I agree. karim Rashid, though born in Cairo spent mosty of his formative years, and was educated in canada. he is therefore easily the most weel known canadian designer. I’d have to put scott laughton a very distant second.
Scot is nowhere even remotely close to second place. I’m not sure how you could make a claim like that. If you read anything other than Wallpaper or Azure, you’ll see what I mean.
While Manu obviously has an infamous reputation, nobody can deny that he’s done more than any other Canadian designer for the world of Design. He’s certainly not a famous designer (you won’t see him in many magazines), he is a very, very famous lecturer, speaker and organizer of design internationally. If you haven’t heard of the Humane Village, or his concept of ToolToys, you need to do more research.
On the other hand, Scot makes pretty chairs. Not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but it very obviously pales in comparison to the achievements of many other Canadian designers, including Rashid, who hasn’t contributed much of anything himself.
The “real” world exists outside of shiny magazines, and the real world needs design too.
Hey Chief,
The poll is regarding who is the most famous designer, not who is the best or who has contributed most the “real world.” In this sense magazines do count because it is magazines and other media that spread awareness of someone’s work. No one is necessarily claiming rashid to be the best, but anyone who says he’s not the best known is simply wrong.
Keith Muller, Vello Hubel, Hellen Kerr, Claud Gidman, Douglas Coupland, Jonathan Crinion, Miles Keller, Roger Ball, Howard Suisa, Carry Dejunge and my big toe on my left foot?
Chief you really gotta get out of OCA more. Manu is a legend in his own mind. Its incredible the cult he cultivates around himself at OCA. To say that he has done more for design than any other Canadian designer is a completely rediculous assertion. Ring Ball really hasnt taken the world like we all predicted it would and Tool toys is hardly on every designer’s must read list. This is a foolish topic anyway. The Golden years of Canadian design have come and gone with the retiring or passing of Gentlemen such as Jan Kuypers, Claude Gidman and Willem Gilles .
I guess it was more of a brass age. But nonetheless an age where designers smoked pipes and words like “all europe is wearing white because of me” never passed their lips.
I’ll give you that one - there sure doesn’t seem to be a lot of important canadian ID going on right now. More precisely, we don’t seem to be playing on the same level as the US, and haven’t been for a long time.
I thought of another famous canadian IDer. Gad Shanaan. His firm must be the biggest consultancy in Canada. Of course, with a satellite office in San Diego, do we want to count them?