Tom Jarvis has won the RCA Conran Award for 2011. An MA graduate of the Royal College of Art’s prestigious Design Products programme, he is something of an anomaly in the neat, considered world of product design, and is not afraid to challenge design conventions.

His winning project, Tools To Service An Orchestra, goes on display from today at the Kensington RCA campus in their annual graduate summer show. Comprised of a series of stunningly intricate yet straight-forward tools to aid the dismantling of jammed trombones and the like: “really this project is about empowering musicians to repair their own instruments, without being reliant on a repair service, which are often very expensive and require a lot of time,” he says.

We caught up with the young man who is set to change the course of product innovation in years to come, and attempted to clarify just why art and design are mutually exclusive concepts.

“Far too often we see redesign stated as design,” Jarvis says, heatedly animated. “I think most of the Milan furniture fair is rubbish. And there’s a huge amount of hype for all the wrong reasons, created around these really quite boring fashion accessories… There’s too much money being spent on bad furniture.”

Jarvis is not backward in coming forward and giving his revolutionary ideas to you straight. With his own work being heralded as the finest thing to emerge from the college this year, you can’t help but listen to him. He is enthusiastic about his peer group, and truly believes that together, they can revolutionise the way things have been done since the post-industrial age. “There will be a shift, a kind of reaction to the very mainstream design which will be a slightly more humble, responsible approach… I think [we are] being made sensitive to how objects are going to be used and what they mean to their users,” he says.

Despite an artistic background – a 1st class degree in sculpture no less – the scientific clarity of product design seems to hold him as captive as any surrealist nut would be when faced with a wall full of Magrite. “There is beauty in function, I wouldn’t claim that there isn’t, and more often than not they’re quite pleasurable objects to be around, but the way it looks is purely down to how it works, I find that some of the most beautiful materials are some of the most functional materials,” he says.

Jarvis admits the artistic and design approaches to problem solving are completely different. “The way an artist thinks and the way an industrial designer thinks are total opposites,” he says. “I think when design starts becoming creative it becomes very conceited, very personal and very closed off, I mean we wouldn’t do any research really if we wanted to become creative, a creative sort of implies that you’re selfish, whereas design tends to mean you’re bringing an object to the world and working out how it’s going to fit with the largest group of people.”

Alongside the main collection Jarvis also manufactured a large, inflatable double-bass case which might as well be printed with pound signs it’s that marketable. Of the comparisons between the two concepts, he says “They kind of treat problem solving in very different ways. I think the base case has commercial legs, whereas the other one is maybe slightly more interesting as a statement, demonstrating how you solve various un-tackled problems… I mean the tools I’ve developed are obviously very niche and kind of solve the problem in a way that you’d expect to solve a problem if you’re designing for disability.”

Undoubtedly all-consumed by his work, Tom spares little thought for external influences. “I don’t get bogged down by what other people are doing so much.”

In fact, the simplicity in which he describes such complex processes possesses an almost poetic element.”I would like to think that I only really do things which are necessary, I’d like to think that every curve that I draw is only there because it has to be, just in the way that there are numerous quotes that say you’re only finished with a design when there’s nothing else you can take away. I’d like to create solutions not problems.”

Tom Jarvis is just taking his first steps towards the design success that is surely awaiting him, but first, he has to make up his mind about what to do. “Not everyone sees the world in the same way and to be a good designer you have to see it in a very particular way, both micro and macro… and on top of that you have to be, I think quite a decisive person, the whole design process is a series of decisions… I think the next two weeks will say a lot, to a lot of people, I think we’re all holding back from making any concrete plans, at least until we find out what’s going to happen.”

One thing’s for sure, whatever options are discussed, schemes hatched or ventures undertaken in the next few years, you may today be reading of a future James Dyson, and we certainly need more of them.

- Cressida Meale

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Tags: aRT, conran award 2011, tom jarvis

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