Notes In The Margin A Monthly Commentary on Design from Our VP Global Trends By Renee Labbe, VP Global Trends

As a person who works in the trend industry – constantly required to absorb, analyze and reflect on an endlessly streaming supply of information – I often find myself awed by the amount of creativity out there.There is so much good design to appreciate! I’m still marveling at the sheer genius of Alexander McQueen’s S/S10 collection from last September. I applaud the intelligence of Kyosemi’s solar spheres (small enough to be a design detail on your cell phone) every time I think about them. I drool at the beauty of randomness in Pascal Smelik’s wax-cast Kaarsrecht wine glasses so much I keep images of them on my desktop.

So it’s particularly curious that I currently find myself pretty in awe of Tavi Gevinson. Yes, I’m aware that she’s had more press in the past 12 months than Madonna and everyone is probably sick of hearing about the little Style Rookie. And Yes, it does pain me a little to use the word ‘awe’ in reference to a quirky, backstage-pass-toting, unreleased-collection-wearing 13-year-old after my 11 years of hard-earned career experience, five years of post-secondary education, and at least four teenage years of drooling over design magazines and fashion television. But I’m still in awe. Actually, I’m in awe of what she represents. 

Like Susie Bubble who came before her and the Sartorialist who came before that, Gevinson represents the evolution of design. I’m sure there are a good number of individuals out there who would stab me for that comment, but I stand by my opinion. The influence of great bloggers – average You’s and Me’s with good taste and unique points of view who were interesting enough to gain and hold the attention of a major online audience – was just the beginning. Great design bloggers have gone on to become new influencers, new style makers, and even new editors. Subsequently there are more opinions floating around the design world, opinions that do not come from a runway designer or someone on the Vogue masthead.

Suddenly, it’s the American dream on a global level. Nobodies can be veritable overnight somebodies, and the design community expands to truly become, well, a design community. Average consumers are becoming global tastemakers, unleashed into a blogosphere loaded with a C.I.Y (Critique-It-Yourself) mentality.

But let’s say we change the equation a bit. Instead of consumers going online and blogging their opinions, they are going online and creating their own designs. If the consumers become the designers, and their 13-year-old neighbors are already influencing design overall, how do these things affect the way our industry currently operates?

This is probably the appropriate time to introduce a company called Ponoko.  Ponoko, as Inc. magazine aptly described in their October 2009 issue, is “the first company to hook a laser cutter up to the Internet and let anyone, anywhere, take control of it.” Think of it like Etsy meets iTunes. Instead of Apple holding a stockpile of CDs in some warehouse waiting to be shipped on order, there is simply an mp3 file for download. Ponoko’s site works in the same manner, in which the designs they offer for sale exist only as digital files, ready to produce on-command, minimum-free. And similar to an Etsy membership, Ponoko offers designers a place to sell their goods to the global public. 

At the moment the product assortment on Ponoko is heavy on lampshades, jewelry and wood or plastic objects that will require some self-assembly by the purchaser. However it’s probably noteworthy that there are more than 800 individual products currently available – a number that reportedly grows daily – and that Ponoko goes the extra mile by offering starter kits and templates for those who’ve never designed a product before.  

I can’t help but have visions of a near future in which we will read articles about Tavi-esque tween-agers with winning dollhouse designs being courted by toy brands, 14-year-olds with digital clothing empires and high school students on design payrolls. I don’t need to look any further than the success of Stylesight to recognize that the future of the design world is indeed changing dramatically. But whether or not the consumer-as-designer will be a subtle shift or a dramatic impact in its change is currently anyone’s guess. Either way, get ready to be awed.


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