My name is Stephen Burks. I have a studio in New York called Ready Made Projects. Many
invited me to talk to a group of young designers about this idea of the designer's identity.
I really impressed upon the students that it was important to understand their own identity
before choosing manufacturers to work with, before running off and making something to
really understand why they're making and who they're making it for and how they can get
better in touch with their own voice, how they can reach that point of realization quicker.
And I think now the next step for them is to go off and develop a concept for many around
their own identity, so I think they have a better sense of what that identity can be.
So we're in our Zena Mini World Tour studio here in Milan and I'm sitting with Henrietta
Thompson who's a design writer and curator. What have you seen? What's caught your eye?
What's new this year? What's interesting?
There's certainly a shift happening in the way that teams that are designers are taking
much more control of exhibiting their own work and also selling their own work as well.
So you've actually got a new kind of dynamic opening up and a lot of the galleries and
the shows you're going to are actually retail environments as well.
It used to be a criticism of Milan that a lot of the things that were under spray not
only could you not buy them now but as a strong chance you would never be able to buy them
because they were prototypes and they were just putting them there to gauge the reaction
of the press and the buyers. Are you saying that that's changed now, that there's a sort
of a more of a transaction involved at first? Yes, I think so and also because the whole
manufacturing model has changed and so it's much easier for designers to produce their
own works and you've got a lot more designer makers so they're making things in limited
editions which they're able to then sell. So magazines are getting into retail and exhibitions
are getting into retail and it doesn't have to necessarily be as cut and dried as you
know I'm a producer, I'm a designer, I'm a retailer, I'm a magazine now everybody's
all doing all those things together. Europe's having a tough time, the east is rising, I
mean it must be a difficult time to be a designer or a producer. I think so but also a really
exciting one because of all these new technologies coming in as well which enable the whole way
things are being made to change dramatically, things can be made much cheaper and you've
got 3D printing which is greatly changing landscape as well. You can sell things online
and actually distribute fairly easily now. Thanks very much Henry Ashford for coming in.
