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At the turn of the millennium, Craig Jones gathered together his years of product design experience to embark upon a new beginning – the launch of Craig Jones Design. 11 years later, with a strong team of designers on board, the business continues to evolve. Having worked on a plethora of commercial furniture products for international clients, the Craig Jones Design team are broadening their repertoire to include everything from solar-powered bike chargers to LED harps. With their ‘cradle-to-grave’ method, the team ensure that their products are intelligently thought-through and nurtured from conception through to production – a rare feat amongst contemporary design houses. We wandered down to their new office in London’s Lavender Hill – rich with the smell of freshly painted walls – to discuss clients, CADs and creative freedom, over a cup of tea.
You’ve gained a lot of recognition recently for your
Eclipse furniture. Are most of your designs for office
use?
Mainly at the moment, yes. The business started in 2000 and
we’ve worked for large and medium-scale furniture companies
in the UK, Europe and the States. I suppose we started off
doing office furniture because that’s where I came from – I’d
designed for other furniture companies internally and then I
left to start up my own practice, and we’ve just progressed
through various products in all market sectors. We’ve got
quite a broad perspective of the furniture market.
Has your background always been in product design then?
Yes, I studied Product and Furniture Design at the University
of Leicester. Doing what we do, we must be qualified with a
design degree, so whether it’s in furniture or product it doesn’t
really matter.
When you’re presented with a new project, what’s the
first thing you do when you sit down to start?
It depends on the nature of the project. We’ve just moved into
this bigger studio to encourage more collaboration, so we’ve
got more space to do that. But it’s quite a personal job,
developing products – it’s sometimes very difficult because
you do get so involved in and attached to the product, but
managing team work is crucial to the success of our projects.
Do you always start with a drawing?
Yes, usually. But we’re not a flamboyant sketching company,
we don’t come up with these wonderful, elaborate, beautiful
drawings; we tend to draw things which we know we want and
then we’ll visualise that on a computer pretty quickly. But
research would probably be the first thing we do anyway.
Sometimes if we’re getting a brief from a client and we’re not
in agreement, we’ll have to go back to them and clarify,
because if at that point it’s not briefed properly then the end
result won’t be a success.
How do you think it has differed running your own
company as opposed to working for others – has it been
more enjoyable?
Well, I suppose it never stops – there’s always something to
do. It gets more difficult I think, particularly with the economic
climate in the last two or three years. We’ve had to change
the way we operate as a business, becoming more proactive
by going to companies with ideas and saying to people look,
this is what we think is a good product for you.
So a lot more pressure – but do you feel you have more
creative freedom?
Definitely, yes. If we go historically back through the years of
the company and look at some of the newer things that we’re
doing, I think the influence of the new people we have working
here and the freedom we have on self-initiated projects - as
opposed to set design briefs – are definitely improving the
aesthetic quality of our products. There’s no question that we
have the technical ability to do anything – we’re very strong in
that area. We do what’s called a ‘cradle-to-grave’ sort of
solution-providing system, so we’ll do everything in that
process. We take care of all the research, concept work, 3D
modelling, production tooling, or anything else that the design
project requires.
What would you say is the most exciting project that
you’ve worked on since you started the company? The
one that’s inspired you the most, perhaps?
I think I’d probably say the Eclipse bench for Connection,
because that made us stretch the boundaries of the
technologies we were using, so it put us into a completely
different area. We hadn’t done any seating products up until
that point, so I suppose because it got awards and prestige
and credibility, that makes you happy because you’re then
sort of getting a reward for the hard work you’ve put in to the
product. We all work equally hard to make things happen for
the business. I think York University took the first installation
of that product; sixteen of them are sprawled out in the
atrium of their building, so it’s quite nice to see the fruits of
labour coming to life! I’d like us to be a bit more inventive
and creative in the things that we’re doing, which is in itself a
different challenge because we’re faced with huge
competition. It’s trying to be a little bit different I guess, but
also designing products that can go into mass manufacture.
Quite a delicate balance to keep.
It is. Because at the end of the day, the client specifies a
price for the product that they want to sell it for, and we then
have to design that product within that price range… so for
us I suppose it’s not just about the design, we have to
understand all the commercial points as well, which we’re
pretty good at as a company. It’s not about whether we like
walnut veneer or green plastic – that’s irrelevant in a sense,
to some of the things we’re doing, because we have to look
at it from the broader picture.
So for you personally, do you have a particular period in
design history that you find inspiring?
We don’t have a house style, and we don’t have a product
style… and we don’t have a ‘period’; although some of the
things we’ve just done are a bit sort of retro in terms of the
tubular bends in the metal – maybe a bit Bauhaus in terms of
style – but the reason we don’t is because of the diversity of
the products we design.
But as a personal preference?
Not in particular... There are so many historical design
influences – like Eileen Gray, Eames, Citterio - that are
important, but one that sticks out is Robin Day, because of
his clever use of materials and simplistic design solutions.
I suppose this question depends on the clients that
you’re working for, but how important would you say
environmental sustainability is to your work?
This is very much driven by our clients and we have to be
mindful of it in some of the products we create, but in some
of the products we haven’t – which is a terrible thing to say!
But… it’s difficult if you’re developing products for mass
market. We went to an interesting lecture last year that
talked about the fact that it’s not the product at the end, it’s
actually about getting the product from the ground to a piece
of steel or a piece of plastic, that’s the real cost; so if we
were all truly environmentally aware, I think, then we
wouldn’t design products in the first place.
What are you working on right now?
Seating products, boardroom furniture, personal storage.
We’re pitching for some lighting projects and we’re also
doing some electrical products, an acoustic panel system
and we’re doing some accessories like paper trays and
partition designs… I think we’ve probably got about 14
projects on at the moment. We’ve also got a customer that
wants to look at doing some work with solar-powered
products, which we’re just starting up on. We’re doing it as a
collective thing with a manufacturer and an electrical
engineer. There’s an initiative in various northern English
towns and centres to do electrical vehicles [like London’s
‘Boris bikes’], so we’re going to help develop the electrical
power stations to power those. The engineer will do all the
electrical work, we’ll just make it look pretty!
Amy Knight, Arts & Media Correspondent