Patrick Jouin The Career of a Designer

French designer Patrick Jouin facilitated a vocational workshop as part of the Foundation’s Révélations Lancôme programme. With his designs a firm favourite all over Paris, from the Velib’ free bike stations to the five-star Plaza Athénée hotel, Patrick Jouin has discreetly established himself as one of the most talented designers of his generation. Growing up in a small village near Nantes, the 15-year-old tradesman’s son who customised his moped with spray paint never imagined being admitted to the ‘Club’. But the young Jouin drew on his design abilities, strong skills in shaping, and knowledge gleaned from books, radio and museums, to graduate from ENSCI in Paris and work for Philippe Starck. He went on to redecorate the Van Cleef & Arpels flagship store in Paris and work with gourmet chef Alain Ducasse to create a range of ergonomic cookware. Jouin participated in the Foundation’s Révélations Lancôme programme this past spring, meeting with art school hopefuls from the Édouard Branly vocational school in Dreux, Northern France. The students were on a guided tour of the Pompidou Centre exhibition devoted to the designer, whose diverse projects include an organic restaurant for the Galeries Lafayette department store, a Medici Villa for the Swatch group in Shanghai, new signs for Paris taxis, and a huge private residence overlooking the Black Sea in Crimea. Jouin looks back on a career driven by his trademark curiosity.

How does the son of a tradesman grow up to be a designer?

My father ran a small part machining business, Jean-Claude Jouin, which later became Jouin Solution Plastique (JSP). I remember him always working. He had a BTS diploma in machining, lathing and milling. He specialised in a new material­¾plastic – and did quite complex high-precision technical jobs: machining, bespoke work, conversion of plastic materials mixed with metals, motion, rotation, translation, electronics…

With you at his side?

Yes, like a boy and his dad. I watched him rack his brains to design things. Like any craftsman, he wondered out loud. He’d talk us through his problems, needed to figure them out over dinner. I watched him work so much that I found myself helping out. At the age of five, I held the parts while he welded. You end up doing things yourself then, sawing a 5 cm section, polishing it, painting it. I was better at that than him. I’m very detailed, so I was really good at finishing. And before I knew it, I’d picked all these things up.

Was your father a teacher?

Very much so.

So there’s an element of passing on skills…

That’s something I’ve held on to. In the agency, I try to encourage everyone to contribute what they know. There was one guy, Jean-Baptiste Auvray, whose father was an upholsterer. I learnt so much from him about fabric and stuffing sofas. We all have our own know-how. It’s important to share it…

So design is about accumulating skills which can only be passed on from others?

There are so many skills you’ll never learn from studying interior design or architecture. You don’t know what they are, but you’ll come across them at some stage. In school they teach you the technical aspects of designing a space or an object. I was lucky to have a few skills under my belt already and to come across new skills (which often abide by the same principles). You learn so much on the job.

So to return to our first question, what led you to become a designer?

I had this desire to design and create things; I liked the idea of beautiful pieces with an artistic dimension. I liked drawing from a young age. At that stage you’re not sure why you’re able to draw, because you like drawing or just because you’re always doing it… Either way, you’re better at it than your friends… And I was fascinated by art: anything to do with comics, but painting as well, sculpture, illustrators, Gustave Doré, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael… no limits. I learnt from anyone who could draw.

Where did you discover these artists? In museums or books?

I grew up in the country, so I read about them in books. I remember when my mother bought the Tout l’univers set of encyclopaedias. It was way beyond her means; she spent the next ten years paying it off. But my parents saw it as a really important investment. And one day my mother announced to us, ‘That’s it, I’ve paid off the universe!’

Did you see designer as a real career option?

Yes. I knew about Roger Tallon, Philippe Starck, Raymond Loewy, Dieter Rams, Paulin, and Jean-Louis Barrault, my favourite designer. He designed the Mehari, the Terraillon scales range, lots of everyday items, a bit like Marco Zanuzo in Italy. Then I discovered Italian design. I wanted to design pieces like that – bodywork design at first, and then school broadened my horizons beyond industrial aesthetics.

Your exhibition in the Pompidou Centre features a picture of your first moped customised with spray paint. Why?

It’s kitsch, but that’s where I’m coming from. At the age of 15, I thought spray paint art was amazing. That was pop culture as far as I was concerned. I come from a small village; we didn’t have much exposure to the arty, refined, cultivated side of life. I needed the help of others to find my artistic sensibility, but found it in the end. It can take a while. My older brother was the one who helped me. My uncle­¾my father’s brother¾also introduced me to counter culture: music, movies… He got me into Bernard Lenoir’s alternative music show on France Inter radio. For years I listened to it religiously, in bed at night. He’s one of my heroes. He introduced me to so many things, like Joy Division. I was mesmerised. The poetry, the romanticism; it gave me a whole new direction to explore. I decided I had to do something, try to understand what was having this effect on me.

Do you still work with kitsch today?

No, I stay away from it. For me, kitsch is about what hundreds of people are drawing at the same time. Kitsch can take place in real time… What I’m interested in working with is aesthetic invention. You don’t know how it’ll turn out, and you can’t think about it. If you do, you risk making it routine, and that’s so dangerous… You miss out on part of the process if you’re too bogged down in the everyday.

In fashion, it’s often said that trends comes from the street. Does the same apply to design?

You have to be careful not to look around too much. Focus on getting your own projects done. Of course, when you open up a design magazine, you see these incredible forms. It’s titillating. But being open to influence is central to the process… You do it to reassure yourself, you’re afraid of not finding it, but that fear is central to the process.

As well as those encyclopaedias, your parents splashed out on a train ticket to Paris…

My older brother thought I was missing out. I needed to see a museum. So we took the train to Paris. I must have been 15 at the time. We went to the Pompidou Centre. The train, the metro, spending the day with my brother, talking, going to a museum, so much to see, the crowds, Paris: it was scary, but at the same time something was pulling me towards the very source of my fear. It may seem silly today, but it was a huge risk to take: after applying to study comics at the local college of fine art in Angoulême, I decided to go and study in Paris. It wasn’t easy to leave my family at that age, even though I was home every weekend. You’re scared of being alone. I applied everywhere, the Duperré School of Applied Arts, the School of Decorative Arts – they said no because my maths wasn’t good enough…

You were eventually accepted at ENSCI, the school of industrial creation founded by Charlotte Perriand…

Yes. They aren’t too worried about your academic record as long as you passed your final exam. They assess you based on your drawings and personality. The school was completely random though, I grabbed the prospectus from a pile of literature… It was a glimmer of hope and I went for it…

Luck is a prospectus sticking out from the pile…

That’s right. I had no idea where to go. Saying that, it was exactly the kind of school I needed: no grading system and complete confidence in the student. They leave you to it. I didn’t have that in secondary school. The curriculum is individually tailored to each student. It’s up to you where you take your studies, and the people you meet over your five years there. The assessments were discussions among adults: Do you want to stay on? Some students leave after a year, but it’s their own decision; the school doesn’t kick people out.

What else did you learn in the school?

You learn techniques, a design methodology, how to structure ideas. You’re constantly going back and forth between the intention and the realisation of a form. You cover industrial and manufacturing issues. It’s very broad-ranging. You learn to think as a team, to be constructive in criticism. You learn soft skills through discussion and by coping with life in Paris by yourself.

Were you made to contribute to projects?

Yes, very early on. As a team of students, we worked on an Indian car project called Malabar. We built a scale model and presented it in India. It was an incredible experience. There were five of us on the team: we learnt to compromise, debate, listen to the intuitions of everyone involved, respect one another. We became the best of friends. And the trip was fantastic: three months in a school of design in India, studying English, discovering another culture… Many years later, when I spoke about it with Anne-Marie Boutin, the Director of ENSCI, she told me, ‘We thought you could do it. We weren’t always sure, but we let you have a go.’

In the Pompidou Centre exhibition, you have photographed photos of your associates. Was it important to showcase your team at the agency?

It was, because no agency in the world can run on collaborative work. The system looks for a name, but it’s never the work of just one person, it’s more complex than that. That’s where design is different from art: there’s the client, and then the end user you have no connection with. So much of it is team work; it’s often hard to tell who’s done what.

Are these different styles complementary?

Every designer contributes a signature style to the project, like I did at Starck. Sometimes I design, other times I do very little and someone else injects their personal touch. We then have our names side by side, as project manager and designer.

Did you feel the need to spend time at another agency (Philippe Starck) before starting your own?

When I graduated from ENSCI, I couldn’t imagine going freelance. I lacked the self-confidence. The thought didn’t even cross my mind. I wanted to be hired by a company. Starck, at the time, was the most attractive agency in Paris. The job was advertised in the Libération newspaper. I applied, as we all did, thinking nothing would come of it, fairly defeatist. I never thought they’d give me the job, but they did. That was in 1993-1994. I was at Starck for three or four years. It was the ultimate experience in industrial design at the time. I rubbed shoulders with designers from all over the world on the Thomson Multimedia project. It gave me insight into how an agency like this operates; Philippe Starck had this amazing creativity, supported by a whole system. My self-confidence grew. I had something to offer. Eventually I felt it was time to make a go of it on my own.

In France, the artistic professions are often seen as an inaccessible world, locked away behind closed doors. Are only fashionable types allowed in?

I admit that the world of furniture –just a blip on the radar of design– can look like an exclusive club from a distance. But only if you’re not working! Start working on something and you’ll be part of it before you know it. It’s as simple as that: just get to work. Design. You can let a support body like the VIA produce the prototype, or you can do it yourself. Then take a picture and send it in to Intra Muros magazine. If Chantal Hamaide likes it, she’ll publish it. So it’s not an inaccessible world, even though it can seem scary at first. But once you’re on the other side, you realise you’re not the only struggling designer; everyone’s trying to nudge these creations into existence…

As Moliere put it, begin at the beginning…

Begin by taking action. If you sit at home twiddling your thumbs and telling yourself you’re going to be a great designer, nothing happens! Of course it takes more than just talent, but I also know some very shy people who are very successful. For a long time, the system revolved around trying to imitate Philippe Starck. As if you had to be rock star to work in design… which you don’t! That’s the way Starck is, but you don’t have to wear a pink suit to be a designer. Just be yourself. You don’t need a disguise or a personality transplant to do this job. It’s like a costume party. OK, we dress up, but the masks come off at some point. And we turn out to be very nice people…

Do you still do a lot of designing or does the business side of things take over now that you’re (co-)running the agency?

I don’t really like the word ‘business’. It’s not as clear-cut as that. Plenty of projects happen without us, from the initial consultations onwards, sometimes even contracts are negotiated. As soon as discussion starts on a project, a mental picture comes to me and I draw it for the client. I try to stay faithful to that intuition that comes in the spur of the moment. The ideas aren’t always good ones. So while we may be doing business, it’s already about design.

You say your proudest achievement is the Sanisette public toilets for the City of Paris. Why?

Because it was a tough project which was run in an exemplary manner. It was a huge challenge, and a magnificent competition. It went well and I’m happy with the outcome. That’s not always the case. Not to mention that the final product is useful and obviously serves a purpose…

Are invitations to tender the nasty side of the job? How do you handle them?

Very badly. If you think you’ve done the best you can, you don’t feel too bad if you lose. But if you think your project is better than the winner, it’s hard not to think you’re doing something wrong. It’s always complicated. And it can affect the atmosphere in the agency. But design isn’t nearly as complicated as architecture – that’s nothing but competitions. Pouring your heart and soul into every entry… I have a friend who often comes second, but second place is nothing in those competitions.