Tom Dixon, Founder and Creative Director, Tom Dixon, In conversation with Clay Chandler, Fortune
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00:00We often talk about designers and say that they're rock stars, but you're a real rock star.
00:04Disco, not rock.
00:06Disco, okay. All right, fantastic.
00:08Say a little bit, if you can, just very quickly, about your unique path to becoming a designer.
00:16Accidental, really.
00:18I had no idea what design was, but I just had a motorbike accident, stopped my music career.
00:27The bass player that replaced me is now in Pink Floyd, played for Madonna, played for Michael Jackson.
00:32So that could have been me.
00:33That could have been you.
00:34So, yeah, you're clicking my...
00:37Uh-oh, sorry. Didn't mean to. There we go.
00:42So, well, let's jump in, shall we, to some of your current designs and what you're working on.
00:48Are we at the right place here?
00:51I don't know.
00:52I'm going to give you the clicker and let you kind of organize this.
00:55How about that?
00:56Well, I think I was asked to talk about seating, really.
01:03And so this is just to show...
01:06I guess we're crashing back down to the ground after having talked about artificial intelligence, United Nations goals,
01:11and big development projects, and back to kind of the domestic scale.
01:17Chairs are great because for designers, although somebody did say earlier we don't need any more chairs,
01:24they're a great typology for any designer because they're human size, right?
01:29So I designed this series of chairs called Fat, and they're called Fat for an obvious reason.
01:37They've got these inflated comfort parts because I really don't sit still, which is what this kind of is talking about.
01:47I like to sit poorly.
01:48Right.
01:49You'll see, you know, during the talk.
01:50I have the same, yeah.
01:52What I noticed with these chairs is that you could actually make them into love seats,
01:56and that kind of suited conversation better than just sitting side by side.
02:03So I thought I'd make a sofa, which took into account a bit the modern age.
02:09Nice to see Kim Kardashian endorsing the fatness of the chair and advertising her Spanx line.
02:17And I think the name Fat is really a celebration of more voluptuousness and more comfort and more generosity,
02:27which is what upholstery needs.
02:29So these chairs are incredibly simple.
02:31There's nothing to them at all, and sometimes, you know, in design you want to do less rather than more.
02:36All they're doing is inflating those comfort parts.
02:41So like I say, a celebration of fatness.
02:43And I think what I'd noticed really was more to do with how people are living,
02:49and I wanted to do a couch or a sofa, as we call it in England.
02:53And this is how people traditionally have sat on sofas, which is all in a line,
02:58focusing on one, you know, focal point, which would have been the fireplace,
03:02then the radiogram, and then the television screen, right?
03:05And that's what people have done for hundreds of years.
03:08Right.
03:09But of course we don't live like that anymore.
03:12We live like this.
03:14So we're not all looking at the same thing anymore,
03:17and you don't need to have your sofa rammed against the wall,
03:21all looking at one thing in line, because you're not looking at one thing anymore.
03:25One person's on Deliveroo ordering their takeaway meal that they're going to eat on the sofa.
03:30The other person is doing their homework, and somebody else is on Instagram, right?
03:35So this is really a story about how, you know,
03:39how even your domestic objects change according to society,
03:44and I think designers can always work a bit better when things change,
03:48and so this is just an observation of mine,
03:50that it's better to have a sofa that points in all directions, really.
03:54So it needs to be kind of simple,
03:56and so the idea was just taking that extreme fatness
04:00and making it into the simplest possible modules,
04:03child's play, if you like,
04:05and trying to find a way of being able to put them back to front and side by side,
04:10and really bringing the sofa to the middle of the room as a three-dimensional object.
04:18So that's the result, really, which is that you're doing,
04:24like with the kitchen that used to be rammed against the wall,
04:27then the kitchen island became the thing where everybody collects,
04:31and that means that you can really use the sofa in the same way.
04:34You just put it in the middle of the room, and you're all facing different directions.
04:37We were still communing, so I think people still want to be together.
04:41It's great. Just looking at those makes me feel a lot more relaxed.
04:44I kind of wish we had one on stage.
04:46We could sit any way we wanted, right?
04:53All right. Well, those are marvelous,
04:55and they're really kind of signature like your other great design lines.
04:59They have a kind of clarity of vision to them, a kind of simplicity to them.
05:03They just make sense, and they look terrific.
05:07Really fabulous.
05:09So let's talk about people who try to imitate this signature approach and vision
05:17that you bring to all of your different projects,
05:19because I know this is something that has kind of irritated you for many, many years.
05:24Describe the problem for us.
05:26Well, maybe I'll just talk about a specific lamp and its journey, really,
05:31and this is what these slides are about.
05:33I was on a not-for-profit trip organized by the British Council to Jaipur in India
05:39where they wanted to find new typologies for the really skilled craftsmen of Jaipur
05:47that are gradually losing their skills,
05:49particularly the ones making these amazing water pots
05:52that are used in all of the villages in India to carry water
05:57because all of these water pots are being replaced by much cheaper plastic equivalents.
06:02And so that kind of heritage is changing.
06:04And here, again, in terms of under-designing rather than over-designing,
06:08here was just the idea of kind of turning the thing upside down and making a light out of it.
06:13So the shapes are roughly the same.
06:15That thing of the hand beating that you see here is kind of celebrated,
06:21and some of the curves are just incorporated into a lighting object,
06:27which gave maybe 20 people now moved to a metalwork city called Moradabad
06:35a chance to make things that people were consuming again, right?
06:40So these have been very successful for us,
06:42and were really our first hit when we started the label maybe 20 years ago.
06:48But, you know, as you go to buy them,
06:51this is what you get on eBay and various other sites is, you know,
06:55vast amounts of Noctumdix and Beatlites, right?
06:59So this is a typical page online showing hundreds of copies.
07:03And we've done an audit online,
07:05and we're talking really about 800,000 units available now,
07:09a quarter of the price of the lamps that we can sell.
07:12So it becomes a bit of a problem.
07:14You know, some people say you should be flattered, you know,
07:17and of course I am immensely,
07:19and, you know, I borrowed the shapes from elsewhere anyway,
07:22so, you know, who am I to complain, right?
07:26But what do you do about that as a designer?
07:28Well, not a lot because, you know, effectively legal systems,
07:31this is an Australian website.
07:33If you put replica Tom Dixon before the name,
07:36you're allowed to sell it in Australia.
07:38As long as they explicitly say, hey, this is a fake, they can sell it.
07:42They're calling out the fake and authorising the sale of it in Australia.
07:46I can't do anything about that.
07:48And, you know, the aesthetic is actually very kind of replicable,
07:51and even Ikea, you know, do a bowl,
07:54which is strangely reminiscent of the lamp, right?
07:57Right.
07:58But what was kind of nice was the next step,
08:00which is the hacker community gets online and says,
08:03well, if you want a Tom Dixon lamp for $18, not $100,
08:07buy a bowl at Ikea, drill a hole in it,
08:10and hang it upside down, and this is the result.
08:13Not bad.
08:14This is a famous hack. Yeah, it's great.
08:16So, you know, I love...
08:17Not so great for you.
08:19I love the way the thing is borrowed and then re-borrowed again,
08:22and, you know, there's ways of getting the look at much lower price.
08:26So I just thought, well, what is it that I can do against the copies?
08:30Well, I can't do anything about the intellectual property.
08:33I can get people, if they use our photographs,
08:35actually photography is more protected than shape
08:39in legal systems around the world.
08:42But what I really want to do is copy the copyists.
08:45So my plan now, which we've just launched, is to do unbeaten.
08:50Do you get the joke?
08:52The unbeaten meaning that I take out the beating,
08:56I make it completely smooth.
08:58Instead of hiding the aluminium, because I make mine out of brass,
09:03the copyists make theirs out of aluminium.
09:06I would celebrate the aluminium,
09:09and I can now make these at half the price of my original.
09:14And I've got a completely new aesthetic,
09:16which is a more industrial, shiny aesthetic,
09:19which I think rejuvenates the lamp altogether.
09:21So in the end, I'm in a position where I've copied the copyists better,
09:26in my view, and reduced my pricing by 50%,
09:30which I think is about right.
09:32They're still beautiful, though. Is this working? Is this deterring?
09:35It's only just launched. I'll tell you next year.
09:38These things take a while to bed in.
09:40Lovely.
09:41So, yeah, I think that there's there a kind of coping strategy, if you like,
09:46which has suited my impatience anyway,
09:51and given me a brand new aesthetic.
09:53That's great. Yeah, those are really nice.
09:57And so these are not out yet?
10:00No, no, they're just out.
10:02Just out.
10:04So a good reason not to buy the copies.
10:08So let's tackle this third topic that we were going to talk about.
10:12So I talked, obviously, about design being influenced by changes in society,
10:17but even better is when there's changes in technology.
10:20And what's been amazing over the last few years for any lighting designer,
10:24because that's the majority of what we do,
10:27is the revolution of moving electrical lighting, incandescence,
10:32to electronic lighting, which is LEDs.
10:35And LEDs have been amazing from a sustainability point of view
10:39because of the reduction in power usage and heat loss.
10:45And the other thing which I love about the modern world, which is hidden,
10:51is the circuit board, which is the most beautiful piece of design,
10:55which is completely hidden in any mobile phone, in any car.
10:59You have a circuit board in a refrigerator now,
11:02but they're largely just masked from view.
11:04So this is just a project about trying to celebrate the LED
11:08and trying to think of a new way of illuminating.
11:11It's kind of interesting even here where you've got the conventional lighting up here,
11:16neoclassical, you've got the spotlights all running on LEDs,
11:20and then you've got the screens, which are completely separate,
11:22which are all running on LEDs.
11:23You've got a lot of light in here.
11:25But I wanted to kind of celebrate the raw elements of electronic lighting.
11:31And so this was an idea to try and just use the circuit board
11:35without covering it at all.
11:37So the circuit board becomes a unit, a module, like a building block,
11:43uncovered, unmasked, and just raw with its LEDs on top.
11:48And with this, in fact with two of them, a square one and a round one,
11:53just like with Morse code, you can kind of build a whole language of lighting.
11:59So using what's normally a track system, so you can just plug the things in,
12:06you're in a position really to deconstruct how you illuminate a space
12:11and think completely differently about how you light things.
12:15And instead of having what we're seeing here,
12:17which is light sources everywhere, you're kind of able to build,
12:21as an architect or a designer, something using my kit.
12:26So I'm no longer the designer.
12:28I'm the producer of a building kit, if you like,
12:31for other people to make their own lighting solutions.
12:35There's a kind of just elegant simplicity to this.
12:39Again, it's sort of dots and dashes, right?
12:42Yeah, so it is like, you know, like I say,
12:45the simplistic kids building a Lego kit effectively,
12:51where really you can just completely change the way that you illuminate.
12:56So this column, for instance, uses something like 8,000 LEDs.
13:00So if you turn it up, I mean, it's like having a sun inside your room
13:05and it kind of blasts out a huge amount of light.
13:07But you can turn them right down and make it almost like a sunset as well.
13:10So there's, and then obviously with the other ways,
13:15you can just use them as a skirting board,
13:17or you can use them as a screen, or even make a sun on the wall,
13:22like you've got in the center now.
13:24What's this called?
13:26It's called code.
13:27Code, okay.
13:28Get it?
13:29I get it.
13:30So I think, you know, the net result is really to try and say,
13:34well, you know, wouldn't it be nice to actually, you know,
13:37because designers are always trying to make the perfect item,
13:40the finished item that you never touch again, the icon.
13:43But I kind of prefer the idea now of just providing, you know,
13:47more possibilities than I could think of myself, you know,
13:52and that's something I'm pursuing also in furniture with, like,
13:55for instance, this project,
13:56which is just about using one extrusion of brass
14:03and giving, and this is my studio,
14:06everybody making a piece of furniture just out of this one very
14:09recognizable unit of brass tubing, right?
14:13So I think I'll evolve from being a designer of objects to try and be a
14:17bit more a designer of systems.
14:20We've only got 25 seconds to go now.
14:23It's just amazing.
14:25You know, how do you get inspiration for these kind of things?
14:28Do you have a kind of standard process for coming up?
14:30No, I think always the,
14:33each piece has a different narrative and a different story,
14:36but the obsessions remain the same.
14:38It's always about, you know,
14:39because I started off welding and then became a designer.
14:43I like how you make things, you know,
14:46the craft techniques or the factory techniques or increasing the new
14:51digital techniques.
14:52And I love the material, you know,
14:54just converting something raw into something of value is something which
14:58I've always thought was like alchemy, you know,
15:00it's like you're transforming, you know,
15:02a piece of rubbish into gold, which is how I started with scrap metal.
15:05Right, right.
15:06Well,
15:07it's one of the things that I think makes your work so unique and
15:10relevant is that, you know,
15:12as we're doing more and more things on screens and with LEDs,
15:15your work is very tangible.
15:17It's very, you know, concrete and edgy.
15:21So thanks very much, Tom.
15:23We appreciate you showing us your latest inspirations and we hope you'll
15:27come back.
15:28Thank you very much.