| THE AWARD |
| CATEGORIES |
| REGISTRATION |
| SUBMIT YOUR WORK |
| ENTRY INSTRUCTIONS |
| TERMS & CONDITIONS |
| PUBLICATIONS |
| DATES & FEES |
| METHODOLOGY |
| CONTACT |
| WINNERS |
| PRESS ROOM |
| GET INVOLVED |
| DESIGN PRIZE |
| DESIGN STORE |
| THE AWARD | JURY | CATEGORIES | REGISTRATION | PRESS | WINNERS | PUBLICATIONS | ENTRY INSTRUCTIONS |
Interview with Maform |
Home > Designer Interviews > Maform |
Editor Frank Scott (FS) from DesignPRWire has interviewed designer Maform (M) for A’ Design Award and Competition. You can access the full profile of Maform by clicking here.
FS: Could you please tell us more about your art and design background? What made you become an artist/designer? Have you always wanted to be a designer?
M: Maform was founded in 2010 by two freshly graduated designers, Geza Csire and Peter Molnar. We believe in a future where we are surrounded by thoughtful objects, and solutions that incorporate high level scientific and engineering solutions, seamlessly integrated into our lives. Maform designers are artists, engineers and science lovers in one.
FS: Can you tell us more about your company / design studio?
M: Maform is a product and interface design firm focusing in IoT, Life Science and Transportation projects. Our mission is to bring tech and science innovation to people by designing great products. Maform designers are artists, engineers and science enthusiasts in one.
FS: What is "design" for you?
M: We believe design is about the essence – not just the senses. Design should be helpful and understandable: we call this meaningful simplicity. It is reached by designing free of learnt assumptions. The result is a helpful solution with a senseful element of surprise. Crafting and testing everything to the limits maximizes quality and user experience.
FS: What kinds of works do you like designing most?
M: We like to work on high-value-added products. The greatest and most fruitful challenge, for us, is to design solutions that bring high level engineering and scientific breakthroughs to our everyday life.
FS: What was the first thing you designed for a company?
M: Our first product was an industrial product called the Power Analyzer. It was a remote maintenance tool that could detect malfunctioning devices based on their power usage. Our assignment was to design a casing that reflected the innovation inside.
FS: When do you feel the most creative?
M: We feel the most creative when we have to face the most impossible challenges. Mostly due to really strict requirements and deadlines.
FS: What kind of emotions do you feel when your designs are realized?
M: We love it when we see the first batch of prototypes. But seeing thousands of identical products, based on our designs, is simply ecstatic.
FS: What makes a design successful?
M: We believe, good design has to be helpful and thoughtful. It has to give answers to meaningful problems. It also has to inspire people.
FS: Where does the design inspiration for your works come from? How do you feed your creativity? What are your sources of inspirations?
M: Inspiration comes from everywhere. We believe in integrating knowledge from distant fields. We seek inspiration where most people wouldn't. For example, the main inspiration of our paq bed project was perpendicular tube connections and paper folding. We also like to look at insects from up close and geographic patterns from high above.
FS: How would you describe your design style? What made you explore more this style and what are the main characteristics of your style? What's your approach to design?
M: We always look for a strong character. This is usually reached by unique trim lines, exaggerated by using high contrast colours. After finding the right character, we work on refining all the details to reach state-of-the-art results.
FS: Where do you live? Do you feel the cultural heritage of your country affects your designs? What are the pros and cons during designing as a result of living in your country?
M: Our studio was founded in Budapest. Hungarians have a traditional mindset of solving problems with limited resources and thoughtful solutions. This is sometimes quite distant from the high class, artisan, super high quality approach of design. It has also definitely nothing to do with the cultural mission of global design. But this mindset helps us finding the most efficient solutions in really tense competition. It helps us in re-utilising resources. And it's useful when it comes to locally sustainable solutions.
FS: How do you work with companies?
M: We work in 3+1 weeks sprints with a really transparent workflow. We share our progress real-time, through the cloud.
FS: Can you talk a little about your design process?
M: Our sprint-based workflow is a combination of classic product design methodology and SCRUM methodology. We start with a clean sheet and try to design free of learnt assumptions. We then combine knowledge of distant fields. We do prototyping as soon as possible. And we work in highly efficient sprints to shorten development time.
FS: Can you describe a day in your life?
M: As a company, we might be considered boring: we have everything planned up front and we try to flatten peaks in workload. We encourage our employees to spend as much time with their family and loved ones as possible. Happy and balanced designers make good design.
FS: Which tools do you use during design? What is inside your toolbox? Such as software, application, hardware, books, sources of inspiration etc.?
M: We use paper, foam and scraps of industrial stuff (metals, plastics etc.) for finding inspiration and modelling. We use 3D printing for validating form, functionality and mechanics. As for software, we use Autodesk Fusion for CAD, Keyshot for rendering, Adobe CC for general graphic design and Sketch for graphical user interface design. For sharing, we use Zeplin and Dropbox.
FS: Designing can sometimes be a really time consuming task, how do you manage your time?
M: We constantly improve project management tools and methodologies and take special care to internal and external communication. We learn from engineering and tech companies: we find it a great deal of inspiration for getting things done.
FS: What are your future plans? What is next for you?
M: We plan to develop our international presence. We focus on Europe at the moment. It would be nice to open a studio abroad, in one of the design capitols of Europe.
FS: How can people contact you?
M: Please visit our website at www.maformdesign.com – all relevant contact information can be found there. We are always open for a talk!
FS: Thank you for providing us with this opportunity to interview you.
A’ Design Award and Competitions grants rights to press members and bloggers to use parts of this interview. This interview is provided as it is; DesignPRWire and A' Design Award and Competitions cannot be held responsible for the answers given by participating designers.
Press Members: Register and login to request a custom interview with Maform.
| SOCIAL |
| + Add to Likes / Favorites | Send to My Email | Comment | Testimonials |
