Dick Powell
Wednesday 12 December 2007, The Watershed
On Wednesday December 12 an audience of almost 200 people came along to Watershed’s cinema and listened to Dick Powell of Seymour Powell speak on product design and his career in one of the best-known design practices in the country.
Seymour Powell has probably done more than anyone to bring the principles of design to a mass audience through their television series where they re-engineered the bra and reshaped the toilet bowl for easier cleaning. Beyond the entertaining delivery, however, Seymour Powell’s success comes from their commitment to creating well-designed objects for everyone. Dick Powell made it clear he was as proud of the kettles and razors in the Argos Catalogue as he was of their public space shuttle concept for Virgin.
The premise of the lecture was that ’Design is about making things better’, and Dick gave us three principles that are common to the range of design disciplines represented in the West of England Design Forum:
1. Ideas
2. Belief: building belief in yourself and then taking others with you
3. Embodiment: realising the idea
Dick made it very clear that these three principles need to be applied to what people want, and Seymour Powell spend a lot of time asking this question by going into peoples’ homes and finding out what they’re doing with objects in their homes. Some of the simplest and best design solutions have come from common sense ideas that have been observed: designers have to learn to really look rather than just seeing.
Seymour Powell has become a multi-disciplinary design practice, bringing product design thinking to a range of items. Ideas are brought to and developed through “Crucible Workshops” where the emphasis is on teamwork. Innovation is seen as a series of small ideas brought together in different ways.
Seymour Powell has recently merged with Loewy but Dick didn’t feel that this would interfere with the future development of his creative career.
Dick Powell spoke engagingly and wittily for an hour while showing slides of the many products his practice has been involved with. He then answered questions for a further half hour on topics such as the designer’s responsibility to develop sustainable products to the opportunities presented by the burgeoning Asian economies.
Many people stayed for a drink after the lecture and they agreed that this had been an extremely enjoyable and informative evening, relevant to all the designers there.
For more information visit Seymour Powell’s website.
