Textured Laminates 'Wow' a World-Class Designer Monica Förster is Sweden's top furniture designer. Her presentation at the European Laminates Conference in Stockholm was a bit of an eye-opener...for the delegates, and for Monica. |
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Monica Förster "Come to me with your story." Designers educate consumers about the value of materials through the choices they make. If we don’t educate them, if we don’t tell them our story and show them our best efforts, we’ll never get beyond the perception of laminate-based furniture as cheap, second-class imitations. |
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Reporting live, from the European Laminates Conference and Workshop – Stockholm, Sweden!
If there’s one word that sums up the feeling of the conference, it would be “feeling.” Every supplier of HPL laminate, every direct panel printer manufacturer, every coatings supplier, every press plate and steel band manufacturer, every décor paper printer, every paper manufacturer, and even designers of scanning equipment had something to say about realistic laminate textures, especially woodgrains and wood finishes.
The excitement over new advances in the stunning realism of surface texture, considered the “final frontier” in the next generation of manmade decorative furniture surfaces, was palpable and justified. Everyone at the conference knew that over the last few years their efforts were paying off.
Except one.
Monica Förster (www.monicaforster.se) is one of Sweden’s foremost designers and was the keynote speaker during the design workshop. She’s been named Sweden’s designer of the year for the last two years, has won numerous international awards, and works with the most prestigious furniture manufacturers in the world. Monica offered us some excellent insights into how designers think and work, and how materials can inspire their vision.
She was careful to make the point that Scandinavians, in particular, like their wood to look and feel very genuine. “Genuinity” was a concept central to her presentation, and in wood, that means a raw, matte-finish feel.
“Laminate can’t do that,” she told us.
I was moderating the workshop, so at the first break I was compelled to show her a laminate sample brought by Schattdecor designer Claudia Küchen. It featured a printed
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design with in-register embossed texture and matte-gloss variations that feel and look very real. Monica’s response was about what you’d expect: “Oh. Oh, I’ve never felt a laminate like this. This is really nice, I like this.
We continued to talk for another five minutes about design in general, and the whole time she never stopped stroking this sample of textured laminate. She was inspired enough to bring up the idea of having her studio do a creative design project with laminate materials. (Project like this generate a lot of interest and press in the design community.)
In the course of five minutes one of Europe’s top furniture designers went from telling us that our products don’t measure up to suggesting she do a special project with them. And all that happened was, someone finally handed her a sample of what our industry is actually capable of.
In another “wow” moment during our brief time with Monica, a workshop delegate asked her what she meant when she said materials must be “ecological.” Her response was perfect: “You need to tell me what’s ecological – come to me with your story.”
(The person who asked the ecological question was a supplier of chemicals to the laminates industry. He asked only out of curiosity only, because, he said, "This isn't really our problem." I countered that if his business would benefit if his customers could sell more materials at higher margins, then he needs to change his thinking and become part of the larger effort to connect with the design community.)
Remember – designers educate consumers about the value of materials through the choices they make. If we don’t educate them, if we don’t tell them our story and show them our best efforts, we’ll never get beyond the perception of laminate-based furniture as cheap, second-class imitations.
Kenn Busch
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