What a beautiful philosophy.
There is terrible opposition to this approach though. Purists argue that it's not right. Conservative rebels fear the different look.
I got a custom surfboard years ago, that was quite thick and floaty. At the time, Slater ruled the WCT and everything was waffer theeeeen.
The shaper was happy to do it, and admitted it was a good thing, but said that if he put out boards like that, no-one would buy them.
Those boards are groooovy, baby !!
this guy is a genius.
imagine how good windsurfing could be if there were more like him involved.
I read a bit more, about the work with Neil Pryde. It does not date it.
At the sail presentation day,Neil talked a lot about the new lamination process they have introduced this year to enable them to add graphic stuff within the structure of the sail, rather than added to the outside.
I'm not sure if that was done in conjunction with meyerhoffer.
reading between the lines i think MH planted the seed when he redesigned the NP branding.
i don't know whether he is still working with pryde but it looks like his vision lives on.
i had no idea he did the pryde rebranding. i'd seen his longboard design a while ago and was so impressed. only read the pryde stuff tonight when i dug deeper after posting it on the iphone thread.
We were typing at the same time.
Innovators like him who come form outside the box have so much to add.
Often though, the consumers are too rooted in their preconceptions to consider it.
He gave the example of shaped skis. It's taken a decade for them to get to where they are now, in small increments.
It's really only this year that female skis have gone past 100mm underfoot, the market is so conservative. And don't get me started on musical instruments. Talk about stodge.
I think there are a lot of people in windsurfing who want to push the boundaries, but you only have to look a some of the threads here to realise that people are essentially very conservative, and blokes really feel threatened by anything a bit different design wise.
Let's go back to Ricci boards for a minute. Surf FX dropped them because the graphics were too "out there". They were not really, but an uber-conservative middle-aged blokey market was a death knell for them.
You would love talking to the Pryde guys.
Robert Stroj is very receptive to ideas and very humble, while clearly having an immense talent.
I never really paid much attention to Pryde before this year, so I have no idea when they were re-branded, or what they looked like before.
For another thing to look at , check out the Seven Artistic Sins programme done by Rossignol skis. I have a set of Caia Koopman S6's. They are very much in the vein of this design philosophy.
They work, they are fun, they are not "performance", and they are beautiful to look at.
Also, have a look at Pete Cabrinha's web-site, and check out his artwork. Very creative.
yeap, completely. b ut the times are a changing.
look at gaastra, they hedged their bets and bought vandal sails. so now they have the conservative and the edgey.
lol, i loved the rrd graphics. it was those that inspired the graphics on my voodoo.
Personally, I'd like to see him re-design the ski-boot, leaving out the obsession with pain and performance, and focussing on ski-ing as an experience to be treasured.
I'd like to see your Voodoo.
Thank you for reminding me not to be a dull bastard. The pressure to conform in my work must be leaking into my private life, which it has not done before.
I think the fact that Gaastra has to buy an "edgy" company just re-inforces my point. Should they not be able to be edgy of their own accord ?
No, can't mess with the established image, might upset a bunch of beards.
hmm, certainly gaastras approach is more conservative. i like how the vandal brand is directly aimed at the youth market. both graphic and price wise. i see that as a good thing really.
the reality is that manufacturers had lost the public interest, sails looked boring on the water and boards were all either white or grey. there was lots of long winded debates about how monofilm was killing the sports visual side.
it's good to see the manufacturers were onto it and got in some good designers to rebrand the sport.
p.s. will show you the board next time it's windy.
Cripes!
For someone so interested in design, I can't believe he thinks that white serif font on black is anything other than extremely unreadable... I had to paste into another program just to read it.
Yes, monofilm sails photograph terribly.
I'm sure Robbie Naish always used pink sails to show up well in photos, rather than as a declaration about anything else.
I recall the trend back to stark white boards. I think it might have been driven by the pros going through a lot of custom boards at the time, and not bothering to decorate them as their usage life was so short.
That happened to surfboards too. The lavishly airbrushed pintails and twin-fins of the 60's and 70's were replaced with cheap, sloppily built boards that lasted about 6 months and were stark white. MInd you, I recall a guy in the late 70's getting a custom board, in plain clear glass.
It was a "purity" thing.
The longboard and nostalgia craze has brought back the art in surfboards.
I can never tell whether you say that like it's a bad thing ..........
Mmmmmm , Bollox !!
Is that a hearty, testicle flavoured drink ??
i think his designs do speak for themselves and i guess i don't agree that it's run of the mill stuff. his peer recognition would suggest it's not run of the mill either.
here is the list of national and international awards he has won.
thomasmeyerhoffer.com/
words however have always been part of the design rationale, i don't know of a single design project i've been involved with that didn't have some type of written response to accompany it.
yes it's probably wanky, and yes most written responses are post rationalisations but they do point out the philosophy that drove the outcomes.
his board design from what i am aware has been hailed as an incredible achievement. to change the face of surfboard design is no mean feat. reviews of the board all praise it as a very fun board to surf and some even favour it over designs.
yes he is making a big deal about the design process. it's the design process that delivers the outcome. the philosophy is just the set of rules followed when questions are asked about the process. do the decissions made suit the philosophy? does the philosophy suit the brief etc etc.....
from an end result point of view to me it does appear that the result with the NP sails is different and has changed the "rules".
his wiki reader is merely a reflection of open source wiki. this is what wiki says, "In contrast, open purpose wikis accept content without firm rules as to how the content should be organized." so he designed a device without firm rules to house the content. i guess he defined the rules as being those created by the establishment and then broke them. that's all he is saying.
i agree dave, there are things you can't express and things that should be left unsaid. space is important and so is the experience or sensation and both of those things don't rely on words. but why not talk about design, it's a good way of exploring outcomes.
"the word "philosophy" used in the context of design explication is utter wankery. Its endemic"
yep it's endemic, but if someone sets out to explain the rules they used they are called wankers and if they just associate a particular philosophy with their design so the rules are unstated they are also called a wanker. seems like a lose lose situation.
Vandal wasn't bought by Gaastra it is a partnership between Dan and Knut Budig the 50% owner of Gaastra just like Tabou is a partnership with Fabien.
At the first presentation. Dan asked us all to slot the brands into a design curve which had Apple at one end and Volcom at the other. And Gaastra fell at the Apple end and with a huge volume in this uber chic iphone style market in Europe, it was obvious that a new brand was needed.
Dan approached the same idea from a different perspective with Vandal.
1st) what would a sail market do with a windsurfing sail if they didn't have to muck around with the panel layout for aesthetics.
2) what if we could just print anything onto the sail after we found the best design.
It's certainly taken the ultra conservative retailers some time to get their head around it and risk there $ on it
ok, i thought it was run by the guys doing the artwork and then gaastra got involved.
i do like what vandal has done. different philosophy to NP but similar outcomes as far as shaking things up. i notice that some of the 2011 gaastra sails are starting to look a little vandal graphic.
here is an extract from an interview re vandal. and again, it talks about philosophy of design. so some may want to tune out especially those against post moderism. oops that was a bit wankish.
PWA: What does the Vandal brand represent?
Vandal: "It's more than a brand, Vandal represents a movement. Vandal tapped a strong underground energy in windsurfing. It's been brewing and growing for years, especially with younger riders that had grown discontent with the status quo. Vandal is literally a resultant outpouring of emotion and rebellion from the old ways. Vandal represents change and a focus on the future, instead of the past. That's why the brand itself has electrified and polarized the industry. Like it or not, Vandal is here to stay and we are committed, above all, to deliver the best products on the market. We live it. We love it. Enough said."
PWA: What direction is the brand headed for 2010?
Vandal: "Sicker performance. Sicker graphics. Sicker moves."
PWA: What makes Vandal stand out from the crowd?
Vandal: "We are really an underground brand determined to bring expression and creativity back into the fold. At Vandal, we put product function before the whimsey of any marketing department's mandates. Once we have our technical designs dialed, we then call on our artists to create original artwork, applying the graphics of our choice. This a huge shift from the big corporate brands that spend most of their time searching through clip-art archives and butchering their sails with extra fake seams, only to arrive at stale unoriginal products. Vandal is the real thing, a home cooked meal, in a world of frozen microwavable entrees... a hip-hop cut instead of elevator music. Have a go on one of our latest sails, and we're sure you'll agree."
OK.
I didn't really look at a magazine from 2000 probably. I bought a few new sails after that, but they were North, supplied by a local guy who got good prices for all the Bundy locals, so I was paying no attention to Pryde or the larger windsurfing design world at that stage. Then I dropped out totally in about 2004, until last year pretty much, so yeah, I missed all that in 2004.
^ i dunno panda,
maybe your contrast is not set right? maybe it was designed on a mac which uses a different gamma setting?????? it reads fine to me. a lot of the design websites i read use a very similar format with black/dark backgrounds and white fonts.
maybe he paid someone else to design it? who knows.
anyways, i started this thread as a celebration to the designers that have evolved the sport.
rather than comment about the colour of something which everyone has a different opinion on i'd rather look at the process and thinking behind it.
