Never before have we been so rich and wealthy as today. “We” here stands for a small part of the world population living in Europe, North America and some other parts of the globe. Depending on our definition of “rich” and “poor” it could be said that some ten percent of the world’s “materially rich” suffer terribly from a strange disease that first appeared and was labelled in the USA as “option paralysis”. The positive side of the “malady” is that ninety percent of humankind is unaffected by it.
The sad side is that at the other end of the economic spectrum the “no-option-at-all” group is also growing.

Option paralysis occurs whenever there are so many alternatives to pick and choose from that any choice turns into a dire quandary, giving rise to a sort of behavioural inertia. Sixty-seven different types of yoghurt were put out on the shelf in a food-store but demand faltered. The assortment was cut down to fifteen and the sales volume of the reference yoghurt started growing again.
A visit to a toy shop with a sevenyear old can be eye opening.
Given the freedom to choose whatever pleases her/him the child will quite often be stuck for a decision. During the war a friend in Belgrade sent her thirteen-year old daughter out of the country to Belgium. The girl decided to buy herself a pair of shoes. In but a single afternoon my daughter, our guest and I visited more footwear outlets than what I would normally
do in a year. After hunting for the shoes all day she didn’t find what she was looking for. I couldn’t help commenting to her how a city with empty stores and one whose stores are chock-full of goods can end up having the same effect on the consumer.

Some restaurants, that I call smart, do offer a reduced menu. Some shops seem to have made a small selection for the customer, thus limiting “multiple” to “double” or “triple” choice. Colette, for instance, store in Paris that only carries and displays a very small number of articles of the same kind.
Their selection criterion is “good design”. The (mostly wealthy) customer with little shopping time is sure to find the best lamp, the funniest clothes, and the finest tableware, while the ultimate Nike’s are just three tables away. The owner of a bookstore once complained to me that he was at an utter loss as to what books to buy.
“Editors just print too many books; I simply can’t cope with the selection anymore, and neither can my customers”, he moaned.

Moral: one wouldn’t be far off the mark in predicting that over the next decade designers will be devoting part of their time and energy not so much to diversifying but to cutting down on available options. In order to bring some order (and decency) into the world of material commodities and consumption designers will have to drive the message home to manufacturers that also on the shelf … “less can be more”.

The difference between excitement and surprise can be seen clearly in modern society, where people are mainly focused on surprising rather than exciting. Is this a need dictated by a general way of life – perhaps we don’t want to get too involved on an emotional level?
If I offer a product using an advertising slogan based on surprise, the product and the brand will always be linked to that specific situation. If, on the other hand, the product is offered in a way that can excite, the message becomes deeper and is not limited to the product in itself. It involves all the values that a brand can transmit. An advertising slogan based on surprise only has a short-term impact, while an ad that can arouse a strong emotional impact, even if it needs a long time to establish itself, will always have very long-lasting effects. Of course, it’s much easier to produce an advertising campaign based purely on the principle of surprise.

How can you create excitement through an industrial process?
Our products excite, but that’s not just due to the object itself. In our case, the product is a symbol of a complex process, it reflects our history. Some time ago I was in Paris, at Karl Lagerfeld’s show for Chanel. I think the event was organised in a very intelligent way – in the centre of the circular catwalk was a huge wooden replica of Coco Chanel’s famous jacket, a symbol of how the company’s present and future are always linked to its past. It was no coincidence that at the end of the show, the models all walked back into that huge jacket. Our products, like the clothes at that show, are always linked to the story of our company and the people who made it what it is, their hopes and dreams. My responsibility towards new designers, salesmen and workers is to keep moving in this direction. That’s something which is inextricably linked to the excitement that an object can transmit. The emotions which an object can arouse always come from its history, its context, its ability to relate to other situations. An object in itself is nothing – it’s excitement that makes objects, and the situations they can create, eternal.

How can we preserve this ability to create objects that excite?
Behind every project there’s always an awareness of our own being, and what that has created. We introduce our designers to our past products, our factories, how we work, and the surrounding context. We try to explain what it means to design in tandem with architecture, because our products only become complete, even from an emotional point of view, when they are part of a context. An emotion is never complete if you just think about the project – it is only completed if you can put it into context. But we should also think about two other things: art and craftsmanship. We produce mass-made objects in line with the definition of design, but we try to make sure that they embody that spirit, that ability to excite, which only art can have. It is no coincidence that many of our products are created in artisanal, almost artistic environments, and only then are they reproduced on a large scale. When we reproduce them, we try to preserve that original feeling.

Today, almost everyone wants instant celebrity status, those fifteen minutes of fame promised by Andy Warhol, using the tired old mechanism of surprise. How can you tell a designer to focus just on the emotional aspect?
We look for designers with great depth, who can understand the value of emotion and apply it to the field of design. Professionals who can interpret and respect our history and bring it up to date. Designers who know how to work with time – the past, the present, and the future.

Interview by Marco Muniz