Designerintervju
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Danai Gavrili started her studies in Product design in AKTO college (Middlesex University’s program) and then done the Master in Design in Domus Academy (Milan) with scholarship.
Could you please tell us more about your art and design background? What made you become an artist/designer? Have you always wanted to be a designer?
Danai Gavrili started her studies in Product design in AKTO college (Middlesex University’s program) and then done the Master in Design in Domus Academy (Milan) with scholarship. After finishing her studies she returned in Greece and worked as a freelance designer focusing in designing and producing furniture.
Alkioni Matsourdeli also studied Product design in AKTO College (Middlesex University’s program) and Interior Design in the Technical School of Athens. During her studies she worked as assistant of the interior designer Yiannis Bavarezos and then as concept and interior designer for the Museum of Greek Gastronomy.
From February 2014 they both give all their love and energy in raising Lommer.
Both always wanted to become designers. What made Danai become a designer was the enthusiasm she felt when she realized that behind every object of her environment was a human’s hand, energy, imagination and the pursuit for a nicer and more ergonomical world. So it felt charming for her to spend her life in designing new things. Alkioni became designer due to her spontaneous need to decompose the spaces, the objects and the functions of her environment, to detect their problems and their malfunctions and then recompose them in a new, more correct and steady base.
Can you tell us more about your company / design studio?
Our brand Lommer was named after the phrase: Love materials, meet requirements. This phrase identifies the philosophy of our brand. As product designers we love to search for new applications of the existing materials, to approach our products with axis the human factor and his needs and to experiment with new production methods.
We started building the brand in February 2014 and launched our first products an April 2015.
What kinds of works do you like designing most?
We like to design products behind which there is a concept that gives the material a whole new dimension. Products that form a whole experience for their consumers. Products that can play with the feelings, interact with their environment and open new paths.
What is your favorite material / platform / technology?
We don’t have a generally favorite material or technology. We have many favorites if we see it per use sector. For the bags for example, this period our favorite one is E.V.A. and that is why we use it to produce our products. In the future that will change by finding something new!
Which aspects of a design do you focus more during designing?
The first thing we are focusing on is the proper combination of correct functionality and the differed approach of the uses. Then come aesthetics and details to complete the entire experience.
What kind of emotions do you feel when you design?
Designing is a procedure that creates us many different feelings, lot of them contradictive. There are cases that we feel happiness, confidence and excitement and there are also cases that disappointment, anxiety and pessimism surpass. All these feelings create for us and for our products an unexpected, exciting, full of experiences trip.
Where does the design inspiration for your works come from? How do you feed your creativity? What are your sources of inspirations?
Our inspiration comes from the problems, the questioning and the research we do when we start working on a project. It is a mainly rational procedure in the first steps where we have to take the first crucial decisions. In a second level, during the research new materials, technics or production methods that we can find in every field of humans activity, become sources of further inspiration.
Where do you live? Do you feel the cultural heritage of your country affects your designs? What are the pros and cons during designing as a result of living in your country?
We both live in Athens, Greece. We believe that the cultural heritage of our country has partly affected our designs. We are raised in an aesthetically contradictive environment, where the classical era of Ancient Greece meets the minimalism of Cycladic architecture and where there is a continues alternation between decorative arts and functionality.
What skills are most important for a designer?
Curiosity, enduring willingness to learn, observation, obsession with the details and stubbornness.
Designing can sometimes be a really time consuming task, how do you manage your time?
Until today we haven’t reached to find the right way to appropriately manage our time. We spend most of the days the 80% of our energy in design.
How long does it take to design an object from beginning to end?
It depends on the object. We have designed things that took us one month while we have a project that we try to complete the last two years.
What is the most frequently asked question to you, as a designer?
Is being designer useful for the humanity?
Do you work as a team, or do you develop your designs yourself?
We work as a team to develop our designs
How can people contact you?
Through our website Lommer.gr, our e-mail hello@lommer.gr , our facebook page “Lommer” and “weareLommer” for Instagram.
