Blurring the Boundaries Between Design, Art, and Commercialization

Marking the release of Phaidon’s new compendium Designed for Life: The World’s Best Product Designers, the publisher’s director of marketing and digital initiatives Ellie Levine hosted a talk at ICFF 2024 about the continued push to blur disciplinary boundaries in contemporary practice, the title’s main thesis. Held on May 19th, the panel brought together the especially forthright perspectives of Herman Miller creative director Kelsey Keith, who penned the introduction, noted lighting designer Lindsey Adelman and up-and-coming polymath Minjae Kim, both operating out of New York City.

(Image above: Courtesy Lindsey Adelman)

Highlighting the recent output of emerging talents such as Mac Collins, Nifemi Marcus-Bello but also recent developments from established names like Jasper Morrison and India Mahdavi, the book surveys 100 global designers—including Adelman and Kim—driving the ever-stratified industry forward. 

In opening the conversation, Levine noted how Adelman and Kim represent different generations, approaches, and preoccupations but how both have cultivated emphatically autonomous practices, a phenomenon that—at least in the United States—emerged out of necessity, on the heels of the 2008 Great Recession.

“I started my studio because I was particularly interested in making functional objects but wanted to infuse them with something that goes beyond function,” Adelman said. “What kind of effect do I want them to have, not only on the room, but on the people in the room? How can they change behavior in the room? How can they affect the mood? How can I create work that seems familiar but also something we haven’t seen before?”

When asked by Keith, who took over the moderation of the talk, what she consciously doesn’t do when it comes to some of the characteristics oft-ascribed to product designers, Adelman noted that she doesn’t adhere to trends or specific marketing strategies but rather, is able to debut new collections when it feels right to do so.

“I’ve been making furniture in some capacity for over a decade but have only had my own practice for about three years,” Kim said. “During my time in the military or working for other studios, there were always side projects that let me explore my own ideas or served as outlets for my frustration about the slow pace of getting other projects done. Starting my studio and working primarily with galleries allowed me to do that full time.”

Keith intro-ed the Designed for Life: The World’s Best Product Designers with a text about the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)’s “taste-making” Good Design exhibitions throughout the 1950s, standard bearer showcases held sway over much of midcentury development.  

“People were really preoccupied with this idea of good, what counted as good,” she reflected during the panel. “But I think the question is now, especially as you’re looking at this survey of so many talents working today, what even constitutes design? She asked both Adelman and Kim how they define design versus craft and design versus art.

“These are really interesting questions to wrestle with,” Adelman responded. “In those days, objects served a purpose. Nowadays, they need to meet someone’s desire. I look at what I do as a kind of service. What people are craving today is something to believe in or a way to feel or hope or something that can lift them up from the inside.”

Keith also noted that design is often a reflection of society but that unlike the previously mentioned period of high modernism, which promoted a quite strict set of principles, it’s hard to define one guiding trend or ethos in the present day. “There’s so much out there on the market,” she said. 

For Kim, adopting a more individualistic mindset and working simply based on personal intuition and reflection rather than having to constantly reference other touchpoints from the past or present day as a means of legitimation ensures that his output always stands out. One way he’s achieved this is by reclaiming and putting his own spin on age-old artisanal traditions specific to his native South Korea. 

“I spent most of my twenties in the US and now I’m 35,” Kim reflected. “So, there was this kind of distance to the localized craft culture I had grown up around. And I would say maybe there was even more appreciation once I left. It’s kind of the classic situation: you leave home and then you develop a new kind of appreciation.  I think there’s now, at least in Korea, more movement to reestablish that heritage, if only in a slightly artificial way, which I don’t try to conceal in my work. It’s usually my interpretation anyway.”

Keith concluded the panel by re-examining the all too real and seemingly never resolved conundrum of being able to maintain a more artistic and self-reflective practice while still meeting a demand, whether that be one forged out of a talent’s own making or external socio-cultural forces; essentially remaining economic afloat while continuing to cultivate one’s approach.

“I’ve been doing this for a few years, and I go through ups and downs,” Kim adds. “We work with a lot of craftspeople, but everything funnels through my studio. We’re very removed from industrial scale production which makes us more agile. But then being at the juncture of design, there’s also the expectations of the market. It’s a little bit different and so, I’ve always struggled with striking that balance. It sometimes feels like there’s a missed opportunity if I also don’t branch out to do more, maybe more product or more distinctively design objects. It’s an interesting challenge. I’d love to try it, but I mean it’s tricky because I’ve thought about how to translate some of my work in a completely different production setting and it’s difficult. I haven’t cracked it yet, but I’d like to.”