Most designers work up to a peak. They do some great stuff, and then it's just junk.

I want people to love to sit in my chairs. You gotta want the people to buy it because they love it.

Most industrial designers do a bottle or a pen or a computer - things that go right past your eye. When you see a chair, it's almost like a person. It's this great big thing in front of you. It hits you more.

Every other piece of industrial design is a pot or a dish or something insignificant. But when you have a chair, it's like a sculpture of a person: it's alive. It's big. You can't miss it. It's a 'look at me!' item.

I do a lot of work on computers, but I am so practiced in drawing that I can draw it full size, and you can take the measurements off my drawings. It's like drafting, but it's a work of art - a really beautiful drawing.

A chair, it's like a sculpture. It starts as a thought and then becomes an idea, something I might think about for years. When the time is right, I express it on paper, usually as a simple line in space. Finally, it takes shape.

To keep the edge, you just keep doing something new. I'm not gonna say that working is easy, but while I'm doing it, I'm just a happy little moron - that's how my girlfriend describes me. The fact that nothing might happen with those things is not the point. The point is, I'm doing new things, and I have a good feeling in my soul.

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