‘Influence comes from everywhere. The individual interpretation of what surrounds us leads to individual expression.’

Born in London in 1959 Jasper Morrison and graduate of Kingston Polytechnic Design School. He is today one of the world’s most influential designers. Designing everything from tram system to toasters. He has produced many publications notably ‘A world without words’ which is a series of images collected by Morrison, this is illustrated by the video below created for the Serpentine Gallery.

‘For a long time after I noticed an antique chair with its seat missing outside a shop I had the idea to do a chair consisting only of structural elements’

Every designer has a chair and Morrison’s most notable design is ‘The Thinking Man’s Chair’. It originally was going to be called ‘The drinking man’s chair’ but after seeing the slogan ‘The Thinking Man’s Smoke’ on a packet of pipe cleaners he changed his mind. The tubular chair, is rough and ready. Written on the sides it has all the dimensions of the chair as ‘surrogate decoration’. It was eventually produced by Cappellini in 1986.

Morrison was also commissioned to design furniture for the new Tate Modern in London. An unusual partnership was made with the architects Herzog & De Meuron and Morrison. Surprised by the reception the architects gave him, Morrison was delighted with them and the Tate Directors in meetings. He eventually produced a table, chair and stool set to furnish the Tate Modern.

“I think each product should take on the basic shape of its function and nothing more.”

It seems Jasper Morrison is a follower of the Dieter Rams approach. Less is More. This can be taken in to account with his range of appliances designer for Rowenta. The white simple look of these designs echoes Braun’s kitchen devices designed by Dieter Rams. I’m not convinced how well he pulled these designs off. I’m all for his various chairs but the appliance look unfriendly and the LCD screen looks out of place.

However, I admire Morrison’s diversity, he doesn’t just stick to the home. He designed new trams for Hannover, apparently the largest European light rail production contract of its time, costing 500 Million Deutschmarks. I cannot find much about how successful it is now but when launched the design was awarded the IF Transportation Design Prize and the Ecology award. 

The success of Jasper Morrison I think is down to his determination to get ideas in to exhibitions and companies have picked up on that and asked him to design for him. If I’m honest I had never heard of him until I was asked to do a Pichi Kichi on it. I think he is a thoughtful designer/ design office, his designs are simple and focused. Due to his success in chairs and many other famous designers like this. I do keep on wondering when or if I’m going to design a signature chair. Is the world not full of chairs already? Maybe if the world has too many successful designers the population of chairs in the world will be greater that that of humans…

The image above is a 3D scan on the Sydney Opera House. It was produced by GSA’s Digital Design Studio. This small department of the GSA seems to be mainly unknown to most of the students, however they produce and develop a lot of digital images, videos and games.

The seem to work with medicine a lot, developing games and head tracking videos such as a detailed skull model they had modelled that followed the viewer around the room. From what the speaker told us they did have virtual reality technology like Oculus Rift but it did not seem they had embraced it as much as the gaming industry.

This also made me wonder if GSA have a digital modelling course to teach students how to produce games and animations? Turns out it has a Digital Culture course that I have never heard of. I keep feeling for a relatively small institution why don’t departments integrate more? Or perhaps PDE is a course out of the loop with the rest of the school due to its links with the university. Hopefully with a new director the school can step out of the 20th century a bit more.

However, it was a fun trip and nice to see what they did over in Pacific Quay.

It seems like Tom Inns is a breath of fresh air for the art school. It seems right to bring someone in that has experience of education and working in a creative industry. He seemed to have a lot of plans for the art school, seeing it as a business and a profitable organisation for which the Art School can benefit.

Whenever a new boss arrives in an organisation such a school there is always a big shake up, and Glasgow School of Art needs this. I think there has been the benefit of the new Reid building to start the ball rolling. There has been a lot of teething problems with the building and Mr Inns has dealt with it well discussing with staff and students what the problems are and what needs to be improved.

It was nice to know his background, studying engineering in Bristol and then moved to more creative streams in the Royal College of Art working through various institutions and was recently a head of department at the University of Dundee. I’m looking forward to seeing more changes to GSA.