Designers Gush: Kiel Mead & The American Design Club

Posted: November 1, 2011 | Author: designgush | Filed under: Craighton Berman, Debra Folz, Evan Clabots, Fort Standard, Interview, Joey Roth, Kiel Mead, Lindsey Adelman, Robert DuGrenier, Sara Musselman, Sergio Silva, Simon Arizpe, The American Design Club | 3 Comments »

If you’re not sure who Kiel Mead is, you might recognize him by his work. His Forget Me Knot ring was in the MoMA Design Store before he had even graduated from college. Or maybe you’ve seen him busy at work on a visit to the New York based design store, The Future Perfect. Besides being a designer and design enthusiast, Kiel is also the proud founder of The American Design Club, an organization created to unite and help build the design community in New York and the United States. As the club proves, it is an exciting time to be a designer in this country and thanks to Kiel’s efforts, we’ll have ample opportunity to see and appreciate all that these designers do. I visited Kiel in his studio to hear more about his work & his efforts with the American Design Club.  Kiel tells all!

K: I came to NY to go to Pratt. I thought I wanted to draw, be an illustrator or something, and then I found out what industrial design was. I started doing that more and more and I got into this idea that you could draw, build, and be on the computer. You could do everything.

K: And I’m a social person so I like the social aspect of creating things for other people. Artists decide what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. They always probably take the audience into consideration, but with design, if you don’t, you won’t survive. I love always having the audience and how they’re going to react to it as one of the factors.

K: From the time I was a sophomore in college I was always working around new jewelry products and the reason I went to jewelry instead of furniture was because the cost of materials was so cheap. I could use jewelry as an experiment for anything else I wanted to do. I was in Lucky magazine and then once I was in Lucky I just kept making new things. I had an idea to cast objects. No one was really doing this idea of finding something on the ground and turning it into silver or gold. That was sort of my shtick back in the day. You know, you open up your pencil drawer and there are knickknacks in there. I would cast those things into jewelry. A lot of my stuff is made from life.

J: I noticed that a lot of the things you’ve made are quite nostalgic.

K: Yes. The first thing that I ever made was the key rings (the rings that look like keys). So the idea is that you might have keys to a car you once owned or you might have moved into some place with your significant other and you can make rings out of the keys. It was sort of stepping in this direction like, “Oh I remember that, I’m gonna wear that forever”.

J: They remind me of the spoon rings that people used to make.

K: The reason spoon rings are out there is because they’re taking the silver and just bending it.  With me I had to go through all these processes to get to this end result. When I started my friend and I were trying to bend keys but keys have nickel in them and don’t react the same way to heat as silver does so we got to a certain point and they would crack.  So that’s not how we make them.  We make molds of the actual key, inject wax and then bend the wax around a mandrill.  Then you melt the wax to connect it, put it on a tree, dip it into ceramic, let it dry and then heat up the wax. The wax melts out and you dump molten silver into it.  You can’t just pour metal into something so detailed and expect it to form so you centrifugally spin the molten silver in a machine which lets it get everywhere and cool at the same time.  Then you crack the shell, which is why it’s called Lost Wax.  You end up with your silver piece.

J: Yes, that’s much more complicated than just bending a key.

K: And The Forget Me Knot rings are even more complicated.  When I started making the key rings, I didn’t know how jewelry was made.  I was working with a shop. I handed them a key, said, “Make me a ring,” and they did it.  Then I learned in my Materials & Processes class how they were doing this. So then I thought, “If that’s how they do it, there are a couple more things they can do”.

K: I brought them a bow and I said, “Make me a ring”.  It was flimsy and they were like, “We can’t do that, it’s not going to work”.  But I said, “This has got to work”. So I went back and took my mandrill out, tied the perfect knot and painted it with matte medium, which stiffened the ring.  Then I could take it off the mandrill and I had a hard ring.  So I said to them, “Look, wax melts out but I think you can pour molten silver into the sting and the string will just burn and disappear” and so that’s what they did.  I sort of taught them that they could burn out organic material. I convinced them that they could cast string.  We cast feathers and gum too. It was cool because I had this dialogue back and forth with my manufacturer.

K: When I started I wasn’t interested in jewelry or what girls wear.  I wanted to make furniture.  So the gum and retainer necklace were sort-of like, “What can I get you to wear?” But then I paid attention more and tried to make more intelligent things that were a little more user-friendly. You might buy something because it’s totally different and in jewelry, that’s huge for me. What can I make that’s different that no one else has made? That’s how I’ve become original.

J: I like that you’ve made jewelry out of things like a land line plug and a retainer.  Again, all of these things are nostalgic.  They bring back memories and in some cases are even obsolete nowadays.

K: Yeah the retainer is really nostalgic because they don’t really exist like they used to anymore. And that is also a good one because you and I grew up in the era where wearing a retainer was almost a fashion statement. It was like jewelry.

K: After awhile I started to manipulate the material myself because there were a lot of people doing the cast object thing after a few years. The Pennant Flag necklace is the first thing I did that isn’t cast object.  It’s more a commentary on trends.

J: When I first saw them they took me back to the days of school swim meets.

K: Yes, and there’s something victorious about pennant flags.

J: I also like that you chose even numbers for the flags.  It has a more modern, unusual look. Is all of your jewelry targeted towards women?

K: I’ve had men buy the Lincoln Ring as a wedding band.  I’ve taken Lincoln off and they get something engraved or leave it blank. We’ve also made belt buckles and that’s been successful.

J: So you’ve done a lot with jewelry but you’ve also done some designs for home use, like one of my favorites, the Birdie Light.

K: Yes, I was doing a lot of research into sporting goods.  I wondered how the etiquette of sport could influence me as a designer and how I could create something different looking. Sporting goods was one theme that I used to try to influence my designs.

J: Are you re-purposing actual birdies for the Birdie Light?

K: Yeah, they’re authentic tournament style shuttle cocks.  I actually made it a DIY project for Ready Made magazine but the thing is, no one is going to do that. I mean, OK if you have a drill press, and as long as you have the time.  I reissued them with signed plugs this year.

Another cool piece I made is the Jesus Door Knocker, which got picked up by Urban Outfitters.  For a whole season they made them in India.  They made them out of these really cool woods. They cast the Jesus and it looked awesome.

K: And now I’m trying to make something that everybody needs. Good god, how many people come into The Future Perfect, they walk through the door, they don’t even look at anything, they look at me and say, “I need a hook. I just moved in and I have nothing to hang my coat on and it’s driving me insane”.  So the Driftwood Hook is beech wood in a bunch of different colors. These are all wood stains: lemon yellow, bright blue, orange, magenta, red and navy and they’re all just awesome vibrant colors that is something you don’t see in houses but I think people are going for more & more. They want color.

J: Has working at The Future Perfect influenced you as a designer?

K: Working at The Future Perfect has definitely influenced me as a designer. Seeing what people touch and pick up and eventually purchase really lets you know what will work and how much customers are willing to spend.  Designers who have never worked at a store should take a day to go shopping and see what people are buying.  It is really interesting.

Working at the store also allows me to interact with designers who want to get their product into the Future Perfect. When prospective designers come in to the store, usually you can tell. They look around, check things out, come up to whoever is behind the desk and ask to speak to the buyer/owner. Chances are that the person behind the desk is not the right person to talk to, but to be able to show them something, whether it’s pulling something out of your bag or showing a really sweet photo, you’re in. I love having that moment with designers in the store because someone’s being completely vulnerable and asking you what you think. I’m not going to buy it but I’m going to suggest it. I’m going to say to the owner, “If you get this in the store, I can sell it because I believe in this product.”

J: But it’s amazing how busy and involved you are because on top of being a designer and working for the Future Perfect, you also lead The American Design Club. How did that start?

K: My sophomore year at Pratt my teacher suggested that we go to Williamsburg and check out this thing called First Stop Open Up Studio. From that moment I was exposed to this design community. But by the time we graduated that community was gone. The people that we knew were just not there anymore. Some of them got jobs, had kids.  Everybody just sort of disbanded or dissipated. Nobody was set in the money they were making or the way their lives were going. So what I realized was that we are the next generation to create that community, but I wanted, and still want, to create a community that isn’t going to dissipate. I wanted to create a club that helps support the new emerging designer or the older designer who hasn’t done anything for a few years and wants to come back or the established designer who’s creating things. It’s all good. We all can help each other. Thus the American Design Club was born.

But it really started as a way for us designers to show work and the way we started was to have theme-based shows. Designers would submit to us based on the theme and then we’d curate the show. At the same time, all of us designers were putting our own pieces into the shows and submitting our own stuff. Immediately it was popping. October 2008 was the first show, “Outside of Sorts”.

K: It started with things that were only supposed to be outside but then as the submissions came in we started realizing that people were interpreting the theme as “outside of the box”, things that weren’t quite right, which was kind of interesting, and since then we’ve always let designers decide what it means to them, which helps keep the creativity going. We don’t want to force them into too tight of a corner. It’s great.

Sergio Silva: website

Evan Clabots: website

K: Since then we’ve done “Outside of Sorts”, “Hue Are You”, “Purpose and Worth”, ” Breakable”, “Lift Hold Roll” & “Use Me”. We’ve done 2 pop-up shops called Design to Go and Black Market. We’ve done 2 Architectural Digest Home shows and every single Gift show since 2009.

Our next show is called “Threat”. The working title for a while was “Threat Sticks” because it’s about that moment when you’re just about to fall asleep and you hear something loud in your kitchen and you could possibly have an intruder in your house. What do you pick up? Design for us a tool that would help you in this situation.

K: It’s a universal feeling but you might have a different reaction then the next. I’ve heard people say that they’d like to design something for the person intruding.

J: Is it open to that?

K: Yeah, like I said, it’s always going to be wide open for interpretation. I think that’s what is interesting about these shows. It allows people to write a narrative around their own work. It’s a teenage boy’s fantasy to create a stick with a nail in it so this show is going to be fun. It’s going to be a benefit for the American Design Club. You have to make one piece that you’re giving to us and we’ll sell it in the way we see fit which will probably be a silent auction. We’re going to be picking 10 or 15 pieces from our show to be sold on Fab.com.

X Bats was kind enough to sponsor a special exhibition for “Threat”. If you are faced with a possible intruder in your home one of the most favorable objects to have in hand is the baseball bat.  X Bats has supplied us with 10 Major League quality bats.  We are passing them out to some of our favorite designers. So far Lindsey Adelman, Paul Loebach, Rich Brilliant Willing, Jason Miller, David Weeks, and Joe Doucet have all signed up to manipulate a bat for the show.

J: So you’ve really recreated that community that you originally saw and desired.  Can I ask you why the logo is a turkey?

K: Well, Benjamin Franklin wanted the national bird to be a turkey. He wrote to his daughter one time and said that he thought that the turkey was a much more noble bird because it travels in a community and gives food to others, as opposed to a bald eagle which steals food from other birds and is a scavenger. And that’s not very American, he thought.

We work with a really great graphic designer, his name is Alex Lin. Studio Lin is his business. He created the current version of our logo.

J: Well I would say that for everything the club strives to do, the turkey does make sense! And it sounds like these shows have really led you to be able to promote and keep this community alive.

K: Yeah. When we worked with Heller for the show “Breakable” they sort of took a risk on us because their glass art gallery is probably the second most popular glass art gallery in the country.

Robert DuGrenier: website

K: The owner wanted to do something with design and his location is in the Meat Packing District, which comes alive during ICFF, so he was trying to see how to make his location a draw. I had become friends with someone who works at Heller and offered to show her at one of our shows and she returned the favor by introducing us to the gallery. We had a show at the gallery and the gallery loved it: huge party, so much attention, so many new people were brought in. They’ve done shows with some of the designers from the show we did and they sold like crazy.

Lindsey Adelman: website  Interview with Lindsey on designgush

Sara Musselman: website

I have this thing I say: Every opportunity is a good opportunity until it’s not, so go for everything. I think if you don’t act that way you will miss everything. Running your own business, you have to have a positive attitude. You have to be open-minded all the time. But designing is only 10%. The other 90% of your business is how you let people know. Who do you talk up that gets you into that world?  The way we got on Steven Allen’s website is that he came through our “Use Me” show.

Joey Roth: website

He bought something then wrote to me and said, “Wait, you’re the guy who works at The Future Perfect, you’re doing a lot of stuff, we should talk”. From there he put me in touch with one of his people and I gave him a catalog of American Design Club products that were sellable and he said, “Why don’t you let us know what you want to show?” In our studio we define who gets pushed forward. We won’t push anybody who a. doesn’t have product ready or b. doesn’t respect our club. I’m proving to a lot of stores that the designers our club picks are worth every penny. We’ve had so many successful ones that they’re carrying other people up.

Craighton Berman: website

Debra Folz: website

For example: Fort Standard. They’re very new but they were recently on the cover of Surface magazine. I put them in a show at MAD Museum where you had one day to make something to sit on. So you brought in a material and you had eight hours. And then at the end the writers of Sight Unseen had a question & answer conversation. I brought four design studios: Silva/Bradshaw, Stanley Ruiz, Kai Williams, and Fort Standard and they made amazing things. The whole thing was orchestrated by the editor of Surface magazine and one of the curators of MAD Museum. Fort Standard met the editor of Surface magazine and he put them on the cover.

Fort Standard: website

So we are like this web of behind-the-scenes, inner weave of people. Fort Standard is so talented that they would have been on any cover of any magazine anyway. But being part of their history in bringing them forward? I’m proud of it but I’m also like, we could do this so many times! In five years I want to have so many stories like this.

A big thank you goes to Kiel for sharing his work with designgush and keeping the design community inspired through his work with the American Design Club. You can see & purchase all of Kiel’s work at his website and stay up-to-date with the American Design Club by clicking here. If you’re a designer and want to submit for the next show, “Threat: Objects of Defense & Protection”, you can find the submission form here. Deadline for submissions is January 9, 2012. The final show will be in early 2012. Stay tuned to designgush where we’ll be covering the new work from the show as it goes live.

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