Biography
Dustin Jessen (born in 1986 in Hattingen, Germany) is a product designer and design theorist with a strong interest in the intersection of design and research. Before graduating from the Royal College of Art in London in 2014, he studied industrial design at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen and the Design Academy Eindhoven. He gained work experience through internships at Studio Eric Degenhardt in Cologne and at the London-based design office Industrial Facility, run by Kim Colin and Sam Hecht. Since 2014 he has been working both as independent designer and as research assistant at the Folkwang University of the Arts. As a guest researcher at the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy he is currently working on his doctoral thesis which is funded by the Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt). Dustin Jessen is the co-founder of Verlag der Dinge GmbH, a company that focuses on the development and distribution of sustainable everyday products. Furthermore, he runs Das Rezyklat – the first Precious Plastic Workspace in the Ruhr area – together with Steffen Hartwig.
Approach
“For me, design is best described as a process that turns a curious ‘Maybe?’ into a determined ‘Maybe!’ – which means that it takes curiosity and courage to try and create new things, but one shouldn't succumb to the misconception that you will actually solve a problem. There is always uncertainty about the effects a product will have in the world. This whole idea of the designer as problem solver seems rather outdated to me. As a designer you certainly develop solutions for a wide variety of things, but in the big picture, you should be aware of the long-term transience of your work, and that you always change far more than you seek to change; eventually yourself. The things we design, they design us back. Thus, I try to create things that are as open as possible, that encourage freedom of use and appropriation; opportunities rather than oppressions, possibilities rather than prescriptions. I hope that what I design is not the conclusion of design, but the beginning of further design by others.”
Credit: Dominik Antoni