Design Indaba: Maarten Baas

5:17:27 pm

Bass confirms that some designers do indeed have a god complex – “Creativity needs a dictatorship, not a democracy!”

5:14:17 pm

“The difference between art and design? First of all, the prices are higher.” Baas subtly articulates what many in the creative industries think – excellent design is art.

5:08:45 pm

Anyone can download the paradoxical (and very cool) Maarten Bass analogue digital clock as an iPhone app:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/analog-digital-clock/id360985167?mt=8

4:59:06 pm

Baas’s grandfather clock uses a projection so that it looks like there’s a real grandfather inside the clock. Reminds me of that Fatti & Moni’s advert with the granny in the cupboard.

4:55:16 pm

Baas doesn’t like using computers to design objects. He draws and then makes objects, adding to and adjusting them until they work. His work is always uncensored and unexpected.

4:50:47 pm

Baas rejected the idea of making something theoretically smart for his student project. He finds beauty in imperfect things, like children’s drawings, and he wanted to have the same naivete he did as a child when deciding what to create.

4:46:04 pm

Baas is wonderfully self-deprecating, saying how other designers seem amazing and perfect while he’s not. But he did win Designer of the Year, so he uses that to impress people at parties.

4:43:43 pm

Maarten’s famous ‘Smoke‘ series was inspired by the irregularity of everything in nature. So now he’s dissing ‘perfect’, ‘unchanging’ objects – including the MacBook I’m typing on right now.

4:39:54 pm

Maarten talks about something that all art directors know and suits don’t – “creativity is not explainable”.

4:38:02 pm

Maarten Baas: “The more you analyse something the faster it disappears. The most beautiful things in life aren’t explainable – like love.”