Up close and personal with Rafael Morgan

“If you really want to create new things, you must search for inspiration where nobody else is looking” – Rafael Morgan.

Yes, Italy has coined exquisite, out-of-box home design to be most often labelled as ‘Italian design’. However, Brazillian designers are seriously are seriously making waves.

Rafael is known for being an industrial and product designer, although he sees himself as more than just. He is Founder and CEO of Rafael Morgan Studio. He received a lot of recognition with a design that was inspired by a tap dripping of water, something we see all see every day.

“Being creative is seeing the same thing as everybody but thinking of something different,” Albert Einstein. Rafael proved this true with the Light Drop wall lamp. The tap is a dimmer. The more you twist the more light you get – explains Morgan on Behance.

This design won the Third Prize in the Bright LED international design competition held by design boom.

Laminated light displaying the likeness of a drop of water. (Image by: Rafael Morgan Studio)

Morgan’s success as a designer has led to great exposure of his designs on the web, but not so much of the man behind the designs. For this reason, we get up close and personal.

Front view of the design. (Image by: Rafael Morgan Studio) When did you start designing? Unofficially, I think I have always enjoyed designing things. Maybe I wasn't designing per se when I was a kid, but I was creating new and meaningful things out of the sum of old meaningless things. This is the foundation of the design process. The difference is that, nowadays, I join fragments of the most varied kinds of ideas and concepts in order to form new things.

However, generally, things didn't really change. I still collect immaterial, informational and subjective things and turn them into new things. Eventually, everything I've ever created will become meaningless junk and creative people will give it new meanings by incorporating its fragments into totally new concepts. That's just how things work, and it's fascinating. Who was your mentor and/or inspiration? In the design world? Nobody, really. I take inspiration from a lot of different sources like music, philosophy, poetry, paintings, but mostly from ordinary everyday things. If you really want to create new things, you must search for inspiration where nobody else is looking.

Hope Table: An inspirational piece made to young designers to never give up designing. (Image courtersy: Rafael Morgan Studio)

What are your greatest achievements in product design? To be totally honest, I don't believe I have achieved anything substantial yet. I really have a great time whenever I'm creating something, though, and I really hope to be able to create something significant eventually. Designers must be careful: There's a very thin line between becoming an overvalued trash maker and a genuine creator of new and meaningful things. I, for one, have been trying to objectively define the exact location and thickness of this line for a long long time, without any success so far. Who knows, maybe I'm just over thinking it, or maybe not. What motivates you to keep at it? Money. No, just kidding. Designing is exhaustive, at least for those who take it seriously, and it takes a very long time to collect the rewards. What really motivates me is the desire to give something back to this incredible world, from which I have taken so much from.

Guru: energy stabiliser. Morgan’s design of a very neat surge protector to keep your office and home looking porsche. (Image courtesy: Rafael Morgan Studio)

Which of your designs would you say best defines the phrase, ‘a better world through creativity’? Again, being brutally honest, none yet. All my designs so far are mostly fruit of conceptual experimentalism. If one wants to be great at something, he must practice a lot, and that's what my designs are for me, mere sketches. Hopefully I'll be able to really absorb this whole experience and produce a true master piece which will be the answer to this very question. Where do you see the Rafael Morgan brand in the next 5 to 10 years? I see myself as an idea designer in the future, not just a product designer. That's what I really am, in my essence. People will call me to their companies and say "Rafael, we need you to find genuinely creative and original solutions to this or that." I love having ideas. That's my passion. I'm absolutely confident that creativity is my thing, independently of how it's materialized by the end of the process.