Theo Williams on the business of design

For me, design is about beautiful engineering, and, apart from the aesthetics, it all comes back to the process. I design a product for the way it’s going to be made and I build a relationship with the people who make it.

I first came across the iconic Juicy Salif lemon squeezer designed by Philippe Starck for Italian design company Alessi in a shop window in Manchester while I was studying in the early 1990s. This was a game-changer, as the design of the lemon squeezer went against everything I was taught in college – it was defined by expression and form, rather than function. I decided I wanted to go where people thought about design in this way, so I packed a bag and got on a plane to Milan to show Alberto Alessi my portfolio.

What I found particularly inspiring about Alessi was the way architects, designers and manufacturers were incorporated within the structure of the company. Throughout the design process, the designers engaged with manufacturers and developed their strategy together. This meant they produced designs that echoed the company’s capabilities in both vision and production.

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Alessi briefed me to design the Honey Pot when I was just 25, and although it was launched 20 years ago, it’s still on sale today. The beehive-shaped jar I came up with may seem obvious, but I find very obvious things interesting, and when something’s not obvious it bothers me.

Throughout my career, I’ve crossed many boundaries between the different design disciplines, working on product and furniture alongside print, packaging, retail and even brand development for a broad spectrum of international brands. I’ve received plenty of offers to design for big retailers, but I knew I wouldn’t be working directly with the manufacturers – I’d be passing drawings up and down, and that’s not what I went into the design industry to do. Many brands don’t have their own factories any more, and most manufacturing is done in China and the Far East now.

This lack of connection is what prompted me to found my own company, Theo Williams. I want to incite new and better ways of thinking about design, so makers, manufacturers, buyers and retailers can better realise their goals. For example, many manufacturers don’t have a route to market, so I launched my own company, Another Brand, as a simple collaboration in which designer and manufacturer work directly as partners to create a business.

I spend a lot of time looking at the production methods, machines and skills of manufacturers so I can maximise designs to incorporate their know-how. This means that we can create high-quality products at the right price, adhering to the manufacturers’ needs as much as our own.

The first collection we created was a furniture range called Cubo, and we launched the Tavolini range, a collection of small tables in wood, glass, fabric and metal, at the London Design Festival in 2015.

Working closely with manufacturers, we started to see opportunities to challenge the conventional construction of a product. In particular, we looked at the amount of material that gets wasted as off-cuts when preparing wood for the Cubo mosaic table. We questioned how we could use the surplus material and began searching for a method to create panels of mosaic for the table top, eventually deciding on ceramic grout as a finish.

I like to recognise an opportunity to improve something. Every time I use or make an object, I look at how I can make it better.

THEO WILLIAMS progressed from designing products for brands including Alessi and Prada to head of design for John Lewis Home via five years as creative director of Habitat. He is now creative director of the company that bears his name; theowilliams.com