Design In Practice: Casper Vissers

Industrial design entrepreneur Casper Vissers’ milieu lies at the crossroads of function and luxury. Based out of Amsterdam, for over thirty years Vissers has worked on projects as diverse as furniture, lighting, automotive and even boats, invariably adding something new and unexpected to the genre every time he dreams something up. For our design themed Journal this month, we thought he would be the perfect man to ask, in a changing world, what design means today.
 
Casper, you have a prominent position in the design world yet you don’t work in the traditional way, like other designers in your world.
I don’t really think of myself as a designer. I’m like a tennis coach. I've been coaching designers my whole working life. I am a marketeer with a very good eye. I think.
I'm lucky that I have a trained eye when a design comes to my desk. I'm looking first and foremost to see if it’s good design, and then second, I’m asking if the market will like it.

And knowing what is wrong is as important as knowing what is right
I'm very much about no nonsense in design. To be a great piece of design an object must speak to the customer.
 
How do you innovate in a crowded market?
Almost everything, in my opinion, has been done already in design, in ideas, shapes, materials. It's very hard these days to create something spectacular or truly new.
Raymond Loewy was the designer of Coca Cola and Lucky Strike; I always liked his mantra. He said, “If you make something new, make it look familiar. If you make something familiar, make it look new”.
 
Do you see design as a constant? Are the same truths still valid as when you started?
My sense of design has shifted quite a lot over the past 30 years. When I started in this business, good design, for me, meant something I had never seen before. Today, good design is something that has many more qualities than that. That's why I like Aera, Revised, and Firmship. The Aera watches that are on the market today, will probably be still on the market in 15 years’ time. These are not designs that date.

Case in point, the harbor launch concept that you created through Firmship. It looks striking in the water but is essentially quite simple.
Firmship was created with Studio Job. The whole concept was my own idea, but it was created by a team. I gave a very, very strong briefing on what I have in my mind. And then they came back to me with their ideas. They totally nailed it, I think.
 
Proof that good design can have a long shelf life right?
Exactly. Amazingly Firmship is a 17-year-old concept already, but it still looks young and fresh, almost hipsterish. But it's also very classical. It's a harbor boat, a work boat but it is also a private yacht.  

With the Firmship Defender, did you set out to improve on an icon?
We certainly don’t dare to think we can make an iconic thing “better”! But we do like to think we can put our own spin on it. We call it “Firmshipping”.  Firmship is really about linking products from other brands who work in longevity design with a no nonsense, no frills strategy. Just like the Aera Firmship P-1 pilot watch we created together, that is available exclusively to the Firmship Defender customer. 

 
So, do you approach design very differently now?
Things are shifting really fast at the moment so yes. Many design businesses are concentrating more and more on atmosphere. I think younger people these days are more interested in creating a certain atmosphere around them rather than focusing on objects. If you go to the website of Design Within Reach for example, you can choose by product categories for sure, but you can also search literally by atmosphere, like mid-century, Palm Beach, or New York City Living.
 
As an industry, design can seem remote to a lot of people, yet it’s everywhere around us. Do you see shifts in the way people are thinking about design?
The whole luxury industry serves people with money, and I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with that. People with income over €150,000 per year can afford design pieces, right? Yes, but a lot of people cannot. The design business makes it quite hard for people with a medium income to be able to buy design pieces. But I'm personally quite in love with companies like Bolia.com who produce things affordably and sell them directly via retail stores. I think there’s a big chunk of business to do there with quite beautiful but accessible products.

 Much of your work with different studios - like the furniture pieces you make through Revised is focused on natural - or naturally derived materials. Is that important to you?
At Revised we only use natural materials. The furniture always feels warm and soft. I love natural materials. At Revised, there's nothing that’s square. It's all softly shaped. We call it gentle “curves”. There's wood, there's steel, there is glass, there is marble; you won’t find anything in plastic.
 
Are you motivated by sustainability?
Yes – I think natural and sustainable materials have a warmth to them – even aluminium. I’m not dead against plastic per se – I think that too can be sustainable if it has a long purpose and isn’t just thrown away.
 
Is that a reflection of changing attitudes or tastes in your customers?
When I was 35 or 40, the people of my age, who made a lot of money, were very interested in showing off. Today, people who are 35 or 40 and successful, they are not interested in that showing off element anymore. That’s why quiet luxury is growing rapidly, especially in Europe and the United States.

Describe for us the perfect moment in your design work.
I feel very happy in a kind of almost Japanese environment where everything is raw and honest and natural.

For more about Casper’s various projects visit. Revised.com, firmship.com and moooi.com