初めて一緒に仕事をするクライアントだったので、全アイテムをボードに貼って商品ラインナップを確認するところから作業を始めました。びっくりしたのは国内の競合他社も含め、この業界の商品デザインがバブル後ほとんど変わっていないことでした。長く販売する商品であることも考え「今からの柔らかさ」という言葉を中心にデザインをすすめました。曲線を多用すると空間的制約がきつくなるので手がかかりましたが(シンプルに見えますが、3次曲面と複合Rの嵐のような構成です)、向こう20年くらいの時代に合う製品ができたと思います。故、内田繁さん以来の外部デザイナーの起用ということで、身の引き締まる思いで臨んだプロジェクトでした。
Since this was our first time working together, we started by putting all of their products up on a board and see the lineup. We were surprised to learn that the product designs of the industry, including those of their rival companies, have changed little since the end of the bubble economy. With the idea of creating products which will be available for a long time, we went about designing them under the concept of “tenderness from now on”. The spatial restrictions that came with using a lot of curved surfaces were not easy to deal with (the designs look simple but it’s full of 3-dimensional curved surfaces and combined curves) but we believe we came up with designs that would withstand the test of time for the next twenty years. We were honored and thrilled to be the first non-staff designer working with Relaince since the late Shigeru Uchida.