David Stark

What other designers inspire you? I tend to look to the world of fine art for my inspiration. Of course, I love all of design as well, but when in my head, my design work is more akin to art making. Now, of course, I know it is technically 'design' because I am making it for someone, answering design problems along the way, but the distinction is that I am not decorating the room. Rather, I am filling it with art that people interact with. It comes alive when the people enter the space. To that end, I think a lot about various artists, from painters to installation artists, and I don’t think about their work in terms of personal taste but whether it works really, really well within its own parameters -- Yayoi Kusama, Yves Klein, Tom Friedman, Matisse, Sol Lewitt, Ellsworth Kelly, Vik Muniz, Keith Haring, Les Lalanne, my list goes on and on. I am pretty voracious in my art appetite. [David Stark designs the National Design Awards space via] What makes a room special? Is it a piece or the colors? Everything? Most often for me, the space is magical when it is unlike anything I have ever seen before, made out of materials that are unexpected, conceptually tied to what an evening is about, and there are layers of meaning built into the décor. Recently, we planned and designed the U.S. State Department’s 50th Anniversary Gala of its Art In Embassies program at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. and that event remains very special to me. Looking at basic geometric shapes, the building blocks of all design and art making, we created a series of interactive, wild installations out of donated materials from companies like Benjamin Moore, Crayola, and Post-it -- a 20 foot tall viewing platform made from thousands of Post-it note pads and a 16 foot tall pyramid made from a millions crayons, for instance.
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