Studio Job + Alessi’s Comtoise Clock
We speak with Job Smets about their collaboration with the iconic Italian design house
Best known for their unique creative approach that merges art and design, Studio Job‘s creations are oftentimes easily recognized. The two Flemish designers leading the studio (Job Smets and Nynke Tynagel) have a knack for using plenty of symbols—from the esoteric to the digital, and the classic to the obscure. During Milan Design Week we spoke with Smets about the industry as a whole, and the studio’s latest creation: the Comtoise Clock, designed for iconic Italian design house Alessi.
Studio Job (which is now made up of 20 people) is in the process of creating several products for Alessi, and the collaboration has been a long time coming. “I met Alberto Alessi for the first time, I think, in 2003 and then we didn’t have any contact for at least 10-15 years,” Smet tells us. “I thought [a collaboration] would never happen.” In the end, the timing has proven to be perfect, because a decade ago, the studio was leaning toward art more than design. But now, Smets says, there’s a balance that has aligned them with Alessi’s desires.
After gaining a little more understanding about Alessi’s production methods and catalogue, thanks to a visit at their plant and a brainstorming session with the team, Smets says Studio Job asked themselves, “‘What has never been done within Alessi?’ And tin—like tin that can be used for soup cans—never really had been adopted there.”
The result is the Comtoise, which is smothered in classic and modern-day symbolism—from hands forming a peace sign to arrows, diamonds, pills and bananas. The clock has an overall nostalgic visual language. “[We wanted] embossing and color, to make it become like an old cookie tin. Everyone has an old cookie tin, everyone still knows what it is,” Smets says. “For us, it was perfect because we’ve got the perfect combination between what Nynke does and what I do. The shape of the clock refers to the 18th century, something which my parents had hanging on the wall when I was young. That makes the design personal and that’s what we need these days,” Smets tells us.
Like so many industries, design has evolved a lot over the past decade. Smets is positive about all the changes, however, and predicts a kind of design renaissance. “We are living again in this sort of post-modern era, and also the identity of a designer becomes more and more important in the way that they develop personal products instead of modernist products… The fields are overlapping a little bit and this is really great. If you look at our office, we work in art, we work in design, we work in fashion and music and architecture, graphic design, 3D design, product development and corporate identities.” In many ways, the Comtoise Clock represents an intersection between art and design, and again, the past and present of both.
Images courtesy of Studio Job
