Gijs Bakker lecture

Gijs Bakker needs little introduction among designers, and in the Design Academy Eindhoven, where he teaches and heads the IM master course for many years, it seems he needs no introduction at all. So, when Gijs got up to start his lecture, it was intriguing to see what he will show. We all know the famous Droog projects, and seen them in books numerous times, and were hoping this lecture would give us something more. It did not fail. Gijs Bakker’s one hour lecture showed the life of an interesting man, not only his designs shown in chronological order, but in them woven his inspirations, the designers he admires, his environment, and his other works, finishing with his teaching career at the design academy and of course Droog.

As these kinds of lectures often go, there was no time to go in deep into the ideas and projects of Gijs. It was a quick presentation of works and anecdotes, seasoned with a bit of humor, brief and general, but Gijs has done it very gracefully, keeping his audience sharp, telling us things we didn’t know, sharing a bit of his mind.

There was even a message, not a very common thing in a one-hour general lecture. Gijs told the students of the academy: “don’t wait – do!”, telling the students not to wait for commissions, but to follow their ideas through, stating how this way of working created Dutch design as it is today.

After the lecture, the master students of the DAE had another hour of Q&A with Gijs. This much more informal and intimate meeting took place in a classroom, with about forty students, when Gijs set on as sofa, taking questions from students. For the most part Gijs answered to the point and elaborated. It seemed Gijs had very clear views on design and could convey them very well. When asked if now that he functions, besides being a designer, as one of the biggest design curators in Holland through Droog, he heads the academy masters to look for talents, Gijs answered that this is a nice side effect, but he is looking for the arguments with the students, the disagreements. This is what stimulates him to teach. On some of the questions, Gijs showed a wonderful quality reserved to really great speakers. He was able to answer a very different question then the one you asked and still be very interesting, making you feel you got your answer.

The one question that seemed a bit unanswered is around the subject that draws a lot of attention recently – the subject of limited edition. It seemed Gijs had trouble defining his view on the subject, and said he is against young designers duplicating some of their old designs in different materials and exhibiting them again. It is almost understandable why someone like Gijs would struggle with such a question – Droog, in many respects, set an example for independent, conceptual, limited (and many times expensive) products. This phenomena, as often happens, is now being taken to extreme by young designers who might be missing the point of boundaries and creativity.

There is no doubt there was a lot more to get from Gijs, but under the time limitations, he gave an interesting, honest and different view of design, by one of design’s most influencing characters in the last 15 years.

17th September 2008