One of the many beauties of wood is their growth rings. These variations in the rate of growth, season- to-season and year-to-year, are a large part of what gives wood its visual interest. There are colour variations, with the wood grown early in the season, when growth is faster, being lighter in colour and thicker in width and the later growth being darker and denser.

In quarter-cut boards, these differences will appear as (almost) parallel lines. In flat-cut boards, there will be a much more varied display of arching lines, ovals, converging and diverging lines and other graphic interest. If we look at the ends of the boards, at the end grain, we see that all years are not equal.

Stories in circles
There were good years and leaner years too. Not so unlike our own lives, although we can’t display our history quite so easily.

That’s a pity. I take some comfort, looking at the growth rings, that I’m not alone in contending with difficulty. I’ve had easy times and harder times. Like all of us. It would be interesting to be able to see this, because we tend to forget it. Maybe not so much in our own lives, but in the lives of those around us. We would all display a pattern of variation, thick and thin. These patterns would tell a story, a biography of experiences. If trees could talk, they would tell us about good weather, hard winters, disease, drought, plenty, threats and blessings, visits and even reproduction.

All the things that we design and make have a history too. Their growth rings are not visible either, but, in a sense, they are there. There is the ring of dream, the inspiration that lead to the creation of this artifact. There would be a design ring, which would describe the activities and process that lead to the form and function being defined as they are. Manufacturing would have its ring, or rings. Material was specified, selected, transformed. Tools were used. A complex web of technology was probably invoked, even for simple things. Supply chains were created. Capital was put to use, arranging the complex decisions and aspirations of a business venture, forming its own distinct ring. Marketing would appear, and probably sales as well. It’s likely that plans were made, in support of these objects finding their eventual owners. This could be a pretty complicated ring, or rings, or wholesale and retail and transportation and distribution.

Layers of meaning
Once an object is acquired by its consumer, it gains a whole other type of ring. There is the joy of acquisition (or not). There are the rings of use, possibly reflecting years of prosperity, interspersed by years of austerity. Things happen in the lives of objects. They may go from being treasured to being ignored. And then eventually re-discovered as mid-century modern is now. There might be rings of damage and rings of restoration. There might be a ring for being discarded. And a ring for reuse in a circle of recycling or repurposing. There might be rings that reflect the emotional attachment that the owner feels. There will likely be rings reflecting different and sequential owners.

Collectively, these rings would tell the life story of an object just as the growth rings tell about the lives of trees. Archeology is a process that is kind of like revealing these invisible rings. Objects that were lost have been found and revealed as what they were, and also thereby gaining a new set of rings, or layers of meaning.

Does this have any relevance for designers? Yes, I think so. We are part of a much larger process that goes on and on. We have our ring, and it is set within other rings. If we do a good job, the chances are greater that there are many of them. Our work is part of a much larger story. That ought to give us some satisfaction.

Paul Epp is professor emeritus at OCAD University in Toronto, Ont., and former chair of its Industrial Design department.

It is often said that form follows function, but it rarely does — at least not that simply. Form follows many other things: convenience, efficiency, geometry, propriety, habit, whimsy and, predominantly among many others, it follows fashion.

The forms we give to those things we make must be agreeable to the user. This is often based on a kind of familiarity. In our early 21st century urban and affluent culture, much of what we surround ourselves with has some reference to geometry. This reflects our debt to Modernism and the machines that made our affluence possible.

We have cubes and rectangular solids of many sorts. Edges are straight and curves are geometrically determined. We find this, the evidence of an enduring fashion, to be comfortable if for no reason other than that it is now familiar. We may also find it to be a bit meaningless — at those times that we notice it.

Cultural influences

But there have been other earlier points of reference for form. Some of these focused very much on meaning. Various cultures, at various times, were very candid in their appreciation for the female human form, for example. Sinuous lines, gentle curves, voluptuous containment. Our culture still appreciates female beauty, especially that of the young, but we don’t form our artefacts in their image. We demonstrate our admiration in other more discrete ways. Maybe we should blame the Victorians, who put skirts on furniture to hide the suggestive legs.

In addition to this anthropomorphism, there is a long tradition of animating form through references to other living things. Sometimes this may have been to capture the spirit of an important animal, and sometimes it may have been only a playful and affectionate reference to the familiar. Now this is no longer common.

There used to be many references to nature in the things we produced. But we don’t live as close to nature anymore, making it less familiar, less known and therefore probably less comfortable. So we seem to have lost a very rich source for form generation, visual imagery and inherent meaning.

Modern malaise

When we do make reference to nature in our contemporary forms, the results are often disappointing. The objects so produced often seem contrived, or sentimental, or naïve. And they are often crudely done. Many of us would not even recognize the animals or plants that we could refer to, wild or not, except for those we have domesticated into our urban world. So we seem to be left in a somewhat barren domestic landscape. We have clean objects, but very little meaning in them.

But for those of us who work with wood, we have a viable option. Form can follow growth. A notable and successful demonstration can be found in the work of the late George Nakashima. He often left intact the outer edges of boards on his tabletops: the wane edge. The description describes what was usually viewed: waning, in decline, decreasing. But Nakashima found in it a source of both beauty and commercial success. He was so successful, in fact, that he is now widely imitated. And I’m glad he is.

The outer edge was also made both conspicuous and valuable in the woodturnings of Nakashima’s contemporary, Bob Stocksdale. And he, too, has been widely imitated, to our mutual benefit.

Don’t forget the trees

Trees give us a lot more to work with, in their burls, crotches, knots, blisters, curls and butts — then only the consistent interiors of their trunks. In industrialized woodwork, this evidence of life has often been avoided and discarded (culled) as waste.

Where I first started purchasing wood, my supplier threw the birds-eye maple up on top of the lunchroom, where I could, with awkward effort, retrieve it if I wanted that sort of thing badly enough. But the trees persist in giving their evidence of an interesting life to us, and now, it seems, more of our woodworkers are recognizing this as a gift to them and the people who buy their products.

Maybe we can’t avoid our “modern heritage,” and maybe we shouldn’t. I want my iPhone to look as it does. But we can also flavour our near environment with some natural evidence of a different and richer environment. And who knows: if we’re reminded of it, we might even take better care of it.

Paul Epp is an emeritus professor at OCAD University in Toronto, Ont., and former chair of its Industrial Design Department.

Even before I became as involved with canoes and canoeing as I eventually did, I found it easy to admire this “frail craft of an aqueous navigation.” All the lines were gentle curves and even when at rest, these little boats looked as though they were in motion. While I was admiring one in particular, the builder happened to mention that he had designed it. My mouth must have dropped open. Designed it? A canoe? A cedar canvas canoe? They have been made since the mid-nineteenth century. Mike didn’t seem old enough. And then I recalled a similar astonishment that I had seen on the faces of some people when I claimed to have designed a particular chair. Chair? Four legs, a seat and a back? And you think you designed that?

Eventually I learned enough about canoes to respect that particular claim. They are actually a complicated design, with many variable factors: the rocker, the shape of the hull, the size and shape of the stems, the tumblehome and many more. Certain configurations work better, for certain purposes, than others. It is possible to design a unique canoe, which looks very historical, by manipulating all of the constituent elements to achieve a particular effectiveness. And I think the same is true of chairs. When they are of a certain type, they may look similar, especially at a distance, but they may perform quite differently. A claim of authorship may in fact be legitimate.

In the understanding of many people, design is about innovation. That which is proposed should look like something that has never been seen before. It should, in a manner of speaking, not have any parents — it should be original. While this is a laudable goal, the business of design is actually much more nuanced than that.

Our civilization has progressed, to a large extent, on the basis of innovation. Many things we take for granted would have been highly original at some point. Maybe everything was. So we ought to be grateful to the innovative amongst us and those who preceded us. But the truth is, very few ideas have ever appeared to anyone in a perfect state. A new idea may turn out to be a good idea, but usually not before some adjustments are made. This is the part we call development. It’s a lengthy affair and usually involves many people, even across time and space.

Some people make their contributions as innovators. And some make theirs as developers, and there are many more of the latter. Without them, the innovative idea may not amount to much. This reality gets skewed by the fact the originality is much more effective at attention procurement than incremental adjustments are. We applaud the brave new breakthrough and it is the part that gets written into our histories.

There is, however, a great deal of honour in actually getting the fancy new ideas to function. And even once they do, they will usually be improved, often by anonymous contributors, over a long period of time.

The activity of originality is distinct. It requires a set of skills, talent and discipline (and maybe even a bit of luck) that allows the originator to make new connections and to see new opportunities the rest of us don’t. The contributions of development usually come about more slowly. They depend on a type of intimacy, patience and understanding that flashes of brilliance usually don’t have. They are often found in a different type of person.

There are lots of examples of this. One that comes to mind is the Volkswagen Beetle. Ferdinand Porsche had the original idea, but over the 65-year life of that particular design, it went through many iterations as well as continuous improvements. We can be sure that Mr. Porsche didn’t make them all. He may not even have made very many. Different job. But undoubtedly, the design got better and better. I could even make the case that the process didn’t stop in 2003, since there have been two “new” Beetles since then, which would not exist without the influential original, and they in turn are expressions of ongoing improvement.

This double nature of design can be confusing. Students often feel that they need to be creators of original work (where the glory is) when many of them would actually be more useful as developers. And as it turns out, that’s usually how things sort out. As Steve McQueen said as Junior Bonner in the movie of that name, “Someone has to hold the horses.”

Paul Epp is an emeritus professor at OCAD University in Toronto, Ont., and former chair of its Industrial Design department.

I’ve been intrigued by minimal expression for a long time: practically as long as I can remember. There were pictures of the cave paintings at Lascaux in the encyclopedia that we had at home, when I was a child, and I marvelled at how much was accomplished with so little. At the gestures that spoke beyond their size.

That seemed to be the essence of it: achieving a lot with a little. And I think that this was the path that brought me to design, and specifically Industrial Design. In that design discipline, unlike some others, there is an obvious benefit to achieving things economically. In fact, to one way of looking at it, efficiency is the ultimate objective. We seek to do a lot with as little as possible and then keep doing it over and over, maximizing the benefits to consumers and to the capitalists behind the venture.

Before I had decided on a career in design, I came upon the book How to Wrap Five Eggs, and I was once again struck by an intuitive satisfaction at the achievement of outcomes with little apparent effort. This wasn’t Industrial Design, but even I could sense the applicability.

So that became a kind of animating force for me, to do as much as I could with as little display of means as possible. If this is the discipline, then every gesture counts. There is a kind of perfection that is sought, and elegance, through economy and efficiency which I find to be innately satisfying.

Now, at times, I feel a bit old fashioned for thinking this way. Modernism, of course, has always displayed a strong interest in the minimal. Witness Van der Rohe’s famous mid-century dictum, “Less is More.” Recall as well, Robert Venturi’s late-century, post-modern rebuttal, “Less is a Bore.” At one time, to be minimal and efficient were seen as honourable objectives, virtuous in their own integrity. Minimal design seemed appropriate for many reasons, even ethical ones, like not wasting resources. And the challenge, well met, was acclaimed.

Time changes everything, to misappropriate the title of a song. Modernism has been buried and resurrected numerous times and been supplanted by all manner of alternatives. Minimalism isn’t gone; it’s just not as important as it used to be. Maybe that is how it should be, everything in its turn. The late, great German designer, Dieter Rams, was a kind of priest of minimal modernism. And he still has his followers, although I sometimes wonder if Apple products aren’t also a bit of caricature.

The opposite of minimal would be maximal, and this, too, has its place in design. Although, to show my time-worn prejudices, I sometimes think of the maximal as having more to do with decoration than design. But I certainly appreciate decoration, despite finding myself inadequate in its practice.

Besides Modernism’s minimalism, the challenge of minimal display achieving greater results has been an objective of many historical and current artists, poets, and other creative people. It’s a challenge with great potential to satisfy. I remain captivated by the style of printing usually called wood-block, although now much of it is fully digital. Why not? The computer is a wonderful tool. In this style of work, there are great limitations on the range of colour used and on the shapes and forms that delineate the image. How much can be done with how little? It may be ironic to consider that a minimal visual expression, like one of these pictures, can also be decorative?

Twitter has, in its requirement of concision, replaced telegrams, which I used to delight in. Haiku is another example of severe constrains yielding strong effects. Poetry used to be based on the strict limits. Minimalism, in its various forms, is an intellectual challenge as well as a practical one, and probably will continue to enchant some of us for a good while yet.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
(a fragment of a poem by A. E. Housman)

Paul Epp is a professor emeritus at OCAD University in Toronto, Ont., and former chair of its Industrial Design department.

Now that I’m not teaching, I’ve had to find a project to keep busy with. And what that has turned out to be is a DIY Sprinter cargo-van-to-RV conversion. It’s certainly kept me busy and I’m not done yet.

I first became aware of Sprinter vans around 2006 and was immediately struck by their potential adaptability for RVs. But that was long before my time. In 2015, when I sold my house, I bought a used RV: a 22-foot Class C. And I got a lot of use out of it over the next three years, spending four months of each summer in it. That gave me a pretty good sense of what I wanted and how I used an RV. Despite my extensive enjoyment of that unit, it was a pig to drive. And I found the interior to be very inappropriately designed, at least for me. So, an idea began to take form: build my own the way I wanted it. This would satisfy my desire to feel active as a designer and it would give me a chance to put my woodworking skills back to use.

I sold the Class C in the fall of 2017 and planned on starting to build its replacement in the spring. I was offered the use of a wood shop out West and that’s where I went in February. It turned out that the shop wasn’t available as expected and I didn’t get the use of it until July. In the meantime, I bought a van and started to do what I could. I bought the long wheelbase/ high roof model because I wanted a bathroom and a decent kitchen and to be able to stand up when using them. Plus, adequate storage for long term occupation.

The shorter model would park more easily and use less fuel, but I made that trade-off. This was just the beginning of the kinds of compromises that this project would typify. I had new windows put into the cargo door and the space opposite, behind the driver which included a smaller awning window with screens. I also had smaller windows that slide open installed in the back panels. I sourced a fresh water tank and ones for both grey water and black water and had them installed. And I had plenty of time to design and redesign.

I had this project in mind for some time and for research, and I had visited RV dealerships, both here and in Europe and also asked to inspect the interiors of other RVs that I found myself camping beside. I went to a very large RV show in Dusseldorf, Germany, which was very worthwhile. There are, by now, plenty of RVs built commercially using Sprinters as a starting point.

Many of these just use the cab and chassis, building a new box behind. The principal benefit of this approach is to be able to orient the bed across the van, instead of along its length, saving quite a bit of space. But this gets back to a bigger and heavier unit and I wanted to avoid that.

The internet also made me aware of the fact that my ambitions were not unique. Others had been doing DIY conversions and in fact, there was now a whole industry supporting this interest. Many of these are intended for shorter time usage, supporting other outdoor activities like biking and their owners are typically not yet retired. So their designs differed but I’ve benefited for the network of suppliers and up-fitters that support this emerging market.

My design is a more conventional RV, with its bathroom and kitchen. I choose a design and construction approach that more closely resembles nautical work than is conventional, although I wasn’t fully aware of how this would complicate my project. The geometry of the van’s body is much more complex that it first appears to be. It tapers to the back, with greater taper at the top than the bottom and even the vertical portion is far from flat or straight. And as it turns out, the floor isn’t even flat, despite its appearance (and maybe its intention). So building has involved a lot of trial and error, with plenty of emphasis on the error.

But it’s coming along. I had hoped to have it roadworthy in time for next spring, but that’s not how it’s working out. The biggest surprise for me has been just how enthusiastic the young people have been that have seen what I’m doing. I had not expected, or intended, to be this cool.

Paul Epp is a professor emeritus at OCAD University in Toronto, Ont., and former chair of its Industrial Design department.