Transcribed with Otter.ai
Guest Karim Rashid
Unknown Speaker 0:02
Hey. Hey everyone. Welcome to unique ways with Thomas Girard and audio podcast got a very special guest on today, and I’ll describe him briefly. He’s one of the most prolific designers of his generation. He has over 4000 designs in production, over 300 awards, and he’s working in over 40 countries, which attests to his legend of design. Please join me in welcoming and celebrating. Kareem Rasheed, welcome. Hi, Thomas. Thanks for inviting me and thanks for the nice introduction. Are you ready for 20 questions? I’m I’m always ready for 20 questions. So fire away, by the way, I didn’t read the questions, even though you sent them to me. I’d much prefer to be spontaneous. So great question one, tell me a little bit more about yourself. What do you do?
Unknown Speaker 0:50
I’m a designer,
Unknown Speaker 0:53
I guess, in a sense, the broadest or pluralist way possible, because I studied industrial design, product design, but I do everything from micro to macro. So I design small objects like watches or mobile phones or televisions to furnishings to interiors to buildings
Unknown Speaker 1:16
to products on work. So yeah. So no boundaries, really, but I shape when I say design, I think what design does is sort of shapes.
Unknown Speaker 1:27
Shapes culture really
Unknown Speaker 1:30
great. And just a quick note for the audience, if you guys are interested in more tangential episodes, please check out our recent episode with Yves Behar. That was a great episode. So question two, what’s a key piece of knowledge that makes you different?
Unknown Speaker 1:44
Well, I think, I think what makes me different is that I strive for originality. And it started as a child. I had this sort of issues when I was five or six that I felt quite different than others, even though we’re all completely different from each other. And so I always had this drive to sort of not conform, and to see what I’m capable of in the sense of an original contribution. So, and I’m still obsessed with originality, and it’s it’s a very difficult thing to do in the design profession.
Unknown Speaker 2:17
Great. Moving on to question three here. Why this? Of all things? Why do you do what you do?
Unknown Speaker 2:25
You know, I was, I was brought up in a home with a father who’s a painter and a set designer for film and television. In fact, he even was set designer for CBC for many years and and our home was full of everything, from his paintings to he designed the furniture in the home, and there was this sort of perpetual creativity going on in the home. So we had a coffee table with about 100 books on it, and it was everybody from you can imagine, from John courage or Pierre Cardin all the way to the Corbusier or Mahalia or Picasso onward. So as a very young child, I was exposed to all that and
Unknown Speaker 3:04
and I started drawing, sort of non stop since I was probably two or so. And I even had a sort of an epiphany at some point when I was about seven that I decided I would design things so, and that was it. So I never, I never really thought about doing anything else, actually.
Unknown Speaker 3:28
So I’m sort of, in a way, fortunate that way. That’s where my passion lies. And I never really had to sort of question
Unknown Speaker 3:36
my profession.
Unknown Speaker 3:39
Great. Some people struggle with number four. But the question is, what does your future
Unknown Speaker 3:44
was? That was, what does your what does your future look like? Yeah, you know, well, my future is probably going to be a continuum of what I’ve done up to date. I’ve been designing about 40 years now,
Unknown Speaker 3:57
so I will just keep going. It’s definitely not retirement. I actually don’t even believe in the notion of retirement, but I think my future is that now, because of technology and the way the world is changing, sort of overnight,
Unknown Speaker 4:13
especially in the design profession that I think I’m going to I’m becoming more of a sort of cultural editor, if that makes sense, than a designer and and my future sort of lies in that I really want to disseminate
Unknown Speaker 4:29
my knowledge and and passion really, in other words, encourage creative people to sort of really think in an original way, and to really start to make and shape change in the world. So I think I need to be my future is to be more proactive.
Unknown Speaker 4:51
Wait, that segues nicely into number five, which is what we say is unique to this show. The question is, let’s talk about location. How does.
Unknown Speaker 5:00
The notion of place play into what you do.
Unknown Speaker 5:03
You know place at one time for all creatives, like, if you go back to the turn of the century in Vienna, you know it was or even in the 1800s every musician had to go to Vienna, for example.
Unknown Speaker 5:16
And not just because Mozart was there, but because it was the center of the world, actually, for classical music and and then, in turn, there was a time when everybody had to run to Dresden, Germany and go study at the Bauhaus and work bond. And Bauhaus in Germany were really at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution. And it goes on this way, right? There’s always a place to go. My father immediately went, in the 50s from Cairo to Paris because he was a painter, and every painter went to Paris, you know, and and that period was a phenomenon, let’s say for for fine art. So we always had to cut place meant to go where you can excel, let’s say in what you want to do, or in your profession or in your passion. But place doesn’t mean that anymore, right? But now you can be anywhere, exist in any part of the world, and be contributing and do something that really, you know, touches people’s lives out there. So anyway, it reminds me of
Unknown Speaker 6:16
what was his name back his first record he did was two turntables and a microphone, and it was considered the first piece of music ever done strictly on a laptop. And we’re talking about, I think, late 80s or early 90s, early 90s and and in a very small town in America, nobody you know, he inevitably to be a musician. At one point, you would have had to gone somewhere. He didn’t need to go anywhere. He produced something in his basement. So technology has afforded us to sort of exist in an omnipresent way anywhere in the world. It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing. So in that regard, place is sort of over. I always say, you know, it’s and it’s even like the notion of, when you say, oh, something’s made in Italy versus made in China, or made in, you know, in Vietnam or made. It doesn’t matter where something’s made. If something is well done, the quality is there and it’s beautiful. We consume it. We use it. It gives us, hopefully, it contributes to our world. So place is over. Basically, I think we’re all becoming somewhat nomadic. And my personal thing is, is that I’ve traveled so much in the last 30 years that even though I live in New York, I A lot of times spend more time out of the United States per year than I am in the in the country, meaning that I’m I don’t really see New York as my home. And I gravitated and went to New York for the same reason I talked about earlier I went there to think that I would get ahead in the design profession by going there, but that was back in 1993 today, it doesn’t really matter where you are,
Unknown Speaker 7:47
so place, place is sort of a non, non issue.
Unknown Speaker 7:52
Great. Six, if you had to start from the beginning, what advice would you give your former younger self?
Unknown Speaker 7:59
Oh, lots.
Unknown Speaker 8:02
Well. I don’t I don’t know if I say very personal things, but I mean Number one is I think about this a lot, because I eat well, and I really take care of myself and and I exercise almost every day for the last 30 years, like I barely missed a day onward, but I would have started that basically as a 10 year old, you know, I would have worn sunscreen, for example, which back in the 70s was almost unheard of.
Unknown Speaker 8:32
I probably would have never ate junk food in my life. But back then, you know, junk food was the thing to eat, right? It was also new and innovative, 60s, 70s, even into the age. So, I mean, health wise, I would have done things very, very differently to take care of myself even more than than I do now. And I think the second thing would be that, you know,
Unknown Speaker 8:53
we waste a lot of time in life and, and I question even now, for example, education, you know, for example, and I don’t really know if I really needed to do six years of university and onward. In other words, I fell into this sort of, let’s say, banal paradigm of the way we’re supposed to go through life. You know, you go to university, and then you meet someone, and you get married and onward. And I probably wouldn’t have followed any of those protocols and just be much freer, let’s say, and,
Unknown Speaker 9:28
and, yeah, be be freer. In other words, you know, it’s like Maslow’s triangle. I would have worried less about societal pressure, or less about accolades, or less about financial
Unknown Speaker 9:42
stability, etc. And I would have just gone, tried to go straight to the pinnacle, the top of the triangle, which is self actualization. And I feel like I’ve reached a kind of self actualization. But it took many, many, many years.
Unknown Speaker 9:57
Great, seven. What’s a day in your life?
Unknown Speaker 10:00
Like,
Unknown Speaker 10:01
every day is different, because I’m perpetually on the go and perpetually in different cities in the world. And I’m working right now in about, I guess, about 40 cities, 40 countries. I mean, so it’s, it’s always different, and the time zones are different. The only thing that self consistency, let’s say, is, is to try to get a really good seven and a half hours sleep eat a very good, healthy, organic little yogurt and breakfast. Coffee is my consistency all day. I love glass of good, organic red wine is consistency. And everything else is all over the place. And I draw every day. And
Unknown Speaker 10:41
what else do I work out every day, and I try to read every day and, and that’s about it. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 10:48
great. Um, ages around lifelong learning. It’s still a popular topic. How do you stay up to date?
Unknown Speaker 10:55
Yeah, okay, what did you say? Lifelong learning? Lifelong learning, that’s, that’s like a Vogue thing. Now, what does that mean? It just means constantly updating yourself. Oh, I see.
Unknown Speaker 11:10
So, okay, so that’s lifelong learning is a popular topic, he said.
Unknown Speaker 11:16
And how do I stay up to date? I guess, digitally, like, probably like everybody else. I read the news digitally. I I try to read informative stuff online constantly. I look at Tiktok, I glance Instagram, i i What else I don’t know things just to kind of understand a lot more about what you know. I think in information age, we have these, these, these opportunities to have so much information and knowledge. So I try to just take advantages and try to learn as much as I can perpetually.
Unknown Speaker 11:52
Okay, so nine is about tools. Do you use both digital and analog tools? Yes, I use both. Yeah, you know, I’m brought up analog, and
Unknown Speaker 12:03
so I still draw constantly. And I even for a long time, started trying drawing on iPads and on
Unknown Speaker 12:11
tablets, and I gave it up, and I went back to paper, and I draw on paper non stop every day. So I have analog in that regard, but in the digital way too, we use, and even my office, but I use, with my staff and people, a lot of 3d tools and a lot of very nice technology, actually, to design, yeah,
Unknown Speaker 12:35
great. Halfway, number 10, work life balance. How do you deal with it?
Unknown Speaker 12:40
Well, I think I answered it in a way. I don’t, I don’t see work as work.
Unknown Speaker 12:47
I see it as my life in a way. So I’m, let’s say, for forever working, in other words, passionate about what I do. But
Unknown Speaker 13:00
since I have no other choice, it’s like my destiny in a way. I don’t really see it as work.
Unknown Speaker 13:06
It’s like my mission, no. And so they are perpetually intertwined and and I what I like
Unknown Speaker 13:15
again, about the sort of age in which we live in, the digital age has broken down this notion of nine to five for a lot of people now, especially post COVID, where you can work at home. We know if you work at home, you don’t sit there and work for seven hours like you do in an office, or eight hours, right? So you’re you start working in the evening instead, or you work early in the morning, and then for an hour you go off to the gym or whatever you do meet a friend for coffee, etc. I think this sort of new way of living, the 24 hour clock has changed, where it’s sort of like, let me see if I can put some words this, sort of like, I’m on the planet now. This is what I’m involved in. These are the people I’m involved in. This is my contribution. This is what I do. This is what I enjoy. This is how I play. It all sort of just blurs,
Unknown Speaker 14:06
nice. I like that. So 11, if you weren’t doing what you do now, what might you be doing?
Unknown Speaker 14:13
Okay, that’s, that’s your toughest question so far.
Unknown Speaker 14:17
I don’t know. I get depressed and shoot myself.
Unknown Speaker 14:22
I
Unknown Speaker 14:26
don’t know what I would do. I mean, the only thing I really would have loved to have done in my life, but I have no talent at it, was be a musician.
Unknown Speaker 14:36
So when I was a teenager, I took up electric guitar for a year, and dropped it. I took up saxophone. I dropped it. I tried to, you know, have patience for piano. I wasn’t really there, so I don’t know if I don’t have talent or I’m just sort of
Unknown Speaker 14:51
don’t have the patience.
Unknown Speaker 14:54
So what I started doing, actually, when I was very young, 15 or so, I started DJing, and I.
Unknown Speaker 15:00
Club in Toronto. And it was sort of fortunate, because I was working in a record store. I was working in downtown Toronto at Sam the record band, which is law God and and I had access to so many records and so many promotional copies would come in. And so I, next thing, you know, I found myself DJing and and I’ve still until I’m in fact, I’ll be teaching in April in Milan, I still DJ until today as a sort of side hobby. Let’s say so, yeah. So maybe I don’t know, in another life I was a musician, or maybe my next life,
Unknown Speaker 15:34
what would you not like to do with your career?
Unknown Speaker 15:37
What would I not like to do.
Unknown Speaker 15:42
The first
Unknown Speaker 15:44
thing came to mind when you said that is, I wouldn’t like to design a gun, which I was offered to do three years ago. I turned it down. I decided that
Unknown Speaker 15:54
I want to make, make and do things physical, things in the world that give people
Unknown Speaker 16:01
sort of an elevated sense of pleasure that brings better emotion to somebody, better function, better comfort, all these things. So does
Unknown Speaker 16:11
that answer that question? I don’t know. Yeah, it does. So how about a favorite word, quote or sentence?
Unknown Speaker 16:20
My favorite,
Unknown Speaker 16:23
I have a lot of favorite words that I made up. Actually, one of them ended up in the dictionary, which is blobjt, which was the idea that an object that has no straight lines on it. But my favorite quote is to be, is to create that, I think that every one of us have the capacity of original thought and original creation. In other words, we’re all capable of it, and we should all be pursuing that. In other words, if we were all being ourselves and being original, we’d probably have far, far fewer issues and problems in the world.
Unknown Speaker 17:02
So I never liked this idea that there’s a notion of fitting in, that we all have to sort of fit into Some so called societal condition, that we’re all free. You know, we are all
Unknown Speaker 17:18
original beings. So to be is to create, and we’re all here to create, then every act we do is a form of creation.
Unknown Speaker 17:27
Great. How about the least favorite word, quote or sentence?
Unknown Speaker 17:34
It is what it is. I cannot stand that. When people say that,
Unknown Speaker 17:38
that’s giving in what if, when people are always projecting that way and thinking like, what if? What if? What if? Because that’s based on fear and that this holds you back
Unknown Speaker 17:50
and in, oh, yeah, what? I wanted to make a t shirt of this. It
Unknown Speaker 17:55
can’t get much better than this.
Unknown Speaker 17:59
Okay, I cannot stand when people say that, because it can always get better.
Unknown Speaker 18:04
Okay, you’re choosing one word to describe yourself. What word do you choose?
Unknown Speaker 18:19
Original?
Unknown Speaker 18:21
What keeps you up at night?
Unknown Speaker 18:28
Nothing, really, I sleep very well.
Unknown Speaker 18:32
What’s a dream you’re chasing? I
Unknown Speaker 18:49
to to touch the planet, to make one’s mark, original Mark
Unknown Speaker 18:56
while they’re here.
Unknown Speaker 18:59
What inspires you?
Unknown Speaker 19:02
Everything, everything inspires me. I’m I all day. All I have is creative thoughts about what I see around me, spaces, people, the way we interact, the problems in the world, all, all of it from good and bad, inspire me.
Unknown Speaker 19:19
Great. And last couple here, number 19, any advice you’d like to share?
Unknown Speaker 19:27
Yes, and this is probably a little more geared towards, let’s say my profession, but in general, for let’s say young designers, or people who are going to study or want to do design that
Unknown Speaker 19:43
don’t waste your time in a profession if you find that you’re not good at it.
Unknown Speaker 19:52
And basically the advice is, don’t waste your time. And with that said, I would even add today, there’s not even a reason to go to.
Unknown Speaker 20:00
Diversity anymore. Don’t waste your time. There’s no real need for it. You can educate yourself exceptionally well, and if even better, just digitally, online, or finding a right mentor or somebody that that you can learn from. So which actually goes back way back to one of the questions you asked me about if I did it all over again. So
Unknown Speaker 20:23
that would be my advice.
Unknown Speaker 20:26
Great. And finally, number 20, how can our listeners keep tabs on you, and what’s our call to action? What’s your call to what? Sorry, call to action.
Unknown Speaker 20:35
Okay,
Unknown Speaker 20:37
keep tabs on me. I’m probably most proactive on Instagram and anybody can direct message me that I answer everybody. I probably answer 50 people a day at least.
Unknown Speaker 20:50
So that would be the problem, yeah, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 20:55
I just want to add to that. I travel. I do, like for example, coming up between now and October, I got 16 lectures planned around the world. So if you’re here that I’m speaking somewhere, I would love for you to come and see me.
Unknown Speaker 21:11
Great. Well, thanks so much for joining. I mean, real, true privilege to have you on the show. Really kind of remarkable advice. Thank you so much, Thomas. Thanks a lot for inviting me. Okay. Bye.
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