Designer Profile #1: Giulio Iacchetti

In late October of this year, I was invited from my school (SIAT) to a lecture at an Italian Cultural Centre right here in Vancouver. Giulio Iacchetti was a featured guest who came to talk about his new book and mainly about many Italian symbols that really define ‘the Italianness‘.

Of course, as you might already be able to tell, Iacchetti is Italian. He is also a very well regarded industrial designer from Milan. When he first graduated in 1992 he was an architect, and by the year 2000, he has got one of his work widely recognized.

It was a spoon-fork type thing called ‘Moscardino, pasta multiso‘

Now the name was probably derived from a type of octopus, but there are two interesting things in this design:

1.) From a cultural aspect, he designed this ‘thing’, because, he said, the pasta store/restaurant there in Milan do not have a seat for the customers, for the most obvious reason it is because that Italian people never leave the restaurant and when the restaurant has a live ‘football’ game on, just imagine. Hmm, and to make it more complicated, Italian pasta doesn’t equal meatball spaghetti like in America. Basically, people had to stand and eat with one hand holding a plate and look! one hand left. So there go the reason for the shape.

2.) They look like plastic, YES. So they’re bad for environment? NO! Despite it’s gloss, they’re made from a special type of plastic PLA. This substance is made from corn and, I don’t like to say good but let’s say, not bad for the environment.

Enough about the first piece, let’s talk about his design in general because I can go on for pages describing about his work piece by piece.

What he did focus on at the talk I went to was ‘sense generating object,’ now I think that is a very cool perspective. At least for me it makes sense and I have not heard that from anywhere. He said that since everything around us have the will on its own and it always does things we don’t wish it to. For instance, glass always break, hmm.. but what if we use its properties to do its job.
I want to give a quick example of this faucet called BATLÓ, as seen on the right.

Here he uses the shape of the bottle give some solidity to water which takes no shape. And most his works go on like that, the function and the visual always have something in common, something that links them and unify them as a product, creating a piece of product that is, for me, full of story and worth ‘having’. I want to stress that word because after all it’s Industrial design.

that’s it for this designer, following is a list of some interesting pieces of work if you would like to take a look.

2006 GEKO
2007 BEK
2008 4OCCHI (VERY famous glasses)
2008 DROP
2008 TROPICO (Famous!!)
2008 CUBALIBRE
2009 FABRICA DEL VAPORE (Vapor Factory)
2009 SURFER’S CHAIR
2009 VASSILY
2009 BISS

have Good Design – earn Good Money

It’s been about a month since I first joined 99designs.com

So far I’ve earned only about 200 CAD$ but my portfolio is building up pretty fast!!!

What is 99designs?
Well, its a website where you can easily find design works.
How does it work?
People post what they want, you submit your design. If they choose you, you get the money!!!

I’m going to show you how this website works!!!