Christopher Metcalfe: Some Truths About Life After Uni

New Zealand designer, Christopher Metcalfe, is a growing name in the product design industry. With his success from the Bol Fruit Bowl, Design-on-Design found out how this came about, and also how he’s made the transition from uni student to running his own business.

Interview by Matt Harcourt

Can you tell us a bit about your design background including your reason/s for wanting to be a designer and your education?

Looking back, I think it all stemmed from curiosity. I can't really think of a time where I wasn't interested in making things or dismantling things to see how they worked. From an early age up until my early teens my parents nurtured that curiosity by buying me Lego Technic sets (probably so I would stop taking all the household gadgets apart). Nearing the end of high school I became more and more interested in graphics and woodwork, to the extent where some days you would find me in the woodwork room working on projects instead of playing rugby out on the field.

I didn't get my Bursary qualifications (Final year qualifications) as I had decided to leave on an AFS exchange to Venezuela near the end of my final year at high school (which was cut short due to political unrest after 3 months before I went on to spend about 5 months living in Chile). I mention this as it was an event that has had a profound impact on my life and career in terms of life experience and learning what I am capable of. 

When I came back from my stint abroad I applied for the Bachelor of Product Design at Unitec in Auckland. I didn't have the qualifications on paper to get into the course I applied for but I was given a dispensation for some reason, perhaps they took pity on me? Who knows? But it has worked out well for me so far.

 
What are some key events that have contributed greatly to your current success as a designer? 

You can't underestimate the relationships in the networks that surround you. Whether it be with your tutors, your friends, or sometimes just random people that you meet. Being a good designer will take you some of the way but it is knowing how to communicate with people, and how to communicate your ideas that will take you further. You could be the most talented designer in the world but you would remain undiscovered if you didn't have the tenacity to talk to people and share your point of view.

I’m not saying that I am the ideal example of a communicator as there is so much more I could be doing in that sense, but it’s true when they say it's not just what you know, but who you know.

I think you also need to be able to challenge preconceptions and be willing to take risks. You need to be able to look past designing pretty things for the sake of it, and design things with a purpose (but also make them look pretty). On top of that, you need to be able to think about how you fit into the bigger picture, so with all the issues surrounding us, is what you are doing part of the solution or part of the problem?


Did you start your design business whilst at uni or did you wait until you graduated?

 

Perfect question… I knew from an early stage of my degree that I wanted to make a go of it on my own so I treated my last project as my first product and viewed it more holistically than I would have done so in the past. I chose a product to revisit that I had designed during my second year which was an expanding fruit-bowl. I copped some flak from my tutors half way through the final project for not going far enough out of the way so I came up with two other products in order to create a range.

Within a week of our final exhibition my fruit-bowl was on sale at Essenze in Parnell, Auckland . I have a great relationship with Clare Mora and the others there. I went to see them a few months before the final exhibition and was given a great deal of mentoring and advice. I put a great deal of my success down to this relationship.

From there word spread and it has been all go since then.

 
Can you tell us a bit about the process of getting the Bol Fruit Bowl on the market?  From concept, design, prototyping, choice of materials, to manufacturing and distribution.

Sure can. Righto, so the concept began with a simple enough presence, that is "if we take fruit from the tree, what would happen if we were to put it back?” Add that to some inspiration by the architecture of Santiago Calatrava and the idea for an expanding bowl with branches was born.

I’m not sure if I still have the original sketch, but I remember there only being one or two sketches on paper, the rest of the design and development came from simple cardboard and tape models. To be blatantly honest I'm not that good at drawing, but I still manage to get whatever is in my head into the real world by means of maquettes or more recently CAD software.

I played with plastics first as they were cheap and easy enough to cut with a craft knife, but ultimately I made the choice to make it from plywood as I felt it paid homage to the wooden fruit-bowls I used to turn while I was in the woodwork room at high school. It seemed like a nice circular idea, to fuse familiar materials with hi tech manufacturing methods to create something new yet familiar.

Again, chance was on my side in a big way. During the final project, my flatmate who studied architecture happened to purchase a laser cutter which was the manufacturing method I was going to be using. I built some shelving units in exchange for using the laser cutter (which was directly outside my room) to create my products. The use of laser cutting also meant it was a relatively cheap option to produce my products without the need for investment in tooling. It allowed me to produce limited runs and make any changes or tweaks that were necessary.

 

At a later point once the wooden Bol was established on the market, I wanted to release a plastic version that would be available at a lower price point. I worked with Millennium Plastics in Hamilton as I took part in a 4 month internship with them once I graduated and we explored a whole range of materials including Nylon, Polypropylene, Polycarbonate, and PLA, each with their own pro's and con's. After the first test run I was certain that PLA was the way to go, I could tick all the boxes on the sustainability card and I would have a product that would have mass appeal. That night I joined a few of my friends at the beach and downed a few beers to celebrate.

It was only in the morning when I returned to my car that I made an intriguing discovery. In my rush to go out and celebrate I had inadvertently left the product samples on the back seat. The PLA version of the Bol had deformed due to the heat build up in the car. I later discovered that PLA has a very low Heat Deflection Temperature and would start to deform at temperatures nearing 50 degrees Celsius. In retrospect, I was very lucky it happened when it did. I could have had a lot of angry customers with deformed fruit bowls on the windowsill and bruised fruit on the floor.  There are a number of other reasons why PLA wasn't suitable but I won't go into them here. In the end Polycarbonate was used due to its strength, clarity and long life.

For NZ and Australia I handle all the distribution myself as it is all still pretty low key. But Essenze looks after my interests offshore and has exhibited my products in New York, London, and Milan.

 

Are you working on anything new at the moment? and if so could you tell us a bit about it?

I'm always pottering around with a few things but I have also learnt that you cannot force things. There are a number of products that for whatever reason are sitting on the shelf at the moment but two that I think will be the next out the door are the Doppler screen and the Running Man Coaster. The Doppler screen is a room divider that has a certain level of interaction. When viewed from an angle it restricts the view through it, but when you walk past it, you can see through and its almost as if it is following you.

The running man coasters are a set of coasters that are inspired by the works of M.C Escher. They can be used individually as coasters or tessellated together to create larger place mats or table decorations. Its pretty much ready to go (design registered and everything) but it is a matter of finding the ideal material to produce it at the required price. I am also very concerned about the environmental impact as it would be a high volume/ low cost product so I want to make sure all of the boxes are ticked before I let it out into the wild.

Looking back over the last two years I haven't actually released that many products in comparison to a lot of other designers but I’m not too worried about that. I am more concerned about making high quality and unique products than releasing variations on the things I have already made.

 
What have you learned in the last few years of experience as a designer that you wish you learned at uni?

While I learned a tremendous amount at Uni, I have learnt even more from the school of hard knocks by starting my own company. While I wish I could have been slightly more prepared for it (i.e. by taking some dedicated business papers) I don’t regret doing it the way I did as I was able to learn by doing, which is a much better method for me than learning by theory. 

There are a few more nuggets of wisdom that have helped shape my direction as follows.

• Don't believe everything you hear, and don't believe everything you read.
• Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
• Just because it can, doesn't mean it will. (i.e. compostable plastics)
• If someone has to tell you they are an expert at something, they most probably are not.
• Starting your own business is harder than you think.
• Starting your own business is more expensive than you think.
• I lived a higher life when I was a student than what I am now (but that will change one day soon I hope..)

And the final question, could you please list five reasons why you may be considered a successful designer?

Well, I think its far to early to tell if I am successful or not. I am not a millionaire, but I am (nearly) making a living from doing the thing I love so in that frame of mind I think that is a success.

1. I'm quite candid, I try not to sugar coat things.
2. I'm inquisitive, I try to look beyond what others might see. Sometimes it’s not seeing new things, but the same things with different eyes.
3. I think about the bigger picture (probably too much actually). If you are not part of the solution then it’s not saying much.
4. I try to do more with less. I find beauty in structure and using the minimum to maximum effect.
5. I'll leave the last one up to you as I’m scratching my head a little...

I hope that helps to answer things.

Thankyou Chris for a great and comprehensive interview.

 

To learn more about Chris and his work, visit his website http://www.christophermetcalfe.com