In a series of three interviews, we ask young designers about their perspectives on exhibiting their work at international design fairs, and other lessons they have learned so far.

DMY Award nominee Eva Marguerre has already achieved what many young designers fervently hope for – having one of their designs enthusiastically picked up by a manufacturer. Even more impressively, Eva achieved this whilst still at university, through a combination of talent, persistence, and a little bit of good fortune.

We recently caught up with Eva at the DMY, to ask her to share some of her experiences with us on Faces of Design (FoD).

Background

Born in 1983, German Eva Marguerre is a student at the Karlsruhe design school (Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe). A 2009 DMY Award nominee, Eva has won a number of prizes, including the 1st price in a competition organized by HfG Karlsruhe and WMF in 2007, and was awarded Best Communication Concept at imm cologne in 2008. German fibre glass furniture specialist Masson recently picked up Eva’s Nido stool design, on display at the 2009 DMY, amongst other design fairs.

Where did the inspiration for Nido come from?

I didn’t plan to make a stool from the start; originally, I became interested in working with fibre glass as a material through a course we did at the university, working with designer Stefan Diez and a Swiss manufacturer. Straight away, the material fascinated me.

You rarely get to see fibre glass as a raw material – it’s stored in big rolls, and feels like wool, but when the fibre glass is combined with resin it becomes extremely strong and weather-resistant. So basically, I just knew I wanted to do something with the material, to demonstrate its inherent properties, and that drove my choice of object. A stool can look fragile, but you can experience how strong it is; this would have been more difficult with a lamp, for example. Also, I needed to figure out how to best work with the material, and a stool is a simpler shape than a chair, where you need to include a backrest, and so on.

I then started looking for a simple geometric shape, thinking about what anchor points I needed, how to connect them and what I could do without – how could I reduce the amount of material needed as much as possible.

Doing that taught me a very valuable lesson: that you can’t force the material, but have to work with it. The properties of the material determined a lot what shape I could form it into, and I just had to accept that. I learned that I could use that as a source of inspiration, rather than a limitation I needed to overcome.

Why did you decide to exhibit at the DMY?

I am lucky in that Nido is already in production, so I am hoping to meet potential buyers, but also to get feedback on the design. Previously, I have just been able to show prototypes of my work, so this is the first time I get to show the final product at a fair. The stool has evolved quite a lot over the last few months, so I was curious what the response would be like. At some point, you really don’t know any more if your design is good, you have just spent too much time with it. So it’s great to be able to take a step back and hear what other people think. The design is less fragile now, but the response is still good. People seem to like the look, and when they try the stool, they stay seated for a while, so they’re obviously finding it comfortable.

So far, the feedback has been great, really. I was just talking to this elderly lady, who stopped by and was really interested in the design, and we talked for ages. She loved it! Of course, the most important question is whether people would actually buy the stool. A lot of people have taken my card, and many have told me that they are going to order a stool, which really is the nicest compliment they could make me!

I have also had the opportunity to meet with a retailer I already had contact with before. I don’t want to jinx it, but they also seemed really positive, so I am keeping my fingers crossed!

In your opinion, what’s different about the DMY?

This is my first time at the DMY. Last year, I presented my prototypes for the first time in Cologne, and I am also showing my work in Milan, Belgium and Poland.

My experience of other design fairs, such as the imm cologne, is that they are sometimes a bit stiff, you get cooped up in these little stalls, and everything is very standardized.

Last year, I came to the DMY as a visitor for the first time and I was totally fascinated – there were all these young creatives, showcasing really good work. To me, what’s attractive about the DMY is that it is more of a festival than an industry fair. Maybe you don’t build quite as many contacts with industry as at other events, but it’s really nice here. The atmosphere is much more relaxed, and everyone is more open. At other fairs, you get the impression that the designers eye each other with suspicion, and see each other as competitors. Here at the DMY, you get talking – the barriers aren’t quite so strongly drawn. On the opening night in particular, everyone just spread out, and the lines between the individual stalls became really quite blurred. Everything could be organized a bit better, but maybe that’s just part of the Berlin flair.

Are there any other lessons you have learned in particular?

It’s easy to underestimate how long it can you to get a product ready for production, and to be showcased at a fair. On and off, it has taken me about a year and a half to get to this point. I wasn’t quite ready at the Interni in Milan, so this is pretty much the premiere. One of the difficulties for me was that initially, there wasn’t a company with the necessary manufacturing skills. As a result, I had a lot of interest from people that wanted to sell the chair before I found someone that could actually make it!

The way that happened was really quite curious: Masson, the company that I am now working with, developed the same production technique pretty much in parallel. They filed for a patent, which I hadn’t even thought of, and called me out of the blue, to tell me that I had violated their intellectual property rights! Masson told me that they had seen pictures of my prototypes in [German womens’ magazine] Brigitte, which had used them for a photo shoot. They didn’t even spot me in a designers’ magazine, but in a fairly traditional women’s mag! Otherwise, we might never even have heard of each other.

Masson mostly makes furniture from fibre glass, for its weather resistant qualities. Their other designs are much more traditional, with a very different target group than for Nido, and they didn’t really have any in-house designers. Masson asked me what plans I had, and told me that I could definitely not do anything with the design in Germany, and if I tried, I would get into trouble. So that was an absolute horror for me, of course. At the same time, Masson told me that they really liked what I was doing, and invited me to visit them. I brought a Nido prototype, ended up staying a week and teaching someone to make the stool!

Masson were really motivated; they were a very enthusiastic, and we just got on really well. It was also very gratifying that they were taking me so seriously as a designer. The company had this great materials competence, but since they didn’t really have a design team, and we got along so well, it was just a great fit.

Masson told me they wanted to produce Nido, and asked if I could sort out a licensing agreement, as they had never done this before. That was another really interesting experience for me, as of course, I didn’t know the first thing about licensing, either! Fortunately, my design school is very project-oriented, and you are really encouraged to just sort everything out yourself, so you get used to making things happen. So I found myself a lawyer, who drafted an agreement for me. There really were a lot of different aspects to consider – I didn’t want to end up accidentally guaranteeing that the design would sell, for example.

Initially, I thought that this whole thing was just too big for me, but I am learning a tremendous amount, and it is really gratifying that the company takes me so seriously as a designer: they don’t just treat me as a design student. The whole experience has been amazing, and no one can take that away from me.

I have also learned not to be so prejudiced when it comes to working with a company. If you take Masson as an example, their traditional portfolio is targeted more at customers that prefer a traditional style of furniture, and that’s how Masson present themselves. So initially, I was really skeptical whether we would get along. But once I got to know them, we got along straight away – I don’t think I could have had this kind of experience with a bigger manufacturer. There are so many small to medium-sized companies out there that you could work with, and that can have amazing technical skills, but that you don’t even know exist. This is a real problem, in my opinion, because the companies don’t really know what’s happening in the design schools, either. So unless you get really lucky, it is easy to miss out on all sorts of exciting opportunities.