• Review of Material Vision 2007

My starting point is the graphic reworking of surface

By Le Vin Chin

An interview with the designer Lars Contzen of contzentrade

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Your designs are often large format. Why is that?

We wanted to do something other than a “pattern“. In the past, the circumference of printing cylinders dictated the repetitive nature of patterns, but thanks to the technical innovations of digital printing, this is no longer an issue. We print directly on special paper and wallpaper materials – my partner in contzentrade, Kai Peters, is one of the best digital print producers in Germany. The method of composition is liberated compared to how it used to be. I studied art, not design or craft, so that’s the angle I come from and, in a way, these designs are a mixture halfway between art and graphic design, although I would probably position it closer to design. So that’s where the large format comes from, really.

But the other reason is that if it’s not a repetitive design, it’s going to have a rather more magnetic effect, especially in public spaces. For me, it’s important that you don’t have to approach a design in a public space up close to within a meter’s distance to be able to actually see the design. It should work even if you are in the street and looking into a shop from outside. Large scale decor gives a room a very distinctive character and can also take the architecture into account. Traditionally, there was less interaction between the pattern and the architecture, because the patterns were so small.

Are your designs therefore tailored to specific sites or projects?

We do offer the possibility of developing specific designs for certain projects. But we also release a new collection biennially. Currently we’re on the third collection; we’ve been going for a little longer than six years. The collection is very extensive and, I hope, somewhat of a trendsetter. I try to foresee the trends, so that we can bring our collection into things like shop interiors. Even if we said to our customers “Everything is possible,” it still wouldn’t help, because they wouldn’t be able to imagine what we can do – with the collection, we can show them and suddenly they see a design that would fit their space – which we can then still adapt with their colours or proportions, on the basis of our initial motifs.

You talk about trends and foreseeing them. How do you do this?

Yes, good question. I think people often misunderstand where trends are created. Most people look to the design studios, i.e. to where the products are being developed and made. But trends almost always originate in subcultures. You can guess a lot of what is going to come by looking at the culture of the young. So you have to be very attentive to this culture of the latest generation, including having an eye on fashion, on information technology, knowing what skaters and hip-hoppers feel, understanding surfer culture – wherever there is authenticity, that’s where you begin. And then you try to transfer it into a commercial form, translate it for the mainstream.

Vertical Dripping. Click on the picture to see a larger version.

Without giving away tricks of the trade, could you tell us one of your sources of inspiration?

One of my favorites is the skater/snowboarder scene. I derive a lot of ideas from there. Also the surfer scene. Just like the companies and labels who have sports stars design products like trainers, or boards, etc. to ensure the final product is “authentic”. It’s basic: you don’t use designers who have never stood on a board to develop the product, you get the experts. The sports people take on a lot of responsibility, but what you get in return is an authentic product. This works. And so you can observe what these people desire. In the skateboard scene, you can study things that verge a bit on punk, for instance, or which are derived from punk, but which pass into the mainstream.

So when you interpret all these impressions, do you also work on shapes, materials, colors, or do you have different sources for those, too?

Yes, different sources; it’s a crossover thing from all that I perceive and have absorbed. Then, you have to join it together: I try to do things that work in a mass market, but which still appear unique. Of course, it’s a bit of a balancing act to be original, not a copycat and to function in the market. The right mixture is decisive. You also need to look to music - maybe link up electronic music and skateboarding and the Gothic … and then create something crossover, but not cheesy or kitsch.

Dark Paisley. Click on the picture to see the skull details on a larger version.

So it’s a matter of combining the elements in the right way?

The right way, or also a contrary way, to create tension. I have designs where shapes meet that normally would not go together, so what arises is a bit controversial and avoids being boring. For instance, this here: you think you have a classical Paisley pattern; then, looking more closely, you see skulls, dice and so on. It’s a very recent design and an example of influences from different sources coming together. These drippings here, that’s derived from graffiti – when you do a piece illegally, often it drips because you’re in a hurry. So I quote that. Those are the kind of disruptions I mean. You begin with something classical, then you let this crossover happen.

Your Paisley pattern here is very much in the Zeitgeist – skulls have been everywhere recently ...

My skulls are in a new context. The motif started perhaps as a tattoo and I use it almost as wallpaper.

This, here, I call “Ba Rock”: at first sight, it seems a classical baroque motif, but then it is interfered with by drippings and little pencil drawings which I then scan and process, so the final effect is rather classical.

Ba Rock. Click on the picture to see a larger version.

How do you assemble your color palette?

I can’t be very precise about that, I think it’s intuition. Maybe I judge what the trendy colors are and try to work against them a little. You see a lot of cyan at the booth [at Material Vision] – I have no idea whether that is ever going to become fashionable! But I adore this color, it gives a futuristic impression: it is a very artificial, chemical blue ...

Do you separate your shapes from your colors, or do they come together?

Well, maybe a few of these designs might function in black and white, but no, I think color plays an immensely important role, because it’s connected to the character of the collection. The colorfulness of the collection is not at all discreet, it’s rather brash. The color never holds back, it’s very direct. All our collections have been like that, it’s the Contzen signature ... The shapes change, but the proportions and the colorfulness remain every season, that’s the constant.

Contzen at Material Vision

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