Brand Maker: Gabriel Tan
Gabriel Tan’s demeanour is humble and thoughtful. His clothing is never loud, his manner of speech never bombastic. His personality reflects his oeuvre, where design is always centred on natural materials, simple functionality and nuance. There is a meditative grace to pieces like his Skyladder for Ariake — a timber shelf whose base curves like a dancer mid-poise — and his fruit containers for the 2018 Wallpaper* Handmade exhibition, where steam-bent wood profiles swirl unexpectedly to frame their quotidian contents.
Gabriel Tan never planned to go into design, but his initial career choice as a naval officer veered off course when he discovered design books. ‘It was as though I’d discovered a whole new world as I read about furniture design, product design, Italian design, Scandinavian design and so on,’ he says. After graduating from the National University of Singapore’s Industrial Design programme, Tan formed Outofstock Design in 2007 with three other designers based in Singapore, Barcelona and Buenos Aires. However, a desire to explore new ground led him to start his eponymous outfit in 2016.
‘With Gabriel Tan Studio I wanted to do more than design for international brands; I wanted to help start them. I’ve seen products that had the potential to be great, but failed because they weren’t paired with the right brand image, manufacturing quality or curation of complementary products,’ Tan reflects.
The first opportunity was Ariake, whose Japanese manufacturer owners Hirata Chair and Legnatec invited him to design a collection for Singaporean consumers. Tan convinced them of the need for a more global outlook, rebranding exercise and larger collection. A new brand was created, co-owned between the companies and with Tan as producer.
Ariake — meaning ‘daybreak’ in Japanese, and the name of the sea close to the factories — was indeed the new dawn needed. Tan engaged graphic design studio AnnerPerrin to steer Ariake’s branding and photographic direction, and designers Anderssen & Voll, Staffan Holm and Keiji Ashizawa to collaborate on the first collection, which has now grown to dozens of products retailed in more than 10 countries.
Tan knows how to assemble the right team and achieve harmony between product aesthetic and commerciality. He communicates with retailers regularly to discuss saleability, but notes that the brand cannot always comply with their requests. As Tan explains, this is because their customer expects to be surprised, and the brand’s unique characteristics include the use of finishes, such as Japanese sumi calligraphy ink made from candle soot and aizome (indigo), used to dye furniture. During a recent workshop, students from local technical colleges were able to watch the designers and craftsmen collaborate; Tan is hopeful that interest in Ariake can reverse the declining numbers of young workers joining factories.
Back home, Tan has done a similar job with Turn handles. He convinced Singaporean company Verotec to eschew the original equipment manufacturer route of offering its patent-pending, soft-rebound door handle to established brands. Instead, Tan crafted the branding and brief and invited an impressive team of architects and designers — including Snøhetta and Studio mk27 — to design a collection of handles that was officially launched at Stockholm Design Week earlier this year.
From the simple ambition of wanting to design products,Tan has gone on to do so much more. ‘I think that being a creative director, while still being an active product designer, enables me to see both sides of the equation. By balancing the interests of both designers and companies, the designers do more than is expected of them and the manufacturer reciprocates.’
Text / Jingmei Luo
Images / Courtesy of Gabriel Tan Studio
