of interest. Take a look at his website: http://konstantin-grcic.com

Lets have a look at a couple anyway…