JKR

Today’s post ties together a couple of recent Gazette strands; limited edition and design PR. Illy has produced a range of crockery by artist Anish Kapoor, as shown above and below. The brand is clearly going head to head with Lavazza in the arty stakes but that’s Italians for you.

The crockery design is a beautiful encapsulation of his trademark style, the mirrored surfaces recalling his Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago (also nicknamed “The Bean” because of its shape). Great design that apparently carries no branding which is an impressively confident act on Illy’s part, more know than show.

However the brand has explained the design thus: “By placing the platinum saucer with the hole in the centre on the top of the cup, which is also platinum, an impression of diffuse light is created whose dimensions are hard to fathom. The flickering reflections prevent the hollow space from being perceived instinctively. A cup, like all of Kapoor’s work, moves from art to life and synthesizes in form some painful mental states such as doubt, ambivalence and error, but also happier states such as mystery, surprise and the desire to understand what we are looking at and to discover who we are.”

For me, this reads like the worst kind of pretentious art bullshit. How sad that the confidence seen in the design does not extend to a confidence so that we the audience can appreciate the work for itself. This is another example of how injudicious design PR shines daylight on magic (or in this case waffle on brilliance) and in so doing makes pedestrian the very thing they are intending to inject with excitement.

Perhaps design PR would be more effective if it described the brief or question rather than over explaining the answer. What do you think?