A New Designer’s Story | Lukas Easton | Episode 534

Lukas Easton | Episode 534

Lukas Easton is from Homer Alaska. Lukas recieved his BFA from the university of Alaska anchorage. Lukas is currently teaching at the Rochester institute of technology and is an independent designer for Jenggala in Bali Indonesia. In the summers Lukas works in Alaska commercial fishing and this fall will be attending Alfred university for graduate school.

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In general, do you understand how people go about finding design work?

Honestly, no. I have no idea. It’s my experience has been, I am sure there are things you can apply for, but in my mind the best things that have come to me in ceramics and art are the people that find you and seek you out for a skill you have or an interest you have. Me meeting Ada and getting connected with Jenggala was just right place at the right time, totally blew my mind kind of thing. It is something I will be looking at more in the future and try to figure that out as I develop several lines with them. Now that I have a portfolio in design work I may be able to bring that to other companies and see where this can go in the future. I have seen this with fishing and firefighting, if you can find your way into a closed system there is a lot of work available. What is so great about this company is they are interested in promoting me to other companies in the future. So I don’t know except just make the best possible work you can and try and get people to see it.

How important is it to start with a theme and have a hook when you start thinking about a line of work?

I think that is critical. I think is something that we ran into, they had a line that they wanted me to breathe new life into and evolve it so we had pretty strong parameters to work with, but they just wanted an outside voice to come in a rethink it all. It is like getting an assignment in school, when you have strict parameters, although it might be frustrating it tells you what you can and what you can’t do. It’s who is your market, who are your users? What are people that are buying this going to be interested in? Where is it going to be used? Is it a gift? Do people have to fly with it, is it small? Is it large? are there cultural colors in your market that you are looking at? Are there cultural icons or designs that you need to seek out or avoid? Which is something as an American working in a foreign country it is a lot to think about. It requires a lot of thought and study and careful maneuvering to kind of learn about what you are working on.

How many pieces do you have to go through, let’s say a plate, how many do you have to go through before you decide this is the one we want to go with?

It’t like a mashup. So I have a team of designers and I have several carvers that I work with and a team of mold makers and wheel throwers and so I would l work through a variety of standpoints.Either I would draw a plate and say, Hey I need the wheel throwers to throw me a dozen of these plates that I can carve on and work on my design or say, Okay I just threw this plate, can you copy this? or I just threw this and carved on it, now we’ll have another group on people look at it. Sometimes when we pick a design it’s going, this form is the form we want but the decoration on this one is the decoration we want. And then the factory is able to piece together my ideas and come forward with a prototype and say, How is this looking? and I can kind of critique it and push it forward onto its next evolution.

It seems like you are more of director than a designer. Is that accurate?

No, I would say that I am both. I think it is like a two stage process. I am a designer to start with and I direct post design. If that makes sense. You come up with the design but then you pass it in to the hands of individuals that subconsciously lay their own influences into it, so then it become my job to make sure that it stays true to my vision as the designer.

Is there an industry standard for how many pieces have to come into that design?

No,because I think it is all about a sales approach as far as the company goes. Are you going to unleash this huge line upon the market or are you going to do it in batches? So if you have a grand plan of a very elaborate set, do you launch it all at first or do you say we are just going to the basic dinnerware and in a few months we will release all our serving dishes. Or we will release the tea set.

Do you call those accessories?

Yeah, I guess you could call them an accessory or additional additives to the line.

It sounds like a major factor of the line is: what does the market want? Is that accurate?

In the case of this line it was all about re-imagining the previous line and making sure it fit to the market. I think there are different approaches, I am new to this so I don’t know everything about this right now. I am just figuring it out as I go. But I can see the two approaches of either you pick and market and see what the market needs or you create a design and you test it in a market. So it is finding a place to fit a thing or finding a thing to fit a place.

My last question is: What was your favorite thing about working with Peter Pincus?

The enthusiasm. Hands down. There is never a negative day. It is always a good day to be working with clay and I think that was the greatest thing about working with him, was just the excitement and drive to exist in this world and exist as an artist and approach every day like it was the last day you had to make and you had to make as much as you can today.