I first stumbbled upon Maurer`s name while reading an article of Victor Margolin, an author I have used for my Design Method essay. After a quick search on Google I was....well....impressed and eager to see more. His site didn`t fail to surprise me yet again. The intro is this sketchy animation of two angel-like characters, combining (I mean that in a purely abstract way) to form a new entity with...a light-bulb as its head. OK, so if you`re thinking to yourself `what is going on here?` , don`t worry...I`ll explain in a minute.
Ingo Maurer is a German enfant terrible of lighting...it doesn`t feel right for a German to be terrible...eh? Ok, so that would partly explain the lightbulb in the intro....right? But what about the rest of it? And why can`t it be neat and clean and refined and German looking like the rest of the site? Because, it would seem that the intro animation is an illustration of Maurer`s perception of the lightbulb, that apparently insignificant and mundane medium through which he is able to manipulate his art: light!
"It was like a flash. I fell in love. The light bulb is in everyone's heart. Cartoonists use it when a character has an idea - a bulb lights up above their heads. It has tremendous poetry."
The rest of the site, is generally what one would expect from a designer`s or a company`s website, catalogues, best items, team membres, a brief history, etc. What I found most...illustrative of the sort of relation Maurer has to his craft as revealed in interviews or reports about him, is that the individual items are presented not as mere enlarged pictures. Instead, they just basically take over the background, creating a sort of momentary environment of the whole site, because they are not just shape, but mood and colour and texture...all the things they bring-out in the environment that they are made to be part of.
Another interesting thing to look at is this little video on Youtube that seems to have been made to promote Ingo MAurer`s exhibition at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York:
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In my best imitation of Panic: 'Change? Change is Good!'
(I badly need a change!
and for those who didn't get the joke, go and watch some cartoon.... they always help)
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