INSPIRATIONS

By feeling. It is a process design that acts on few assumptions and incomplete data. “Feeling” design is participatory, the design is not by a single author but shared by a collective, its mantra has one word: ”let’s try.” Thus, the key is in the unfolding, a path of slow refinement conditioned by subjective feelings. Form is defined through progressive adjustments to reach the final result. It is loved by clients somewhat less by designers, particularly, those who have their own stainless idea. It is tentative to the last and aspires, despite the meagreness of the premises, or perhaps because of them, to a wow-effect result.

Wow. In the world of brands, wow is a coveted effect. It happens when a brand goes beyond expectations to such an extent that it leaves you speechless or, indeed, just with a wow. The bet is to amaze – and if I amaze you, you will like me, you will want me and you will come back to me… The point is to have a substance so attractive that it generates such amazement which not all brands have. By substance is meant a set of qualities such as the ability to create a product, innovation or service, taken care of with such attention and meticulous precision as to verge on perfection.

Perfection. It would be nice if everything was perfect, but it’s not anyway. So let us relax! For this we are helped by Wabi-sabi an Eastern view that suggests acceptance of the impermanence and imperfection of things by recognizing three truths: nothing remains, nothing is concluded and nothing is perfect. At first glance, the principle may sound a bit resigned but, on second thought, it avoids futile efforts to reach impossible goals. This impermanence, however, is no excuse for sloppy doing. The goal is not perfection but to value things through one’s own skill, the best available, with a specific look.

Gaze. Let’s take a Lady Dior and a Kelly by Hermès. Even before being two bags, they are ways of interpreting the same object, two different logics, two distinct looks. The gaze defines style, a unique language for inventing universes. Are we talking about fashion? Not only that, also about all the ways of creating and doing that we can imagine. Style is recognizable and difficult to describe, more a matter of feeling than reason. But how does one learn it? Style is transmitted, to understand it it must be taken on, it must be breathed in as if it were air.

Air. To the ancient Greeks it was the seat of souls; technically it is a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen. It is measured in liters and we breathe in about six per minute, in twenty-four hours we “drink” more than eight thousand five hundred. Air trumps mind: just don’t breathe for a minute and we start to have a serious problem. Instead, if we do not think for a minute, we breathe even better. Air envelops the Earth for a hundred kilometers then vanishes into interplanetary space. In this infinite vacuum our ball floats suspended with us on board. When we notice we are breathing, that is, when we realize we are alive, let us remember how much grace.