The Russian design industry is at a crossroads – with a large pool of talented people and an underdeveloped industrial design sector. While some individual Russian designers make it big, the industry on the whole has yet to make a major impact worldwide.
Vladimir Pirozhkov, noted for his work at Toyota’s design center in Nice, and Alexander Matveyev, who won a Red Dot design award in 2010 for his work on Erich Krause office accessories are both up-and-coming designers on the Russian scene. Yaroslav Rassadin has been noted for his work on the Marussia team race cars as well as various home appliances, while Maxim Nazarov is a noted Russian watch designer.
Yet the most famous face among Russian designers is still Artemy Lebedev, founder of the Art Lebedev Studio, and author of an oft-controversial, popular blog. The Optimus series of keyboard designs, produced at Art Lebedev, is a famous example of innovative Russian design – and the keyboards, which have expanded capabilities that involve each key being adjustable so that it can perform any function, are a big hit with people in creative professions.
Headhunters come to Russia
Maria Stashenko, editor of the Design Management website, told The Moscow News that industrial design studios are currently enticing Russian specialists to come work abroad. “Vladimir Pirozhkov, for example, worked for Citroen and then for Toyota in their key European design center in Nice in the 1990s and early 200s – and was quite noticeable there as member of their designer team, which collaborated on several very successful models of this Japanese car manufacturer, including the Yaris, Corolla, and Avensis,” she said.
Italian designer Lappo Elkann, who visited Moscow during the Skolkovo-sponsored Digital Life Design (DLD) conference this year, said that Russian designers are viewed as a having a lot of potential. “Russia gave a lot to the world in terms of aesthetics, and Moscow has made huge progress lately,” he said.
Money isn’t everything
At DLD, Elkann appealed to the Russian design community to focus more on its creative potential – and to balance that out with revenues. “Cash isn’t king,” he said.
Elkann believes that on the Russian market, creative professionals must learn to say “no” to clients more often, so that the integrity of their work is preserved.
‘Made in Russia’
Local designers admit that Russia’s industry has yet to find its identity – and to develop its own distinct image.
“In industrial design, we need to establish such a thing as the ‘Made in Russia’ brand,” Maria Stashenko of Design Management told The Moscow News. “Right now, only a minor part of this market belongs to us.”
Stashenko blames the economic upheavals of the 1990s for sidelining Russian industrial design – a turbulent time from which the industry has yet to recover, she believes.
Vladimir Samoylov, editor-inchief of Designet.ru, a professional web resource on industrial design developed by the Designet company, believes that the Russian design industry cannot even be called an industry right now. Instead there are “selected people with selected projects,” he said.
In spite of this, Russian design companies do win major projects to develop at home as well as abroad. Designet, for example, is currently busy on an Erich Krause line of staplers and hole-punches. “We produce not only design images, but files for engineering, which are fully ready for manufacturing purposes,” Samoylov said of the project.
Finding their niche
In a society still often driven by the desire for the ostentatious, Russian design company Open Design, for example, drew attention to itself with its famous Diamond Inside rings. The gold rings, bearing the inscription “Diamond Inside,” were outfitted with diamonds that were turned inward, and billed as jewelry “for modest people.”
Vladimir Samoylov of Designet. ru believes that Russian designers should be taking their cue from the likes of Artemy Lebedev and his Optimus innovative keyboard project. The project, according to Samoylov, is of the kind of quality one could expect from a heavyweight multinational company such as Phillips – as opposed to a comparatively small Russian design company.
The emphasis on both quality and form is what will propel Russian designers forward, Samoylov believes. Far from focusing on just the look of a product, the best Russian designers today must focus on the manufacturing and marketing angle as well. This is what multinational companies and consumers worldwide are ready to pay for.
Source: themoscownews.com