Eames

Charles and Ray Eames: the dynamic duo (husband and wife) whom have defined most of modern furniture and design!

Charles Eames

Improving quality is increasing the quality of connexfions!

Eventually everything connects – people, ideas, objects… the quality of the connections is the key to quality per se. – Charles Eames

Lesson: the secret of creativity might be studying all forms of art, and finding novel ways of connecting these things in life!

On working with an artistic collaborator / life-partner

My wife is a painter, and a very good one… and we’ve been working together for, oh, twelve years now, I guess…and at first I used to help and criticize things she was doing, and then she would help and criticize things I was doing, and we would… pitch in and do all the jiggering for each other and get it as people do… and then, gradually, things begin to sort of, you know, entropy… things began to get shuffled, and pretty soon you didn’t know, sort of, where one started and the other ended, and anything that we’ve looked at or talked about here, you know, I say that I’m doing it, but actually, she’s doing it just as much as I am, only she sort of goes under the same corporate type name…

Never compromise, but work under constraints!

Brilliant idea:

I have never been forced to accept compromises but I have willingly accepted constraints.

Details make the design

Lesson: Focus on the details to make great designed things!

The details are not the details. These make the design.

Definition of design

One could describe Design as a plan for arranging elements to accomplish a particular purpose.

Is design art?

[Design is] an expression of purpose. It may, if it is good enough, later be judged as art.

On creative design constrainfs

Q: Does the creation of Design admit constraint?

A: Design depends largely on constraints.

Q: What constraints?

A: The sum of all constraints. Here is one of the few effective keys to the Design problem: the ability of the Designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible; his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints. Constraints of price, of size, of strength, of balance, of surface, of time, and so forth. Each problem has its own peculiar list.


Change the world by intensely working on a specific field

Choose your corner, pick away at it carefully, intensely and to the best of your ability and that way you might change the world.


Ray Eames

“What works good is better than what looks good, because what works good lasts.” – Ray Eames

I never gave up painting, I just changed my palette.[13]

— Ray Eames