Interview with Duncan Shotton

tape dispenser, for j-me in 2007

One of them is egg-box moulded paper, lot of time for that.

When I haven't eaten.

All of them. If you don't look at everything, you aren't doing it properly.

Rocket-like excitement, that's the most rewarding one and why I do it.

Rocket-like excitement

Everyone loves it.

If it works.

Benefit society & be responsible to the environment.

More designer-producers, more collaborations, less corporation-owned design.

During Tokyo Design Week with Designboom Mart, October 2012. I'd like to do a solo exhibition in Harajuku, Tokyo, and get to London and New York at some point too.

I do a lot of trend research online and in the retail environment.

Well-excecuted wit.

My Studio is in Tokyo. The city fills me with excitement, but it's much harder to communicate directly as my Japanese is still pretty basic. Japanese colleagues are essential to the studio being a success.

Joint-branded collaborations.

Select me.

Research, idea, prototype, research, prototype, prototype, engage with partner companies (sometimes from the start), finesse, produce.

Mini-Cleaner (Midori), Gundam Mega-size plastic model, cat earphone jack, automatic tape dispenser (leti), my next design...

I am a young designer. Aren't I? Just work hard, you only go round once.

Positve : I think about things that would make people happy, then a make them real, then people are happy.
Negative : Almost always, you have to make compromises because of factors out of your control (e.g. Cost)

It must make people happy.

Designers need every skill, conceptualisation is just as important as verbal communication.

A computer, the internet, a notebook, card, a ruler and a scalpel.

Work at light speed.

Totally depends. My Irish friend at university used to say "Do it in a night", there's a lot you can do in a night. Many of my projects take typically 1-2 years.

"What's Product Design?", I say "It's the design of Stuff and Things"

Year placement at J-me in London. It was really tough, but really rewarding.

Mars, HighTide, Kinneir Dufort, NOTCOT.com, EntreX, Suck UK, Cara Technology, Unilever,

Product and Packaging, you can feel it. I love one-offs too, if you do something great, you only need to do it once.

I want to grow the Studio, to hire a few more staff to help with design as well as the general running of the business.

Mostly myself, but I always share them first with my colleagues, friends and manufacturers. Other people sometimes notice things that you haven't.

I'm planning to release 4 new works this year. They'll be first released at http://facebook.com/DuncanShottonDesignStudio , http://twitter.com/_dshott and to people that have signed up to the newsletter at http://dshott.co.uk/newsletter

via http://dshott.co.uk