The press announcement for Mr. Tom Dixon’s upcoming trip has an appropriately catchy headline: ‘Around the World In 90 Days’, but the designer himself anticipates that he will be on the road all year moving from Amsterdam to Reykjavik, from New York to Hong Kong, Vancouver, Nashville, and Casablanca.
He plans to go to Dakar in Senegal, where he has never been before, and also to Lima, Peru to finish off the journey. In March, he spent a couple of days here in Singapore to visit furniture retailer Xtra, where his collections are sold, as well as to participate in an international design colloquium.
“It’s an excuse to go to a couple of places I’ve not been to,” he says in half jest. In reality, although the world tour sounds like a leisurely trip across the globe in a hot air balloon, his work calendar is packed. This month the London headquarters, which has a restaurant, a shop, and about 100 people, will move to a new address. In May, it will be New York’s turn; a temporary shop has to be set up. “That’s gonna be a huge burden in terms of capabilities,” Mr. Dixon remarks.
And then there’s also Milan. “We normally we spend the whole of March and April stressing out about Milan, which is the biggest event in our calendar. We spend all our money on it, and then it’s over in five days. So I was thinking if we have to do New York, refresh our stores in Los Angeles, and move London anyway, wouldn’t it be exciting if we talk about all the places we go to but which nobody knows about?”
- CASTING A NET WIDE
- NAïVE ENTHUSIASM
- VAGUELY DISSATISFIED
- THE ACCOMPLISHED DESIGN
Casting a Net Wide
Mr. Dixon’s holds a theory that in the modern world one’s power does not reside in New York or London, but in one’s network. “If you look at where we sell and the people who have been the most enthusiastic and the most supportive over the years—it would be nice to reward them or at least pick up the conversation again rather than being centrally focused on just going to Milan like everybody else.
“I think about those maps on the Internet, with so many connections buzzing, and that’s what the modern world is like. It’s not really about being at the center, but knowing how far you stretch and overlap. I kinda like that idea that you’re not just nurturing the places to where everyone else is going back. The farther you go, and we witnessed that in Cape Town, the more excited people are that you’re there. It’s nice and rewarding for me as well.”
Parts of Mr. Dixon’s itinerary are obviously ‘usual-suspect destinations’: Cape Town in South Africa and Singapore in Asia, for example. But Reykjavik, Tennessee, and Casablanca are specifically unusual.
“I’m going to do Teheran as well,” Mr. Dixon says, “and probably Dakkar, which is probably even more unusual. The idea is that you’re hopping along. When I put the map of the world together, and I do all the time zones, then I’ve done it. It’s not about finding new things in these places, but hopefully making all those connections that come when you make a bigger effort. The idea is also partly about visiting dealers who’ve been selling my things for ten years.”
Mr. Dixon acknowledges the benefits of meeting and talking to people. “I had a good meeting with some people who own an island is Madagascar. I’m doing a sustainability project that requires hot water and a jetty, and I got (ideas) from them. It’s obviously not about the money or the commerce; it’s about the farther you cast your net, the more fish you’re gonna to catch.”
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- CASTING A NET WIDE
- NAïVE ENTHUSIASM
- VAGUELY DISSATISFIED
- THE ACCOMPLISHED DESIGN
Naïve Enthusiasm
“I’ve never really designed with the attitude that an object will look good in a certain place. My design comes from me learning to become a designer or learning how a structure can stay up. The chair, table and candlestick came from the time I moved away from all the scrap metal to virgin metal as it were. It comes from me trying to figure out the minimum use of materials to make a table or a chair stand up, and improving my welding technique as well.
"I was poverty-stricken at one time and metal was precious – these were made of welding rods for a gas welding machine – so it’s partly practice. I was also teaching a lot of kids to weld at the time.
Mr. Dixon admits that he has not gone to design in a serious cultural or industrial context. “I came to it from pure pleasure – the pleasure is in making things. I did not consider the customer or place where it was going to be presented at the beginning. These things come a lot later when you’re forced to think about your actions. I came with naïve enthusiasm. And most of the stuff is still running on that momentum of naïve enthusiasm.”
A part of that enthusiasm remains. “I need to try and maintain it; otherwise, it will be disastrous. I don’t design very well to a brief or if I’m not interested. And I only design well if I’m passionate about the sculpture or the function that I’m designing into. So the more (a project) keeps surprising me, the better it is.”
There’s no denying that Tom Dixon has become a brand, and he has a way of explaining it. “I stick out a bit because I’ve got this vaguely unique business model, which a lot of product designers don’t have, but a lot of fashion designer do, and that is you’ve got an infrastructure under your name, and your own ideas come out; you do the design, product development, packaging, and marketing and sales. That’s quite normal in the fashion business, but not in product design. Designers mostly have their own design studio, and they license their design to a manufacturing brand.”
Mr. Dixon, meanwhile, designs for Tom Dixon. The company has an interior design department that does work for exterior partners, but over the past 15 years, Mr. Dixon reveals that they have not done any. Some designs from Mr. Dixon’s previous career are still being manufactured, and there are few things that they have decided to do tactically, like the collaboration with IKEA that has just been launched.
- CASTING A NET WIDE
- NAïVE ENTHUSIASM
- VAGUELY DISSATISFIED
- THE ACCOMPLISHED DESIGN
Vaguely Dissatisfied
With an international footprint and recognition, Mr. Dixon has reason to be happy, but he chooses to keep a healthy dose of dissatisfaction within reach. “Happy? Do I look happy?” he asks. “Well, I’m always a little dissatisfied. There’s no perfect model. I’ve tried them all. I’ve tried being a craftsperson, having my own factory, working for big brands, and you’re always looking at the other side going, ‘Oh, it would have been much easier if I only had a studio’.”
But does that help a designer to be a little, albeit constantly, dissatisfied? “I think, authentically, to be a good designer you have to be slightly dissatisfied with the status quo. You always try and improve something, or interested in something new, or finding a new combination of things. Maybe it’s just natural to be vaguely dissatisfied, or maybe that’s just the human condition. But as a designer you’re able to try and affect that, and that’s what so nice about the job.” He concedes, however, that as a company gets bigger, it becomes limiting to have the 120 people and the three offices. “You’re breeding conservatism in your organization.”
So what changes come with growth? “What people don’t think about is that you almost become a compulsive gambler, and every time you gamble, the stake gets higher. I’m now owned by a private equity that wants an even faster growth. If I decide to do a candlestick, it’s no longer, ‘Well, I’ll make 20 of this and see what happens’; it’s more ‘I need this to be making a quarter million pounds, or there’s no point putting it in the collection’. That’s what changes.”
Mr. Dixon proudly admits to being “the rebel in my own bloody company”. “I’m the one saying, ‘No, we have to take a risk; we have to be different’. So nothing really changes. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, as they say in French.”
- CASTING A NET WIDE
- NAïVE ENTHUSIASM
- VAGUELY DISSATISFIED
- THE ACCOMPLISHED DESIGN
The Accomplished Design
Tom Dixon counts several successful designs in all its ranges, the number of copies of its designs a testament to their popularity. “I’ve noted that when the objects are successful – and not everything becomes successful – they tend to be the ones that can be read, where you can imprint a bit of your own whatever onto it,” Mr. Dixon says.
“I may have come from a completely different perspective; those specifically came from a visit to some metal workers in Northern India,” he says pointing to his pendant lamps, “that make water pots so the shapes have come from that.
“But when people read my CV, they see North Africa (he was born in Tunisia), they decide ‘that’s definitely a North African influence’, but it’s not. Some of my designs have been successful because they’re legible in several different ways. It could be Arts & Craft, right?” he asks, referring to the same lamps.
Mr. Dixon would like to think that there’s a bit of history in his designs. “I’m not inventing anything really – it’s not an inventing game; it’s a reshaping game. There’s a lot of references to Pop Art, Abstract Expressionism, and even Victorian engineering – all kinds of stuff. I guess those references get lost in the process of shape making.
“Same with this piece,” he says of an object he’s designed. “Some people say it’s very organic, very natural, that they are reminded of a volcano, but some other people would say, ‘Oh, my god, that’s so Space Age, so 1960s retro. That’s often the success of an object; they also tend to have longevity. If an object is too specific they will get out of fashion quickly. That’s a post-rationalization; I don’t know if it’s true.
“I don’t know if somebody can have 100 per cent hit – apart from Taylor Swift,” he laughs.
Mr. Dixon claims he tries not to look back too much. “I look at everything with a degree of dissatisfaction, no matter if its successful or not. I always go, ‘If only I have done this bit differently…. It’s a bit of an annoying trait of mine, actually. Everything I look at I go, ‘Ugh’. And it niggles, you know. I can’t think of anything that I wouldn’t change something on.”
The only time Mr. Dixon admits to being happy is when his designs sit comfortably different contexts. “If anything, the success of a design is if it can live in a traditional or historical context, or in a modern or futuristic context. I think those pieces are the ones that will survive.”
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