Philippe Starck: Design for Life

In the six episodes of the television mini-series; “Design for Life”, one of the world’s most renowned designer: Philippe Starck and his team has chosen twelve people ranging from 19 to 32 years of age to compete for 6 months work experience in Starck’ agency. During this time, each of them must complete tasks set by Philippe Starck himself and convince him that they are the one who deserves this opportunity.

From a couple of episodes in, I realised one thing. All the contestants came in to this show expecting and wanting to impress Starck with their ability to design or their creativity and ideas. But slowly, I noticed that this is not what Starck was looking for. Starck set these tasks with one goal in mind and that is to train the students’ ways of thinking in to the way a designer thinks. With every project, Starck is constantly looking at how the students have approached the tasks and how they have come to the conclusions of each task. Starck tries to train them to think like a designer instead of just waiting for ideas to pop out of nowhere. Using the tasks, Starck repeatedly emphasise a few elements he wants the students to focus on, which are; the benefit for mankind, sustainability, ecology and ethicality.

For their final project, each of them were to design a product that was non-electrical, democratic, ecological, ethical and for daily use. Not one student’s achievement was satisfactory for Starck because they have all failed to present a finished designed product. As a designer it is your responsibility to design the product and figure out how it is going to be produced and used by the consumer. It is not enough to just to merely transfer your dreams on to your art diary. I have learnt this through the episodes of “design for life” as well as in the Industrial Design course at university.

In one of the episodes, Philippe Starck points out that Designers possess the powers to affect everyone in this world through the objects that surround us everyday. This reminded me just how important Design is to each one of us and how it is such a big part of our lives. This thought was very overwhelming and continues to inspire me every time I am reminded of it. It pushes me to challenge myself to become a better design student and hopefully one day become a designer that can have a positive impact on this world and the people that live in it.