The Seduction of Design

The cover of the Fall issue of Perspective, the International Interior Design Association’s quarterly journal, is essentially a small poster. As such, its meaning has as much to do with the act of making it as with the resulting artifact. In order to make a great poster, one must be able to sense the policeman or soldier lurking around the corner as he applies his message of provocation to the wall. One must be able to feel the possibility of a parent or religious authority discovering his innermost desires as he creates a message of sensuality and seduction. He must feel the edge of the precipice… and step over. Great design, universally, is about the creation of that which seduces and provokes. The seduction of great design can be a soft whisper in your ear or the smoke-crackled voice of a blues singer—raw, coarse, and unapologetic in its call to your emotions. This illustration for the cover of Perspective is about that kind of raw seduction. The kind that leaves us saying, “I don’t need to understand exactly how or why this object was made, I only know that I want it. And I won’t settle for anything else.”

Cover for the Fall issue of “Perspective,” the journal of the International Interior Design Association

 © 2009, Legendre+Rutter