Colin Nourie and Collective Ten

This week, I had a most pleasant Zoom meeting. It was an interview with Colin Nourie, the founder and main man at Collective Ten, an industrial design studio located in Cincinnati, Ohio.

After graduating from Ohio State with a degree in industrial design, Mr. Nourie landed a job in Chicago with an industrial design firm doing work primarily outside our industry. In an early indication that the kid had talent, one of his assignments was the design of a bottle for Owens Galderma facial soap, Cetaphil. His design is still being used after 27 years by the brand – a testament to design effectiveness.

Colin Nourie, Founder and Principal of Collective Ten.

Mr. Nourie has designed furniture, products and environments for some of our industrys best-known global brands – Steelcase, Herman Miller and Geiger, as well industrial design” products for global brands such as Proctor & Gamble and Abercrombie and Fitch, and even some retail furniture for Staples.

Archideas is a Chicago based multidisciplinary architectural practice with both industrial and interior designers on staff. Landing a job there several years after graduating would be for Mr. Nourie, the launch pad that great careers often need.

I started working with Steelcase in 1995 or 96 when Archideas was hired to assist with the development of Pathways,” said Nourie. “As a multidisciplinary practice Steelcase thought we were a good fit to work with them on the research and development of Pathways applications and portfolio, given its scale and complexity.

So, unlike many architects and industrial designers who design furniture, I didn’t start out designing a one-off object like a chair or a table, hoping to find a company that might produce it. My first experience in furniture design was working for Steelcase on Pathways, a hugely complex system, and I was extremely lucky because unlike those young designers starting from the bottom and working their way up, I was working on huge projects with big teams and big budgets – with engineers who had worked on the space shuttle and people who had been in material science for 30 years. The training I gained and the relationships I made during those years are fantastic.

Post & Beam is an architectural framework that allows users to configure a range of work environments from dedicated individual workspaces to shared group settings. Designed as an alternative to traditional panel-based open office systems, Post & Beam defines, delineates and activates spaces in the open office landscape with its refined architectural aesthetic, robust construction and flexible planning features. Design Team for Steelcase: Colin Nourie + David Gresham + James Ludwig + John Hamilton + Brett Kincaid + Karl Mueller. Launched 2004.

For a variety of reasons, I left Archideas and went out on my own in 2002. I moved back to Cincinnati where I had grown up, and started my own firm. I continued to work with Steelcase as a consultant but also did some outside work for others.

I designed some home office products for Staples and made a few other forays into merchandising retail, which is a different animal altogether.

After the Pathways launch, I was involved with the entirety of the design and development of Post and Beam, and I worked on what became almost a re-design of Steelcase Elective Elements. It comprises free-standing components equally at home in private offices or open plan. We wanted to address the growing level of collaboration and interpersonal interactions we were seeing among companies trying to increase innovation. People were emerging from cubicles and private workspaces, and we designed Elective Elements to support the move; it has been very successful.”

Elective Elements 6 is a freestanding office system designed to address the changing workspace requirements in today’s private office and open-plan environments. More collaboration, more interaction and a reduction in the time that individuals spend at their personal workspaces, have driven professional service companies to rethink how their workplace really matches the needs of their people and aspirations of their company. Design Team for Steelcase: Colin Nourie + Brett Kincaid + Amanda Buckley. Launched 2009.

 

Over the years Herman Miller had contacted me a few times to work with them, but I had always been working with Steelcase when they called, so I couldn’t do it. I dont know how a designer can with work with two companies at the same time that are competitive with one another; I would not do it! But after wed finished Elective Elements, they called a few years later and said they wanted me to work with the team developing Canvas. This was in January, and they wanted to launch at NeoCon in June so the crunch was on.

Subsequently, I worked with Geiger on its very first open plan system. Catalyst is a furniture-based system that spans application from private offices to open plan and earned Geiger its first Neocon Gold for casegoods. I think it succeeds really well in bridging the aesthetics and refinement of materials we normally associate with the private office with the reality that more and more professionals were moving into open plan scenarios.

Catalyst is a furniture-based system that equips open-plan and private-office vistas with equal ease. The same storage, work and privacy components comprise every Catalyst configuration, providing visual and functional continuity to the office landscape. The lines are minimal: the aesthetic is horizontal, lean and refined, yet the resulting environments are warm, personal and productive. Catalyst preserves the comfort and material standards of executive offices for those managers joining open-plan or collaborative settings. A new vocabulary of furniture for the professions, Catalyst places a premium on the individual and the contributions they make to the enterprise. Design Team for Geiger: Colin Nourie + Jay Chapman + John Leach + Philip Wong. Launched 2012.

I was quite surprised when Herman Miller asked me to design a new casework program for Healthcare. I told them I didn’t know anything about healthcare, but they persisted and I designed Mora – a modular storage system that is flexible with a contemporary visual – and based on Herman Millers productive capability, well-priced compared to the custom casegoods often specified for the Healthcare environment.

Not all my experience is with big companies in the office furniture industry like Steelcase and Herman Miller. In the last several years I’ve been working with many smaller companies in North America and Europe.

Mora is a healthcare casework solution that’s purposefully designed to clear the clutter from surfaces and give more time for caregivers to enhance relationships with patients. Its elegant aesthetic works hard too, seamlessly blending with many healthcare furnishings and environments through its broad range of choices. This modular storage gives caregivers quick access to what’s important and conceals less-used items. That means people can spend more time focusing on patients and less time finding what they need. For Herman Miller Healthcare. Launched 2017.

 “It seems like a lot of the projects I’ve worked on recently have been the firsts for the company. Catalyst was the first open plan system at Geiger, and Im currently working on a fully upholstered outdoor lounge collection that is a first for that company.”

It’s different from working with a big company. My role seems to take on more aspects of creative direction for the whole company. But its not like I come in and dictate a process; it happens organically as work on a project moves along and were discussing, for example, aspects of how the new product will fit into their ongoing business. Then, they decide that the conclusions we’ve come to will be the future direction of the company. They say, This is where were going in the future,’ and I find that really rewarding.”

The 356 Outdoor Collection was inspired by the long, low design of the Porsche 356 Speedster. Riding low to the ground, built of beautifully seamless surfaces, balanced with a spartan interior, driving the 356 with the rag top down brings a sense of ease and lightness which are the feelings Nourie wanted to elicit for users lying poolside on the chaise. Its design is machined from aluminum and with a full wrap of Batyline outdoor fabric to withstand the rigors of outdoor use. Created for the contract hospitality and high-end residential markets
the collection comprises a poolside chaise and side table. For Danao Living. Launched 2019

I asked Colin about the size and location of his studio. He said, I intentionally keep it small. I currently have few associates, and thats about as big as I want to get. I love designing, and no matter what you intend, as you get bigger you have other things to manage that interfere with the creative part of industrial design.

Inspired by the open-air architecture of the Big Island, the Nani Outdoor Collection takes its name from the Hawaiian word for beautiful. Nani’s soft sculpted geometry creates an airy minimalist structure where one sits more within the profile of the chair than upon it. Handcrafted from beautifully resilient Indonesian Teak, Nani’s comfort is derived from a curved backrest that naturally supports you as your body moves and from its soft contoured seat. The Nani Outdoor Collection is composed of a dining chair dining table, and a bar height table with companion bar stool. For Danao Living . Launched 2016.

We will soon be moving into a new studio space in the historic Over-The-Rhine neighborhood of downtown Cincinnati. We’d be in it already, but for COVID-19 delays with the construction. Our business has been good and other than the difficulty of not being able to travel and pretty constant Zoom meetings, we fortunately havent suffered significantly from the slowdown in economic activity.”

Inda is an outdoor dining collection whose soft contoured seat and back provide incredible comfort for a long meal. Its tightly tailored form, where surfaces blend seamless into each other, creates a refined and considered look for any outdoor space. Handcrafted from beautifully resilient Indonesian Teak, the Inda Collection is composed of a sled base dining chair and a companion sled base bar stool. For Danao Living. Launched 2016