Ross Lovegrove
I came across the work of my Silver Saint whilst working on a packaging project for a
client of mine. I was at a model maker's in London discussing a project and I saw this
prototype bottle which captivated me. It was like someone had captured a piece of
flowing water and transformed it into a bottle. I asked who had designed it and they
said it was a fellow Welshman called ‘Lovegrove’. I just thought ‘wow’ what a fantastic
piece of design.
Only a few weeks later I came across the finished article at a photographers in Cardiff and discovered it was for the Welsh bottled water company – Ty Nant famous for their blue glass bottle and this was their new range of bottled waters. The images just blew me away and I thought, I have to find out more about this man.
Ross Lovegrove, born in 1958 in Cardiff, Wales. A graduate of Manchester Polytechnic in 1980 with a First in Industrial design and a Masters from the Royal College. It was whilst a final year student he was offered a job with internationally famous Frog Design in Germany where he joined a close knit team of designers working on projects for the Sony Walkman and Apple amongst others. Whilst in Germany he was approached by Carl Magnusson of Knoll in Paris a pivotal moment in this young designer's career. Because while he was in Paris he mixed with his peers whom he had only read of in books – Sottsass, Richard Sapper, Richard Meier, Andree Putman. He also began visiting Nimes, a city in the South of France, where the Mayor had commissioned Phillippe Starck and Jean Nouvel in a project now famously known as the ‘Atelier de Nimes’.
In an article, Lovegrove recalls meeting Phillipe Starck at in one of Nimes Mayor's gatherings, and Starck standing up to announce, ‘This is the designer I most want to meet in the world.’ Praise indeed from such a great designer in his own right.
Lovegrove returned to London in 1986 and setup his own studio called ‘Studio X’ and has worked for notable
companies such as British Airways, Kartell, Cappellini, Phillips and Moroso, to name but a few.
It was in early 2000 that he worked on the Ty Nant bottle that brought his work to my
attention and he recalls in his presentation at the 2005 Ted conference in Monterey,
California, (see:
http://tedblog.typepad.com/tedblog/2006/08/ross_lovegrove_.html#)
that the project was a difficult one to complete he even offered to return his fee to the
company until they persuaded him that they had faith in him and they allowed him to
complete the project which proved to be one of the most successful projects he’s
worked on, because in one year Ty Nant sold over 20 Million bottles – he wishes he
had a royalty on that one!
I hope that you are as impressed with his work as much as I am and this is why I regard Ross Lovegrove as my Silver Saint – a truly great designer who always looks to create unique designs that complement the needs of the 21st century, and it is a sentiment that I have always tried to followed in my own work.
Neil Davies