Lectio by Valentina Bertazzoni at the design school in Florence
FLORENCE – The vision of product design of an over one hundred year old company, with a very technical and technological production heart, accustomed to communicating with global commercial centers, brought to one of the training centers of excellence for the designers of tomorrow, the Isia Designer in Florence . This is what he shared with a large audience of passionate and curious young people […]
FLORENCE – The vision of product design of an over one hundred year old company, with a very technical and technological production heart, accustomed to communicating with global commercial centers, brought to one of the training centers of excellence of tomorrow’s designers, the Isia Designer of Florence. This is what Valentina Bertazzoni, Style and Communication director of the company of the same name, an international leader in premium kitchen appliances, of which she represents the sixth generation, shared with a large audience of passionate and curious young people. >. His approach to design is original, expressed in the concrete context of a company that can tell a century and a half of history.
“I provided, perhaps unexpectedly, a lot of contextual information, because tothink of a product the design must first of all know the client and the dimension in which it operates“, explains the entrepreneur who, underlines , wanted to deliver three indispensable keys to approach the production world effectively. “To make a good product the designer must first ask himself: what, how and why. That is – he explains – what is the object he is called to be interested in; how to approach it, drawing on a wealth of technical, technological, procurement and commercial knowledge. And then, and perhaps first of all, he must ask himself the reasons why a product must be made in a certain way rather than another”. For Bertazzoni these are fundamental aspects that allow “not to remain in love with oneself or one’s own idea and to be able to operate more easily and with greater satisfaction in the encounter between creativity and production”.
Bertazzoni’s history, vision and type of product have made it possible to concretely support these arguments by entering the heart of a company loved throughout much of the world for its quality, easily recognizable products. “For a company with a long history like ours – he summarizes – continuity of style is fundamental and therefore calls for an evolutionary design, which draws creatively from the archives; engineering products remain the cornerstone, they must be characterized by a style that enhances this very nature, together with their functionality”.
Last but not least, the reference to objects that remain in the kitchen for years and years, linked to a purchase that is an investment, rather than the response to an impulse. Their lines, therefore, cannot be subject to seasonal changes. A complexity, therefore, which fully responded to the objective of Isia Design, that is, to make young aspiring designers understand the complex world that revolves behind and around a design product, of which technology is only a part. A complexity that Bertazzoni gave an account of, describing the activity of the Style Center within the company of which he is director.
“The designer – he says – also takes on a role of mediation between very different needs which are compared precisely in this Center. Those of the design, production of the product, the purchase of materials, the sale, the aesthetic and functional aspects. Finding a point of contact is certainly challenging, but it is also a very nice team effort”, concludes the entrepreneur.