Portrait of Jasper Morrison by Elena Mahugo © Jasper Morrison Ltd.
“Some Designers have a complete Vision of the Future”
Interview with Jasper Morrison by Gerrit Terstiege
The clear, calm and precise product language of Jasper Morrison has often been linked to that of Dieter Rams. We wanted to know how Morrison today feels about the legacy of Rams, if he considers certain Braun products „super normal“ and what brought him to Germany as a design student.
GT: I would like to start by going way back … to your time in Berlin and at HdK Berlin in the late 1980s. What made you go to Germany in the first place? Was it the reputation of German design or the somewhat artistic and experimental atmosphere in Berlin at the time?
JM: I was already studying at the Royal College and was aware of Dieter Rams‘ work as I had one of the white radio/record players with transparent lid and wooden ends in my room since I was 17. I knew about the Bauhaus of course, and was aware of Marcel Breuer as a master of furniture design, which was my subject. I met Andreas Brandolini at a 1982 design meeting of European designers, called „Rastlos,“ on the Austrian-Hungarian border and we became friends. I had an offer to study in Germany from an organisation called The Shakespeare Foundation, promoting relations between England and Germany.
GT: Where did you acquire the „Snow White’s Coffin“? In Great Britain or in Germany?
JM: It originally belonged to my maternal grandfather. He had been the head of Danish Bacon in Britain. One room of his house was furnished in the early 1960s in a modern, Scandinavian style with objects acquired during his trips to Denmark. This room made a deep impression on me as a child. And one of the objects in the room was a Braun SK 55. Each time we visited my grandparents, I’d end up in that room. I couldn’t explain it at the time but looking back I realised that the atmosphere of that light, airy space, without any of the over-stuffed upholstery and claustrophobia of carpets and curtains of typical English living rooms of that time, was an improvement. I was aware of feeling better in that space than elsewhere and later on came to realise that my sense of well being was somehow tied up with how I reacted to my surroundings. Later my parents used the SK 55 and then I took it over from them.
Sketchbook by the young Jasper Morrison with a drawing of his room at school showing his grandfather's Snow White's coffin.
© Jasper Morrison Ltd.
GT: What has become of the „Snow White’s Coffin“?
JM: I had the SK 55 from around 17 to 28 years old, and then gave it to an assistant in the late 1980s. It was in my family for three generations and then was happily taken over by a younger designer, so it had a good long life!
GT: The so-called New German Design in the 1980s was very anti-functionalist, anti-mass production. Groups like Pentagon, GINBANDE or Kunstflug were the thing—and they took their various positions against the Bauhaus tradition, HfG Ulm, Braun and Rams. How did you react to those tendencies back in the day?
JM: Well, they were colleagues and contemporaries and we got on well enough. We all had our different approaches and opinions, but the general mood was that we were all exploring new territory. The Bauhaus and the Werkbund were relatively fresh to me and I saw so much possibility in trying to reinterpret them.
GT: You choose to study at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin (now called Universität der Künste Berlin) — while Dieter Rams was a design professor in Hamburg at the time. You could have studied with him … Were you aware of that?
JM: No, I wasn’t. I never even imagined that he’d be teaching. If I had, I could have applied, but Berlin had its charm and I was quite happy to be there. I’m not sure Dieter would have been all that interested in the ready-made furniture projects I was working on at that time!
GT: You assembled standard products used in chemical procedures — funnels, tubes, hoses — and turned them into a lamp for example. Would you still recommend such a playful approach for design students today?
JM: It was a great way to discover the intricacies of manufacturing. I still have the price lists of what each component cost and what the sum cost of a piece would be. In the absence of real manufacturing possibilities I highly recommend finding another way to do it, whatever it is. It taught me to be careful in what I was designing, knowing that each part of a design has a cost that will effect the selling price.
The radically reduced Plywood Chair by Morrison for Vitra, 1988.
© Jasper Morrison Ltd.
Unrealised concepts for a flat screen TV and HiFi for Sony, designed by Morrison together with John Tree, 1998
© Jasper Morrison Ltd.
GT: When did you realise formal simplicity was the path you wanted to take as a designer?
JM: I realise now that it was the only path available to me, it’s the way I’m programmed. The puzzle of simplifying things is so much more satisfying than the mess of complicating them.
GT: Your very first mass-produced design was the FSB door handle series 1144. Was it important to you that Franz Schneider Brakel was a German company? And did you design it to look somewhat German?
JM: The request from Jürgen W. Braun, the CEO of FSB at the time, came out of the blue after an article on my work appeared in Domus magazine in 1988. I’d spent some of my early years living in Frankfurt and then had time in Berlin as a design student so it was an appealing idea to work on a real product in Germany.
Door handle Series 1144 for FSB, Jasper Morrison's first industrial-produced designs, 1990
photo: Timm Rautert / © FSB
GT: What would you say is the greatest achievement of Dieter Rams as a designer?
JM: It’s exceptionally rare but some designers have a complete vision of the future, and I think Rams‘ greatest achievement was to have mapped out the next two decades of design aesthetics for everyone else to follow.
GT: Do you mean the 1960s and 1970s? My impression is that his vision reaches much further. He to this day is very much committed to the future of design and design education.
JM: I mean that in those decades he was showing the way, and others followed. He had more influence on design aesthetics than anyone else and consequently his contribution is a lasting one. That’s proved by the respect he is paid by the design community.
GT: What do you think will be the one new development that will change design as a profession? Artificial intelligence?
JM: I think AI will have a big impact on design, but how much of the designer’s work it can do remains to be seen. Artificial Intelligence can only think in a binary way. It might become very good at reinterpreting what has already been designed, but unable to match the human vision of what comes next. It might lack random spontaneity, but who knows?
Exhibition "Super Normal", Axis Gallery, Tokyo, 2006, curated by Morrison together with Naoto Fukasawa
© Jasper Morrison Studio / Axis Gallery
GT: I have always thought of the „Super Normal“ exhibitions by Naoto Fukasawa and you as a project in the tradition of the German Werkbund endeavour. But can people really be taught to understand a design language better by being exposed to well-designed objects?
JM: Yes, I’m sure of it. Just as I was by the Rams/Gugelot record player or by Eileen Gray’s work. It’s just a question of paying attention to your surroundings.
GT: I really wonder if Rams‘ designs fall into the Super Normal category, in your eyes. Do they? Taking his RT 20 radio for example—it seem so special and it certainly is not overlooked in a room, but it grasps people’s attention … What is your view on Rams products? Would you consider them „super normal“?
JM: l’d happily consider them to be super normal. The RT 20 is formally restrained and relatively discrete in terms of appearance and presence, though the graphic element and speaker grill are eye-catching, and yet it has a good effect on atmosphere, which are all properties of Super Normal objects. I should maybe explain what I mean by a „good effect on atmosphere“. If you bring an object into a room that calls for attention by being visually loud, discordant or plain ugly, the atmosphere of the room will not be improved, it will worsen. Good atmosphere is built by adding a series of relatively discrete objects with restrained formal qualities which provide positive and powerful atmospheric effect and interest. I’m not suggesting that’s everyone’s idea of good atmosphere but it’s my own interpretation after many years of seeing the effects objects have on the way we live.
APC (All Plastic Chair) design by Jasper Morrison for Vitra, 2016
© Vitra
GT: Do you think a society can be improved by good design? Can design improve life?
JM: Absolutely, who wants bad atmosphere, and how else do you get good atmosphere?
GT: Have your views about certain products by Dieter Rams changed over the years?
JM: Not a lot, but I still get so much pleasure when I see them still looking fresh.
GT: I totally agree—but often they are presented, especially on instagram, in a kind of retro, mid-century setting that is still such an interior trend these days. How do you feel as a contemporary designer, about the retro-trends in design? It seems, the past will somehow be our future …
JM: If you accept Enzo Mari’s theory that an object cannot be truly evaluated until it’s 45 years old, then it makes sense that we live with older things. Any object that achieves good atmosphere when it’s first made or after 45 years is a good design. Retro-trends may be helpful to people who are less sure of their own eye.
GT: One last question: How do you feel about the term „timelessness“? Do you think it can be achieved in design?
JM: I believe there are objects which will always look fresh and remain timeless, look at a Thonet or a Kohn bentwood chair. To do that they have to avoid style, make good atmosphere and provide good function. Appearance is important, but there are plenty of products that look good initially, but will not survive more than a few years. So appearance has to be controlled by the other criteria.
Watch design by Jasper Morrison for the Swiss company Rado, 2009
© photo: Xavier Perrenoud/XJC, 2024
More Contributions
Jonathan Ive
Numerous international designers have expressed how much Dieter Rams‘ work means to them. But the impact of what Jonathan Ive did through words and actions for the Braun design revival of the Rams era was and is immense and ensures a worldwide response — to this day. Time for an interview with the long-time Apple design chief.
Fabio De'Longhi
In 2012, the family-run De’Longhi Group took over the Braun Household division. In our interview, Fabio De’Longhi talks about how he sees Dieter Rams‘ legacy and what he expects from the future in terms of design, production methods and management strategies.
Lord Norman Foster
Lord Norman Foster on Dieter Rams: “His work is in many ways quite witty. The touches of colour, the changes of contrast. It’s wonderfully optimistic. There’s a lightness of touch. There’s an elegance.”
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