Victor Design

Let talk about prototyping.

This is my favorite pieces so far. Commissioned by Christian Kotter, who had already bought a coffee table in the same style from us. He liked it so much that he wanted it as a dining room table.

I have never built this design at such a large scale and there were a few things to consider if we were going to build this piece with the same skinny lines. 

1) Will the tabletop be strong enough to support itself and additional weight. If not, I would have to design a support system into the base of the table.

2) What gauge steel rod should I use for the legs. Similarly the legs need to be strong enough to have zero flex or bounce.  There are different qualities of steel each with their own characteristics; ability to bend, weld, colour and cost.  

So as designer you need to find the perfect balance between using the correct materials which meet your strength requirements whilst at the same time being aesthetically pleasing, the common denominator being cost of materials.

This is where prototyping comes into play. Its a trial and error game, you literally need to build it, test it, build it, test it, until you get it just right. 

Lesson of the day: always manage client expectations. I have found that is is important to manage client expectations by supplying them with spec details down to the screw size. This prevent a thing called scope creep, the client wanting more than what they paid for.

This is a very time consuming aspect of design and often is not billed or considered in the final price of the item in question.

This experience has provided me with the personal realisation that will govern the direction of design from this point in time. I would like to design a product suite that will be offered to consumers on order rather than designing custom pieces for clients.

This will offer a business model which is scalable and require less potential problems such as scope creep or maybe I am wrong, in the end I am just prefer expressing myself through my own designs.

This was a mobile clothing display unit for a home grown denim label call Real and Simple.

They wanted a mobile unit made to specific size limits which had to suit their brand. The key words were quite simple, Industrial, raw timer, raw steel, robust etc.

After building my first bath couch I needed a few extra pieces of furniture for the Western Cape Furniture Exhibition.

I had always been interested in the idea of a Chaise Lounge, great for a afternoon nap or read, but have never seen one that quite suited my style. They all seemed to be a little over the top aesthetically. So I decided that the Victorian Bath Chaise Lounge would be the perfect fit for the exhibition.

Note to self for future all designs: Figure out exactly how much the entire unit is going to weigh before you build it. 

I experienced this when designing a mobile, flatpack coffee shop. It is quite easy to forget about the end weight of a unit when designing with many restriction such as max weight capacity, maximum board size (how small does it pack). 

The biggest design challenge for this mobile coffee shop was to make it as light as possible, strong as possible and be able to break it down to pack on roof racks. These three characteristic challenges the designers ability as well as the client pocket depth. It is possible to use very light weight materials but these come at a high price.  

Cost price of manufacturing and transport is a large component of good design. The item you design needs to cost the correct amount to manufacture in relation to your target market and transport of the item also needs to be taken into consideration.

This is why I noticed the potential in the design of the hairpin table leg which was trending in Europe. 

The hairpin leg design traditionally has a much sharper bend at its extremities. I decided to open this angle as much as possible to give it more of an "Afrometric" look as well as the visual "V" effect which relates to Victor Design.

This was so much fun to make!

I can not remember how I stumbled upon this idea but when I did I knew it would be a prefect project. What better person to have in your festival entourage than a bartender on a mobile bar.

The most important social/cultural event of the year for my wife and I, is the Afrikaburn festival in the karoo. The only mode of transport at this festival is bicycles.

This mobile bar was build in two evenings using recycled oregon floorboards. Crazy to think of where this wood has been, In nature minding its own business, cut down and laid as a floor in Cape Town, ripped up and converted into a bar cruzen the karoo desert.

Competing in the framing business is another story. There are so many people producing picture frames in Cape Town not to mention the cheap imports, so the competition is hot. What could we do to separate our frames from the rest?

The solution was to design something a little different. I designed frames in different geometric patterns, very similar to what you would see in our cladded wooden pieces, the result was fantastic.

Its all simple geometry, somthing I would never have thought of when I was sitting in class.  

It was at this point in time that Caroline Viitanen, an artist representative, saw the imagery of our latest shoot and suggested that our work has a very Afrometric style to it. 

South Africa is a country of diversity which is one of our major attractions to foreign markets. 

iKhokha, this was a really great project to work on.

A very good friend of mine Ramsay Daily, spotted a gap in the South African market and took a huge leap in starting up a tech company.

They needed to kit out a office fast, on a shoestring budget and it had to suit their Brand identity. 

We produced desks, dividers, a bar and a coffee table for them.

The biggest lesson I learned here is that when producing items for clients it is important to foster a good relationship with them, iKhokha have subsequently purchased many more desks from me as they have grown.

Breaking into the weekend markets environment was quite the challenge. At this stage we had a number of "smalls" which we could sell at markets.

These "smalls" consisted of picture frames, coffee tables, side tables and wooden robots. Many  of these items sporting the cladded wood patterns were were getting known for.

Little did we expect that consumers at markets such a The Neighbour Good Market were more interested in wining and dining as opposed to lugging around a coffee table.

Lesson learnt, furniture and soft furniture such as picture frames are more often a predetermined purchase decision rather than an impulse decision, at least for our target market at that stage. 

I teamed up with a carpenter, who is absolutely mad about wood, in 2013. He had started to clad wood in different patterns onto flat surfaces, the result was amazing.

These pieces we created were very time consuming due to the high number of components that had to be cut to perfect size. This combined with all the filling, fairing and sealing ensured the each each piece required many skilled working hours in the workshop.

On of Victor Design last truly upcycles project was turning this old 60s suitcase into a retro side table for Jean Duraan. This worked great as a side table in the living room or bedroom with great storage space. 

Here is another blast from the past. I have seen quite a few chairs made by upcycling different sporting decks such as snow boards and skateboards. One day on one of my many scouting sessions in woodstock I came across these skis in a second hand store and this idea dawned on me. 

The retro Zodiac chair design from the seventies is a classic in my opinion and the lines of the piece will alway stay current. So if you find one in good shape, hang onto it.

This Zodiac was refurbished by Victor Design in 2012 although the base was not salvageable. Thankfully there are many standard chair bases that are available on the market which can quite easily be retrofitted.

The fabric chosen for this piece are quite loud and the shape of the chair resembling a wide rim champagne glass. 

One my initial discovery that I wanted to live a life where I created, there was an international trend of upcycling and recreating functional pieces from random discarded objects.

Lets talk about patina and what people will do to get it. Working on an installation at one of Cape Towns only boutique wines bars, Publik.

We had to source a low cost alternative to old expensive rare woods which add so much character to their environments. This was especially important to Dave Cope.