Scott Klinker is the designer-in-residence for the Cranbrook Academy of Art 3D Design department.

Scott Klinker’s describes himself on his website as follows:
“Designer, inventor, entrepreneur and educator, Scott Klinker is passionate about giving form to new cultural ideas. He heads the graduate 3D design program at the renowned Cranbrook Academy of Art as Designer-in-Residence, where he also received his MFA in 1996.  After building experience as an in-house designer at Ericsson, and as senior staff at IDEO - Klinker ventured to Japan in 1999 to lead a product design program at the Kanazawa International Design Institute and founded his independent studio, Scott Klinker Product Design - focused on developing licensed designs for contract furniture, household goods and toys. He moved his practice to Cranbrook in 2001 and built partnerships with small, design-driven manufacturers that share his passion for innovation. In 2004, Scott’s Spaceframe Builder’s Kit was selected by Fortune magazine as one of the top 25 products of the year. In 2006, he was featured in Newsweek’s annual ‘Design Dozen’ selection of best new designers. Scott has organized and curated exhibitions to promote Design in Kanazawa, Chicago, Detroit, New York and Milan. As an active agent in education, culture and commerce, he is building new works, connections and discussions to inspire design culture in America and abroad.”

10 Questions for Scott Klinker.

1. You identify yourself as an “inventor and entrepreneur”, alongside “designer” and “educator”. Do these four sides of your practice help or compete with each other?

SK: First thanks, Arjen for building this site. It’s a great resource for us all.

Like many designers, I like to wear several hats. In my studio, I try to balance theory and practice to keep learning on all fronts. If you look on my website (www.ScottKlinker.com), you’ll see experimental concepts alongside commercial products. Sometimes open-ended research into a material or process will lead to a real product. For example, The Spaceframe Builder’s Kit came from playing with a new material, nonwoven PET plastic. The Truss Collection was a self-initiated study of digital fabrication. Both of these research projects found manufacturing partners to make them into real products. That kind of synergy makes me very happy. In this way, I try to lead my students by example and offer an inspiring model of practice. These different roles work well together. The entrepreneurial role is the most difficult so far. The royalties on this kind of work are very thin and barely pay for your time and talent. My newest furniture collection for a Michigan-based retailer includes 28 new products and will launch this summer. This project may help me to grow my practice over the long term.

2. When you founded your studio “Scott Klinker Product Design” , you were living in Japan. How would you say being a part of such a different culture influenced your design practice?

SK: It changed everything; 2+ years immersed in glorious POMO weirdness. All my defaults were useless. After I got over that discomfort, it did wonders for my process. In Japan, all cultural codes are free game for the remix – East, West, Old, New. Japan is advanced.

3. As the head of the product design department at Cranbrook, you are part of a progressive academic and design tradition. It seems that this environment would be an excellent incubator for your own focus on innovation.

Do your design theory and studio practice work well together or do they sometimes clash with each-other?

SK: I’m a maker and a form giver, two values that sometimes seem to be disappearing from design education. Cranbrook designers should be able to think, make, and give specific form to the stories that are important to them. I try to provide a progressive example of this as the head of the program. Some of my projects involve real world constraints, like clients and budgets, that are not always ideal, though I choose my projects and partners carefully so that there is room to explore. I’m interested in the scalability of design, moving between mass production and craft. Mass produced projects have more constraints, but put incredible resources behind my creativity. Craft (or digital craft) projects offer more theoretical freedom. I try to balance these two.

4. As a teacher, do you have a mantra that you live by and try to convey to your students?

(For example, Laurie Haycock-Makela and Scott Makela used to tell us (The 2D Design Department at Cranbrook) “Experience before Theory” which I interpreted to mean that it’s better to try things out and then dissect the experience, than to over-think projects before starting them and then get paralyzed by theory.)

SK: Storytelling is a key goal now, with an understanding that we live in a world of many competing stories so products must speak to specific cultural attitudes. Earlier experiments with theoretical tools like deconstruction or phenomenology have been absorbed into these overall goals. Some mini-mantras support this approach: Play with Words, Know Your Genre, Fit Our Time, Nail the Subject, Point Your View, Build a World Around It.

You can read more about these in this ‘crash course’ for Core77 called ‘Spinning Form: How to Tell Stories with Product Design.’
http://www.core77.com/hack2school/klinker.asp#klinker

5. The “space frame builders kit” is a large scale construction toy for kids. It was recognized by Fortune as one of the top 25 products of 2004. Where did the idea for this project originate and did you plan to use recyclable materials from its inception?

SK: This particular project started as a material investigation. I befriended a factory in Holland, MI that specialized in this new material, non-woven PET plastic. After many experiments with the material, I tried to identify a product idea that would exploit the material’s light weight and rigidity. I teamed-up with Offi, a small design-driven company in the Bay Area to develop the Spaceframe. They liked the story of ‘green architecture for kids’.

6. “The Truss collection” is a line of furniture that packs flat and assembles easily. Is the iconic look a typical example of form follows function or did you explore a very wide range of stylistic solutions?

SK: My goal was to develop an authentic form language for CNC digital fabrication. Bold graphic exaggerations of familiar structural forms seemed to best emphasize the digital tool path. While engineered forms were the inspiration, the lines are stylized and Pop.

7.  Which invention or product surprised you the most after you completed it and for what reasons?

SK: Offi gave me 10 Spaceframe kits and I built a structure that reached the ceiling of the Cranbrook Art Museum. I really didn’t know how the material would respond, so it blew my mind.

8. Over the past 10-15 years we’ve seen the emergence of the “star” designer, creating one-off or conceptual products that have been sold in galleries and collected by museums while building their own names into a valuable brand in the process.

Do you feel that these designers push design into unexplored territory or do you feel there are some negative side-effects for the profession at large to this elevation of the individual designer?

SK: Of course, I’m all for individual authorship. Design is now a fashion system. Young designers create couture contexts to get noticed. This has made the field much more interesting and created space for new kinds of authorship and new models of practice. The down side comes when design becomes a vulgar side show of young designers trying to out-spectacle each other with heavy-handed concepts. When branding eclipses actual design content, then it’s dubious. Memphis predicted this. However, ‘Design about Design’ is here to stay and Cranbrook - being focused on authorship and making - should be a thought leader in this discussion. As an American school, we have to work harder than our Euro counterparts who have more advanced venues for young designers to show their work and get noticed.

9. As a curator and exhibition organizer, do you feel that the increased design awareness of the general public–through events such as Design Miami–has been a positive development for the design community?

SK: Design Miami has made design rarities collectible, like Art. Is awareness of Art a positive influence on the general public?

10. What was the most successful exhibition that you either organized, curated or were a part of as a designer?

SK: Selfishly, my solo exhibition at the Cranbrook Art Museum was the most successful one for me. It drove a completely new body of work in a short time and I was able to art direct everything – the work, the story, and the installation.

More Reading:
Online Essays by Scott Klinker:
http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/beyond_fashion_reviving_experimental_design_by_scott_klinker_9171.asp

http://www.core77.com/reactor/09.06_klinker.asp