This interview was conducted by designer Britta Stammeier, for her master's thesis at the FH Salzburg on the topic of "Mindset in design and system-based product development using the example of a shoe concept". The thesis was included in Springer Verlag's BestMasters Programm 2018 and will soon be available in print as well as online. Currently, Britta is looking for a new challenge professionally.
For this post, the interview has been shortened and edited in the service of better readability.
Britta Britta Stammeier: To begin, I'd like you to briefly introduce yourself and tell me what you're currently working on.
Eric Eric Pfromm: My name is Eric Pfromm. I am one of four partners of BFGF DESIGN STUDIOS.
We have our office in Hamburg. We currently employ two people, freelancers are rare. We always have interns, often from abroad. At the moment we have an intern from China.
We work mainly in Hamburg and mainly do interior design: offices, agencies; also pubs, bars, clubs and in the last few years we have added some exhibitions.
We have always been very focused on getting to grips with interior design as industrial and product designers - apart from the conceptual - by designing small series. I think this distinguishes us from offices that live more from bought-in products and solutions. We develop a lot ourselves and have it produced if necessary.
My partner Christian Schüten and I have been working on 'Cradle to Cradle' for several years, together with Carsten Buck from the Hamburg agency Mutter. Since a few years we are certified 'Cradle to Cradle Design Consultants'. And to this day we are absolutely enthusiastic about the concept. You know the concept, that's why we're talking now.
We got involved with a lot of commitment and wanted to realize projects. We did our own studies in order to get to grips with this in the implementation phase. With the agency Mutter, we developed the 'Milk Tumbler' for a small cooperative that produces milk here. And we had a cooperation agreement with EPEA -that's Michael Braungart's company- as their design partner. As part of that partnership, we met with some of the companies that had come forward to EPEA in the 'Cradle to Cradle' area. Some they were already cooperating with EPEA, others were thinking about it. Through this cooperation we from BFGF DESIGN STUDIOS got a pretty good insight into the potential of 'Cradle to Cradle', but also into the problems.
Subsequently, we gave many very nice workshops at design faculties. These were four-day workshops: 'Cradle to Cradle' from a designer's perspective. We were on the road quite a bit: Münster, Karlsruhe, Kassel, Braunschweig and Munich. It was a great and exciting experience.
Stammeier: What do you think is the reason why it is not yet possible to earn so much money with Cradle to Cradle?
Pfromm: That's the core question that's on everyone's mind. Let me think about how to put it. On the one hand, it has to do with the dimensions and, on the other, with the mentalities of the actors. The one with the mentalities is particularly interesting.
So with the dimensions, it's clear that if you want to implement Cradle to Cradle, you need a comprehensive approach. To be honest, it's not enough to say: "Yes, I'll take a look at where my materials come from and get them certified, and then I'll be fine. Basically, you have to make sure that you develop a reverse logistics system; either your own or a collaborative one. Or you have a product that can access an existing reverse logistics. But without reverse logistics, the system is not really round, the closed-loop system. Unfortunately, this often has a deterrent effect on customers who do not have access to an existing reverse logistics system.
For small companies, it's a huge challenge to make such a development; also because it's relatively expensive. You have to be able to afford it, you have to be willing to change everything.
While large companies - some of which are already doing C2C - have completely different problems. They usually do it on a side track. That is, they keep their product portfolio and make an additional Cradle to Cradle product line. That's the case with Puma, that's the case with Nestlé. You can go through the list of Cradle to Cradle companies, it's like that relatively across the board. Of course, that leads to an absurd problem. If you say, "I have a multitude of products and this one Cradle to Cradle product, which is ..." Yeah, what? How are you going to communicate that to the customer, to the market? Because actually the joke about Cradle to Cradle - especially if you talk to Braungart - is that only this one Cradle to Cradle product is right, wholesome, beneficial and harmless. That means all the rest are harmful. And that's hard for a brand like Puma to communicate. They would have to say, "We make this product that is better than all the other products we make." Of course, they can't do that. That means they can only ever market their Cradle to Cradle products with the handbrake on, and that leads to goods that are not as successful as they could be if you were allowed to advertise your qualities. It therefore happens very, very often that the products are discontinued after a short time. They simply cannot be economically represented in such a group.
That is one problem. The other problem is the mentality. The players in the field of sustainability rarely have an understanding of the importance of design. They usually come from a completely different background, mostly from academia. They consider design to be an artificial, afterthought that may be necessary in order to sell the product in the end, but that doesn't change anything about the actual product. This is a classic problem that we designers have. But in many areas of the economy, it's not so bad anymore. In fact, we have already broken down prejudices there. But in the area of sustainability it is still very strong. On the one hand, they always say: "Design!", "Everything has to be redesigned now" and "Design saves the world" and "We are designers ourselves, we design new concepts and products" and so on. The designer himself or herself, however, is then a pretty boy who is supposed to make the stuff attractive so that someone will buy it.
We experienced this relatively drastically at the EPEA. We were confronted with the ambivalence between the importance that was attributed to us as designers (that we are totally important) and the understanding of what our task actually is (make-up afterwards) in all its severity. They had no idea what we could achieve and how far we actually had to be in the boat to be able to do justice to this task. We were relatively starved dry.
It's true that many designers think the topic is great and are very committed to it. But that doesn't meet with the kind of response that would be needed to actually say: "Ok, we need design to implement these products and make them usable". I can give a lecture off the cuff about how design is crucial to making a new product usable at all; to what extent what is actually considered to be secondary by scientists is actually fundamental to a product being used at all. That was a short and unfair summary of my experiences.
Stammeier: How would you describe your design style?
Pfromm: My design style is task-driven. I need and love the briefing. I need my clients. I can only design together with clients. I need the clients to have their wishes and ideas, which I can then work on. From this, I develop designs that usually go beyond what the customer expected. Sometimes they even go beyond what they need. It's true that my design style is also based on the fact that I want to realize the unusual and conceptually exciting from my engagement with design.
Stammeier: What is currently influencing you in your design?
Pfromm: To be honest, I'm very much concerned with feasibility right now. There were times when it wasn't so important to me how to implement something. I made designs and didn't look so much at how it would be built economically. That's what we made possible later on. As I get older, I don't have the energy for that detour, and I find that I think about feasibility much, much earlier than I used to.
Stammeier: Are there any current changes that you can perceive in the design?
Pfromm: There are, of course, big changes in design - away from product design to interface design. User experience and all that. In fact, the question is increasingly to what extent the remit of what we used to think was the domain of product design is changing, namely making devices usable. This is increasingly being lost from the formal three-dimensional to the two-dimensional surface. The things that I used to find exciting, the things that I thought you had to get to grips with via the buttons on things, are of course no longer the subject of classic product designers today. Which hole pattern the loudspeaker has and which button and which switch; that's all in the graphic realm now. That's a huge difference! I think it's an incredible pity. But it's not so dramatic for me, because I've found my design niche and can continue to work the way I do now.
Stammeier: What is your niche?
Pfromm: My niche is interior design, products, lighting, furniture, that area. So that's what we do at BFGF.
Stammeier: How do you keep up with new developments? Have you noticed anything recently that you found particularly exciting?
Pfromm: I find the topic of 3D creating extremely interesting, especially in the very delicate combination with open design; open source design. It's difficult for us designers to find a way of dealing with this, I think. I'm fascinated by the Internet of Things because on the one hand it seems so trivial, but on the other hand it has the potential to make drastic changes that are important for us as designers. They are, after all, Things. That means it could be a very interesting topic for us designers, if we find a way to deal with it and now just... But it hasn't really opened up to me yet, to what extent there's really something interesting behind it.
Stammeier: Open source means, for example, that you produce products or blueprints that you make public so that they can be copied. What influence do you think that has on design?
Pfromm: Sometimes people call us and say they need to design a product. If we could tell them which program we use, then they could do it themselves. Of course, I'm happy to tell them which program I use. If they can, they can do it themselves (laughs). This is open source design at its core.
Whether that serves the cause, I'm not sure. For example, it became very impressive to me when I visited private houses in Argentina. The owners developed and built their houses themselves without an architect. And I realized how much you can mess up a floor plan if you think the most important thing is that all the rooms are big. I have rarely seen such... what do you mean rarely? I was definitely struck by how badly these floor plans work. That's a good example for me. I think that we designers.inside can do something and have learned. Those of us who are okay, good, or even better, we can actually do it really well. If Open Design is about the complete despecialization of design, then I don't think that leads to better things.
In the end, of course, it's a simple question: Do professional designers need to exist and what do they do for a living? I have not heard any convincing answers from the Open Design visionaries who are designers themselves. At least none that I believe can finance them. I once had a very funny conversation with two people who were both very involved in Open Design. I was standing at a party with them and heard them complaining about how everyone is always asking them how to make money with Open Design. Still, I asked them, "Yeah, how do you make money with Open Design?" They said, "Well, we work at the university." In the end, I have the impression that Open Design is an academic model.
I mean that it is difficult for us designers to develop business models with which you can earn a living. There are concepts according to which you help as a consultant. You let people design themselves, and if they feel they need help, they can call on the designer. They get paid for that, too. But I don't believe in that. Neither in the survival of the designer, nor in the quality of the resulting products.
Stammeier: Where do the obstacles really lie?
Pfromm: It seems almost impossible to me to earn money in this way. It's already difficult for us as professional designers to get money for our designs. If there's nothing left of your work but a computer program, maybe a little experience, and finally an offer to help, then I'd be surprised if you could make a living from it.
Stammeier: Now, for example, there is also another trend called transformation design. It also includes, for example, the non-design of products. What do you think about that as a designer?
Pfromm: Yes, that's exciting for students. I know idea of avoiding design from my own studies. That was a big topic in the 90s. That was more than twenty years ago now. So: designing the avoidance of design. Of course we don't need another chair, and of course you can think about how necessary it all is and how it can be replaced and so on. And that's also true. But from my perspective it is not a consideration for Designer. Because there is nothing to design about avoiding design.
We as designers are actually burning to design things and release them into the world. If we think that's no longer necessary, then I think it's highly advisable that we simply look for another profession. One that deals with something that we think is more meaningful than designing new things.
But as long as one is a designer.in, one should consider it meaningful to make and design things. And that's the core of Cradle to Cradle, by the way. That's what I think is so great. We say, "It's not about avoidance and abandonment, it's about creating more, for more people and more needs - without causing harm." And that's great for us designers.inside, because then we get to do again what we actually like to do: which is to design and realize things. I don't want to say that people who are in favor of doing without or avoiding products are stupid. I just find it professionally irrelevant for me.
Stammeier: To what extent, for example, do current discussions such as resource scarcity influence your work, or yours?
Pfromm: Resource scarcity has a massive influence on my work, because that is the basis for thinking about Cradle to Cradle. But we, as consumers, don't suffer from resource scarcity in our everyday lives. We dispose of functioning televisions on the street because we buy new flat-screen TVs. Just because we want a newer or bigger one. Here we lack a concrete sense that resources are scarce. This is a social problem. That's why so little happens, because it can't really be experienced, it can only be understood intellectually. And it's the same in my profession. I can't convince a customer to take a resource-saving measure because it's not worth it for them. I can only convince them with other arguments. Moral ones. And in the end, unfortunately, they are not very strong.
Stammeier: You work a lot according to Cradle to Cradle. To what extent do you take this into account in your work?
Pfromm: Not nearly as much as we would like. We try to use products or avoid mixing materials, but we are very dependent on the agreement of our customers. As soon as a product becomes more expensive as a result, it is difficult, to say the least. It has happened, however, that they are enthusiastic despite the higher cost. But usually not. Mostly the customers have too little money for what they want. Most of the time, we have to get everything done as cheaply as possible so that the project can be realized at all. Then Cradle to Cradle is one of the very first things to fall out of the budget.
Stammeier: What would you say is the focus of your work?
Pfromm: At the center of our work is the need to realize as great designs as possible with the resources of our customers. Stammeier: Do you choose your projects yourselves or do you mostly get commissions?
Stammeier: Do you choose your projects yourselves or do you mostly get commissions?
Pfromm: We almost only get commissions. Very rarely do we have our own developments, which we then try to arrange. We are absolutely dependent on having customers who pay us. An in-house development has to be financed in advance. That is too much of a burden for us as an office. After all, we have to make a certain amount of money.
Stammeier: What made you decide to work according to Cradle to Cradle?
Pfromm: As always, there are the good and the not-so-good reasons for it, and the result is a mixture of both. It started with Carsten Buck being friends with my compagnon Christian Schüten. He met Michael Braungart almost by accident and told Schüten he wanted to do this thing: C2C workshops for designers.inside - they are extremely rare. I think there were only two, so after ours there was no other one. It was mainly designers from other countries who took part. I don't know how many German Cradle to Cradle Design Consultants there are, probably no more than ten. At that time Carsten Buck asked Christian Schüten if he wanted to participate. That was not an entirely cheap pleasure. Schüten asked me if he should do it and I said, "Yes come on, let's do it together.“
Then the three of us, with Carsten Buck, signed up. For me, there was a crazy situation when we sat in the get-to-know-you round. The moderators asked: "On a scale of one to ten, how familiar are you with the Cradle to Cradle concept? This started - horrifically - with the woman next to me, and went off me so that I was the last one. Then, in turn, everyone was like, "On a scale of one to ten, I'm at three or I'm at four," and one had been studying hard, who said, "So eight." I had never dealt with Cradle to Cradle before, I knew nothing. I thought, when it's my turn, I'll say "One." But then Christian Schüten, my compagnon, got to it before me: he had read a bit about it and prepared himself, he would say, on a scale of one to ten: one. Oh dear! I knew he knew a lot more about Cradle to Cradle than I did. So, what was I going to do? On a scale of one to ten, my involvement with Cradle to Cradle was at zero! Embarrassing.
But once I got into it, I was excited and I realized why. We had already been environmental consultants for the city of Hamburg for a few years. Very classically in the idea of resource management and sustainable design, we participated in a program to advise Hamburg businesses. I had always been unhappy with that role. Actually, we were assigned a function that didn't match our skills at all: somehow saving resources. The expectation was that we would have the grandiose idea of which screws could be left out. Or we suggest to use the same screws in two different places. Or we save material thicknesses with some "biomimicry" technique. Or we substitute materials. But these are all questions that should be asked by engineers or process technicians.
That's why I was so happy with Cradle to Cradle. Because the principle is actually perfect for designers to play to their own strengths: to develop new products, to develop concepts, to develop entire systems.
Stammeier: Is there anything you would want to do differently about the concept Cradle to Cradle?
Pfromm:? I think it would have to deal much more with the meaning of design. They don't, of course, because the actors in Cradle to Cradle are natural scientists. But I think that design is really what determines whether Cradle to Cradle can work or not. I think that's important and that's what's missing.
Stammeier: What is the significance of design in Cradle to Cradle?
Stammeier: What is the significance of design in Cradle to Cradle? Pfromm: I had a discussion with one of the EPEA scientists about why a certain product doesn't work economically. He said, "This product is great, they just need to sell it better and explain it." To which I said, "Yes, but if it doesn't sell and explain, then it's not super, it doesn't work." Then he said, "No, that's just a question of perception, the thing itself is super." Quality is always -in my opinion quite wrongly- a very important term with them. I think this is wrong, because the idea of quality is not correct. So the quality is good, the product is superior, you just have to work on the perception. That's when I thought, "That's crazy, because we're actually further along in our understanding of the world." I thought about that more intensely later. I don't remember how I got out of that discussion. But as a result, I thought: "It's crazy that a scientist, of all people, argues like this. Because with the whole development of quantum physics, we are actually over being able to make this separation at all. Einstein is said to have said: "Facts are facts but perception is reality", and for me that sums up quite nicely what this is all about. What design is also about. There is no quality, there is no product, there is no function apart from the perception of the product. The perception is the product. If you don't succeed in making the function perceptible - whether this function is quality or that milk foams up or that you don't poison yourself when you drink it - if you don't succeed in making this function perceptible, then it doesn't exist. And that is ultimately the task of the designer.
Stammeier: Cradle to Cradle also talks about a positive footprint. To what extent can you as designers contribute to this?
Pfromm: If you really want to seriously achieve a positive footprint, then the prerequisite is that you manage to make something that not only causes no harm, but also generates benefits. In the abstract area of function in the sense of "making things usable or better usable" that is one thing. If you really want to do it in the chemical, worldly area, then you need an interaction of designers, engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs. I think you can only do that in the course of a holistic project.
Stammeier: What impact do you think that has on the design of a product?
Pfromm: Massive impact. You can design a product differently. First of all, you have to design it differently anyway if you design it so that it can be broken down into individual parts that can be separated by type. Then, of course, it's exciting to see to what extent you can make use of that. And you have to ask yourself how you can charge the decomposable product with a value that fills consumers with pride when they use it. Can you also develop an economic incentive for the consumer to return the whole product or parts of it to the cycle? That's also a huge issue. Of course, there are extreme implications design-wise when you're no longer primarily concerned with avoiding the use of materials, or with streamlining and diluting and ...lightening materials. Instead, you consider whether it can be heavier if that makes it recyclable. That's a whole different world!
Stammeier: What would you say current product design looks like?
Pfromm: Current product design suffers from the "black boxing" of objects, the interchangeability of formal language. That's quite clear in my eyes. By shifting all the user guidance and operating elements to the monitor, products are increasingly becoming interchangeable boxes. You no longer know which box does what. A television looks like a large telephone, a telephone looks like a remote control, the sink faucet also looks like a small telephone. I think that's a problem. It should actually be possible to do this better. We product designers really ought to pull ourselves together a bit and not give up the field so easily.
Stammeier: Why has this developed the way it has?
Pfromm: On the digitization of equipment. From analog to digital, everything becomes a computer. All computers look the same. Whether water or light or food comes out at the end is then only a question of the program. In this way, the products, the objects themselves, lose their uniqueness. Because in the end they are not unique either.
Stammeier: When you think of ecological design now, what image do you have in your mind, can you describe it to me?
Pfromm: When we talk about what that classically looks like, I have in mind this clumsy attempt to pretend sustainability via natural materials.
Stammeier: Can you elaborate on that?
Pfromm: There's the furniture sector; then a lot of wood, fabrics or bamboo is used there. Then everyone is of the opinion that as long as you use a naturally renewable raw material, you are in the area of sustainable and ecological design. You can also communicate that to the customers. I find that annoying. From my perspective, you are not interested in the fact that you have produced hazardous waste from this naturally renewable raw material by gluing it with Ponal. You have taken it completely out of the cycle.
In summary, I would say we have those who want to sell something as ecological and then work with natural materials and beige tones. And we have those who want to make an ecological product and try to make it look the same as everyone else. For fear of falling into the jute corner of the 80s.
That is, we have the "real" ecological products that don't want to look like that and the "fake" ones that want to look like that. And both don't really get it right - although the fake ones do it better, of course. This is also an issue for us as designers. That's why I think it's so important that we have to say: "No! You can't make a better product and then want to look like the others. If you want to be different - namely better - then you have to look different.“
We had that funnily enough here at Fairphone (holding the Fairphone 2 up to the camera). Schüten and I; we approached them in Holland in the first enthusiasm. Then we were invited to the Fairphone Open Design Bootcamp. There, the first concepts for the second generation of this phone were developed. We talked about it for a long time, because they always said: "Yes, this is a Fairtrade, socially responsible device, so to speak. It's just as good as the others and should look the same." "You can't be serious! You are not just like the others. You are better, you must look better. First you must look different and then you can think about everything else." I'm quite happy with the fact that the idea actually caught on. Although it didn't seem like it at the time. I don't know if you know this transparent back cover. We said at the time (my Dutch teammate and I): "If you're so proud of the innards - make sure you can see them. We made a model with a transparent back. In the end, they actually did something similar
That's what designers have to be able to do. When you put the Fairphone on the table now, everyone knows the phone is different from the others. That's important! That is a design.inside achievement. And that's what biologically responsible or ecologically responsible products have to be able to do. They have to communicate their strengths themselves, so you don't have to stick a flyer on them to say what's great about the product.
Stammeier: What do you wish for the future?
Pfromm: I would like to see a generation of young designers who succeed in earning their money by making our product world recyclable.
I think it's great if you already deal with the topics during your studies and go out with the knowledge. In the end, a customer may not actually find anyone who designs a product that doesn't work in a circular economy. I would be happy about that. Then the design profession would actually have a chance of survival. That would be our chance to become really relevant.
Stammeier: Do you already see a change there?
Pfromm: Among young people, yes. But that has to be an area-wide tapestry of designers and designers can't escape.
Stammeier: Thank you for talking to us.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]