The Swedish design group Front first showed their ‘Sketch Furniture’ at Tokyo Design week in November 2006. The original video of the Front designers creating this furniture was removed from You Tube some time ago, but I just found out a new video has been posted. This one’s much the same as the original, but shows the ’sketching’ in a new environment and visualises the linework better.

I’ve been a fan of Front’s work for some time, what I really like is how they ignore the way that design ’should’ be done, understanding that when you define a process you inevitably also define the outcome. Traditional industrial- and engineering- design processes are intended to remove the possibility of mistakes, whereas much of Front’s work embraces uncertainty and gives up the control over the final product that designers usually fight for.

Wallpaper patterns created by rats. Image © Front

Patterns worn in the floor of the Tensta Konsthall.  Image © Front

The sketch furniture also embraces this notion of uncertainty - if you watch the video you can see that the designers are essentially drawing ‘blind’, and sometimes make ‘mistakes’ in understanding where their hand is in relation to what they have already drawn. Quite obviously, if this were a conventional sketch where the designers could see what they were doing, and even correct their mistakes, the final products would have a very different aesthetic.

 Sketch Furniture. Image © Front

In relation to my own work I find  this project especially interesting for a number of reasons. The first, not surprisingly, is the use of rapid prototyping technologies to create products, rather than prototypes. But I’m also interested in the way that Front are able to give up control, and get creative satisfaction from the idea behind the product, rather than the exact nature of the product itself. This is something I would argue that designers will need to do in future, as they allow consumers to decide the ultimate aesthetic rather than dictate it themselves. It’s also something that many designers I talk to find extremely hard to envisage. And finally the process itself, drawing in the air as anyone can do, shows what happens when we as designers free ourselves from what we are taught is the way things should be done. Consumers, who have never been taught design, will certainly be free of such constraints.