San Francisco, California, USA
“Designing Ideas is not about a marketing solution – the final glossy picture – but showing the slow, winding road, the journey of design,” states Yves Béhar of fuseproject.
Since founding his San Francisco-based studio Fuseproject, in 1999, Yves Béhar has redefined the role of the designer, expanding his work to include both public-sector and entrepreneurial engagements.
In doing so, Béhar has produced groundbreaking, award-winning designs that have had a positive impact on the well-being of people in developing countries and impoverished communities, creating everything from laptops and eyeglasses for children to stylish electronics.
His clients have included MIT, Nike, Herman Miller, Birkenstock, Mini Cooper, Movado, Nivea, L’Oréal, Swarovski, Puma, Kodak, Samsung, on and on.
In a comprehensive retrospective of Béhar’s 20-year career, “Designing Ideas” (Thames & Hudson) presents his work in thematic chapters―“Reducing,” “Sensing,” “Transforming,” “Giving,” “Humanizing,” and “Scaling”―and explores over sixty projects in detail through text descriptions, sketches, and exquisite studio photography.
“I’m usually more interested in partnering on things that can be surprising,” states Béhar.
“Often in these strange or out-of-left field moments, I find you discover the bigger design opportunities that tend to be more game-changing than the standard fields that designers play in.”
Béhar shares insight into more than 60 of his creations, including the Sayl chair, which he pitched to Herman Miller’s head of design straight through an earthquake.
“The storytelling within each project is really more a story of the meanderings, the things that worked and the thing that didn’t work, and how we got to a final solution,” he says.
“I think it’ll be a good resource for somebody that doesn’t just want to see the finished product with some marketing speak but rather wants to understand how designs are born.”
“I think there is a calling in design about being of service.”
Throughout his 20-year career, Béhar has blended Swiss aesthetics with California technology in his work and with a mission to build a better future.
One Laptop Per Child program instigated by Nicholas Negroponte at MIT’s Media Lab was a massive initiative by Béhar to bring educational technology to kids in the developing world.
The device was achieved instant fame as the “$100 laptop.”
“To me that was always a natural combination in the work that we do,” says Béhar, whose Ocean Cleanup sunglasses are made entirely from recycled plastics; each sale helps fund removal of 24 football fields worth of refuse from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that won a recent 2021 Green Good Design Award from The European Centre or Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies and The Chicago Athenaeum.
“Rather than creating a distraction for us, I’m interested in technology becoming life supporting.”
The book offers thorough insight into the conception, process, and production of some of the most recognized pieces of contemporary design, “Yves Béhar: Designing Ideas” illuminates the designer’s particular fusion of creativity and commercial savvy, as well as his studio’s expertise in combining social responsibility and entrepreneurial acumen.
The book is available this July.
Project: Yves Béhar: Designing Ideas—Twenty Years of Fuseproject
Designer: Yves Béhar and fuseproject
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
