20BACKSTORY:

LIGHTS, CAMERAS, AUGMENTED REALITY!

This year’s Memphis-inspired product lines made “play” a key

part of the launch strategy. This behind the scenes look at

the making of the digital campaign (a carpet industry first) shows

you how a product based in design history became the

catalyst for a futuristic advertising campaign.

18

08

OA

KE

Y C

OLLE

CT

ION

:M

EM

PH

IS U

ND

ER

FO

OT

Oakey’s newest product line could be his boldest and

brightest vision yet. So why does he use words like “fun” and “play” to describe it? Seeing is believing.

© 2010 interface flor, llc. mission zero and the mission zero mark are trademarks of interface, inc.

A REAL PAGE TURNER

04A MEMPHIS POINT OF VIEw

Thirty years afterMemphis Design turned the world

upside down, it hasinspired a wholenew generation

of designers to play with color from the ground up.

LAUNCH ME AT AR.INTERFACEFLOR.COM

Real carpet becomes augmented reality—an industry first—when you hold

this new Memphis Pattern Library tile to your webcam on our AR site.

Get ready for the style (and dimensional) experience of your life.

OF

F O

IL:

TH

E F

OLIO

IN

TE

RV

IEw

Peter

Gre

ene t

alks

abo

ut su

stain

abili

ty’s e

lepha

nt in

the

room

(hin

t: it’

s OIL

) and

the c

ompa

ny’s

plan

to ge

t off

oil

entir

ely by

202

0. B

ON

US:

Hea

r abo

ut N

omkh

ubul

wane

, a

1.3-to

n ele

phan

t scu

lptu

re a

nd sy

mbo

l of e

co-re

spon

sibili

ty,

appe

arin

g with

Inter

face

FLO

R a

t Neo

Con.

2010AUGMENTEDREALITY(INDUSTRY PREMIER)

“Look out there, there is a new landscape…if you want to, you can take a walk there.”

—Ettore SottsassAPRIL 1994

IF THESE cEIlIngS cOUlD TAlK

PHOTOgRAPH BY FRAnçOIS HAlARD

MAkING ROOM FOR A MEMPHIS

POINT OF vIEw

THIRTY YEARS AFTER MEMPHIS DESIGN FIRST LIT UP MILAN, IT HAS INSPIRED A wHOLE NEw GENERATION OF DESIGNERS TO PLAY wITH COLOR

FROM THE GROUND UP. DIANNA EDwARDS LOOkS AT THE BOLD AS BRASS, RULE-BREAkING, FREEDOM-SEEkING, DESIGN MOvEMENT THAT BEGAN

wITH ETTORE SOTTSASS AND BOB DYLAN.

05

Interior by kelly wearstler, Inc. kelly wearstler is the founder of the Los Angeles-based architectural interior design firm kwID. Her eclectic and glamorous style evokes Memphis in its combination of materials, color, form, and finishes. Ms. wearstler is the author of three books: Modern Glamour; Domi-cilium Decoratus; and Hue.

OP

PO

SIT

E P

AG

E,

FAR

LE

FT: V

ersa

ce s

tack

ed s

tile

tto

in M

emph

is p

alet

te; S

titc

h fo

ldin

g ch

air

by A

dam

Goo

drum

in a

Mem

phis

pal

ette

. TH

IS P

AG

E,

TOP

RO

w,

LEFT

: Dia

ne V

on F

urst

enbe

rg h

andb

ag; S

otts

ass

obje

ct, c

irca

198

3; M

IDD

LE: E

lly

Jack

son

of L

a R

oux

on r

etro

Mem

phis

set

in c

onte

mpo

rary

fa

shio

ns b

y H

ouse

of

Hol

land

, UK

. Fro

m t

he B

ulle

tpro

of v

ideo

, 200

9. F

ashi

ons,

Hou

se o

f H

olla

nd, U

K. B

OTT

OM

LE

FT:

Sott

sass

sta

ndin

g lu

min

ere,

198

2; P

rous

t G

eom

etri

ca a

rmch

air,

1978

, rew

orke

d by

Cap

pell

lini

in a

cot

ton

fabr

ic b

y Al

essa

ndro

Men

dini

and

han

d-fi

nish

ed w

ith

untr

adit

iona

l fi

nish

es.

07

1979America is gray. Three Mile Island evokes nuclear night-mares. Oil spills pollute the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. Mortgage rates hit 15.25 percent and keep climb-ing. The country learns a new word – terrorism – courtesy of Iran. The collective conscious-ness is deadly serious.

1980Italy is beige. Milan, one of the world’s most visual cities, bows to the modernist dogma of the time: simple, plain, minimal. Beige minimalism rules. All this in this ancient city of the Romans; this city birthing Armani, versace, and Dolce & Gabbana. Ettore Sottsass has had enough. He is a great designer, already leg-end, a man known for vision throughout his career. Sottsass has had his fill of despair and the shapes and colors it has wreaked upon design. If you think this approach to a story about a design move-ment named for a Bob Dylan song overly dramatic, you are forgiven. How else to introduce a change so vital and alive that it continues to influence and enhance contemporary life today?

To bring vibrant color, wit, and total freedom of expression into design in 1980—when it was ruled by

“form equals function” dogma —took no small amount of passion and charisma. Even for a designer at the top of his game. Ettore Sottsass already had a solid body of work to his credit. His cherry red “valentine” typewriter for Olivetti had turned an

industrial machine into pop culture, foreshadowing Apple’s

“flavored” iMacs thirty years later. He had traveled India, Burma, Thailand, and Nepal learning vernacular textures, dyes, and techniques. His brief time as a pivotal member of Studio Alchimia in the mid-1970s had proved too intel-lectual—too much talk and too little design. He moved on.

The Memphis Movement began simply, with Sottsass assembling colleagues (all architects under thirty) to plan a furniture collection he’d been commissioned to do. Over many glasses of good Italian wine, the ques-tion arose: when the whole world is beige, is more beige the answer? More beige sofas, more eternally monochromatic carpets? wasn’t it the time to, as Barbara Radice put it,

“imagine other lives”?You know the answer.

The group chose its name—Memphis—because in the growing excitement, no one cared that Bob Dylan’s

“Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” played repeatedly that night. Ironically, the name had other appealing cultural con-notations. It was the ancient capital of Egypt and, of course, the birthplace of Elvis Presley. Cultural oxymorons perhaps, but then so was Memphis.

when they met again, the group shared hundreds of drawings for furniture and lighting, each wilder and more colorful than the next. They seemed to believe wholesale in Marlon Brando’s ‘wild One’ philosophy of rebellion:

“whaddya got?” whatever signaled “real design,” the

Memphis Group steered away from it, choosing instead mate-rials from celluloid to sheet metal; laminate and sparkle flake finishes; fluid, playful forms; and motifs from kitsch to pop art.

At the Salone del Mobile of Milan (the world’s most prestigious furniture fair), Memphis and its members were treated as rock stars. Thousands came from all over the world to see furnishings blazing with flashy colors, geo-metric and natural patterns, leopard-skin prints, neon tubes, spangles, and glitter.

Critical reaction was radically divided. Memphis was loved or hated, but rarely anything in between. Regardless, exhibitions were mounted in London, Los Angeles, Tokyo, San Francisco, New York, and again in Milan. America’s Michael Graves and other notables soon joined the collective, but Sottsass, disturbed by the media circus, soon departed.

“I am a designer and I want to design things,” he once wrote. He designed jewelry, ceramics, buildings, furniture, and more until his death in 2007.

2010we are back in Mobile again, with Memphis’ vivid colors and black and white optical patterns appearing in fashion, film, lighting, and on the streets all around us. (Foremost in InterfaceFLOR®’s new Memphis-inspired product line. See the interview with designer David Oakey on page 08.)

But there are many other examples: Nike’s new Memphis-style neon logo

treatment in the heart of New York City. England’s passion-for-fashion designer, Henry Holland (houseof-holland.co.uk) whose irrev-erent tees and street-smart prints won him Barney’s heart and London’s acclaim. Danish kitchenware company Bodum’s release, twenty-four years after its creation, of a Sottsass Memphis teakettle.

Even California-based kelly wearstler, the interior designer who stole the show on Bravo’s Top Design and furnishes some of California’s most glamorous hotels, has chosen Memphis “First” chairs for her home.

why? Because at its heart, Memphis style was, and is, about personal free-dom. It was decades ahead of the true Global village yet incorporated patterns and motifs and colors of many cultures. The Memphis foun-dation of black-and-white geo-metric and nature-inspired optical patterns provides a natural foundation for any décor to receive an injection of the whimsical, wonderful jolt of color.

And then there is the joy. There was so much sheer fun in the Memphis pieces from the past and the contemporary interpretations today.

Ettore Sottsass himself felt that human beings were connected, in a very real sense, with their surroundings. In Design Metaphors, he wrote,

“It may occur to someone working in design to produce objects...that serve to release creative energies. To suggest possibilities. To stimulate awareness. To bring people’s feet back onto the planet.”

OH MAMA, CAN THIS REALLY BE?

YOU DON’T HAvE TO OwN, OR EvEN

HAvE SEEN, A MEMPHIS DESIGN FOR IT TO AFFECT

YOU SOONER OR LATER. TRUE

TwENTY-EIGHT YEARS AGO AND TRUE TODAY. IN

SOME qUARTERS, MEMPHIS IS

CREDITED AS THE GENESIS FOR

THE wHOLE 1980S PERSONALITY. ALL

THAT ATTITUDE, DARING, NEON

GRAPHICS—EvEN MADONNA—HAD TO COME FROM

SOMEwHERE. wAS IT MEMPHIS?

06

to it. This Memphis-inspired product line represents David Oakey’s—and InterfaceFLOR’s—most singularly committed intersection of art and science to date. “what I want is to inspire people. To shake people up and say, ‘Let’s have fun again. Let’s be playful again.’ That’s an important part of the image I wanted to portray.” The line’s inspiration is, of course, the Memphis Movement led by Sottsass in 1980. while the world may be full of Memphis

inspiration today, in early 2008, that wasn’t the case. Like most market-driven d e s i g n e rs a n d a r t i s t s , David Oakey and his fash-ion analyst, Cindi Oakey, work a lmos t two y ears ahead of trend. So when Oakey and Oakey began their thinking, Memphis was not on the radar. But all of a sudden, says Oakey, the couple began seeing colors and styles that were reminiscent of Memphis popping up in the first place most fashion appears: the streets.

“we saw f lashes of i t in the clothes on the streets of New York,” says Oakey.

“In places l ike Topshop. Cindi would say, ‘Look

how bright this is,’ and I responded, ‘That’s Memphis, you know.’” (A Lon-don fashion authority since the mid-1960s, Topshop just recently opened its flagship store on Broadway in Soho.) Cindi Oakey remembered own-ing Memphis pieces in the 1980s but not realizing what they were. Sadly for her collector husband, those pieces are long gone. Memphis furnishings of any kind command high prices on the market today. Just check the price of a Sottsass Nilo vase from 1983 on Unicahome.com: around $1,073.

ART AND SOLE:

09

IN THE STUDIO wITH DAVID OAKEY

David Oakey’s newest canvas was under his feet when we met at his studio this winter. He was busy mixing the bold, colored stripes from Beale Street™ with the widest black and white strokes from Union Ave™ to study the effect. It reminded me of a Paul klee rug I’ve seen only once, in a design anthology. Oakey iscomfortable walking on beautiful things. He has designed every InterfaceFLOR product line since 1994, and his art (which the commercial carpet indus-try holds in high regard) is meant to be used. And, on occasion, abused.But this, his newest work, has special meaning even for Oakey. It is an homage of sorts to designer Ettore Sottsass, dead now some three years; celebrated still and probably for many years to come for the revlu-tionary design group and movement he led in Milan dur ing th e 1980s . Called “Memphis” after a Bob Dylan song, Sott-sass and his band of merry c o - c o n s p i ra t o rs b ro k e through a wall of utilitar-ian modernist design with willfully provocative pat-terns and color so bright i t was almost shocking. I take that back: it wAS shocking. Memphis elevated motifs and materials and color combinations that had been relegated to the design basement for decades. And in the process, designers themselves were liberated. “I look now at what Sottsass did then with Memphis, and I appreciate it so much,” says David Oakey. “He was sixty-two years old then; the ‘in’ designer in Milan, and he just completely shook things up. For me to tell his story just one more time is very important to me.” Oakey isn’t just retelling the Memphis story he is adding

08

PRODUCT: Doodle™ mixed with Memphis to Milan and Back™ Pattern Library

Revel in the Current State of Play

ALL PHOTOGRAPHY BY GEOF KERN

13

PRODUCT, LEFT: Memphis to Milan and Back™ Pattern Library mixed with Union Avenue™ RIGHT: Memphis to Milan and Back™ Pattern Library

12

OPTICAL ALLUSIONS

It’s Time to Think Inside the Box

PRODUCT: Union Avenue™ mixed with Beale Street™

15

CREATE MOVING IMAGES

Rock the Ground You walk On

14

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17

The

resu

ltin

g O

akey

Mem

phis

in

spir

ed p

rodu

ct li

nes a

re so

per

-fec

tly a

ttune

d to

the w

orld

s of a

rt

and

fash

ion

that

they

coul

d ha

ng

on th

e wal

ls a

t MoM

A. L

ovel

y th

ough

t, b

ut th

at is

not

wha

t th

ey a

re d

esig

ned

for.

They

are

des

igne

d fo

r joy

.

Abov

e all

else

, the

se a

re I

nter

face

FLO

R p

rodu

cts.

So w

hen

push

com

es to

sh

ove,

they

are

as m

uch

abou

t per

form

ance

as

they

are

abo

ut fa

shio

n.

Thes

e pro

duct

s sho

uld

beco

me t

he n

ew, n

ot-re

d ca

rpet

s of H

olly

woo

d.Th

ey sh

ould

dec

orat

e ho

tels

in S

an F

ran-

cisc

o or

Los

Ang

eles

, of

fice

bui

ldin

gs i

n N

ew Y

ork,

scho

ols i

n At

lant

a, re

stau

rant

s in

Chi

cago

, and

civi

c ce

nter

s in

Dal

las.

Th

e firs

t visu

al im

pact

MO

RE

MO

RE

MO

RE

DA

VID

01

09

05

02

1006

03

1107

04

1208

desi

gn a

low

pro

file t

o he

lp th

e pro

duct

be h

igh

per-

form

ance

. So

we g

et th

e tex

ture

into

the v

isua

l.”

Anot

her a

spec

t Oak

ey li

kes a

bout

this

new

pro

duct

lin

e is i

ts m

utab

ility

. All

Inte

rfac

eFLO

R st

yles

can

be

mix

ed a

nd m

atch

ed, t

rue,

but w

ith th

is li

ne, t

he p

lay-

fuln

ess o

f the

pro

duct

itse

lf se

ems t

o enc

oura

ge it

.“w

hen

I lo

ok a

t the

Car

lton

boo

kshe

lf [

Sott

sass

’ ic

on o

f the

Mem

phis

Mov

emen

t], i

t loo

ks li

ke ca

rpet

ti

le s

tack

ed u

p in

br

ight

, dif

fere

nt c

ol-

ors.

If I

coul

d un

fold

it

and

lay i

t on

the f

loor

, it

wou

ld be

like

mix

ing

solid

s and

text

ures

and

pa

ttern

s on

the f

loor

. It

just

scre

ams m

odul

ar

carp

et.”

The C

arl-

ton

book

shel

f do

es

evok

e mod

ular

carp

et.

And

just

$6,

000

can

buy

you

one

at f

ur-

nitu

rest

oreb

log.

com

. B

ut fo

r a

muc

h m

ore

reas

onab

le p

rice

, you

16

one

abso

rbs

abou

t th

ese p

rodu

cts i

s the

ir

colo

r. Th

e se

cond

is

text

ure.

The p

rodu

cts

are t

extu

ral—

ther

e are

sli

ght v

aria

tions

in th

e he

ight

of t

he fi

bers

—bu

t for

the m

ost p

art,

the

text

ural

look

is

an op

tical

illu

sion.

One

w

e ho

pe e

ven

Ett

ore

Sotts

ass w

ould

appl

aud.

Th

is i

llus

ion

is

achi

eved

with

the h

elp

of n

ew t

echn

olog

y de

velo

ped

spec

ifica

lly

by I

nter

face

FL

OR

. An

Inn

ovat

ion,

say

s D

avid

Oak

ey, t

hat g

ives

the c

ompa

ny th

e abi

lity

to

deliv

er sh

arp

text

ural

pat

tern

s but

still

mai

ntai

n a

low

pro

file i

n th

e tile

itse

lf.O

akey

like

s tha

t ill

usio

nary

asp

ect o

f the

pro

duct

s. “P

eopl

e lov

e tex

-tu

re b

ecau

se w

e all

wan

t to

touc

h an

d fe

el. B

ut w

e

can

live w

ith g

reat

art

th

at y

ou c

an r

eint

er-

pret

ever

yday

: Oak

ey’s

mas

terp

iece

s.“P

eo-

ple c

an ju

st p

lay w

ith

this

and

be a

s bol

d as

th

ey w

ant,”

says

Oak

ey.

“Tha

t’s a

noth

er th

ing

that

conn

ecte

d m

e with

th

e Mem

phis

styl

e. Yo

u ca

n ta

ke s

olid

col

ors

from

ano

ther

pro

duct

lin

e of t

extu

re, m

aybe

ad

d in

a l

ittl

e pa

t-te

rn, a

nd d

o it

rig

ht

on th

e flo

or. M

emph

is is

the w

hole

conc

ept o

f pl

ayin

g w

ith th

e pro

d-uc

ts a

nd se

eing

wha

t you

can

crea

te.”

“Pla

y” is

a

child

like w

ord,

but

wha

t it r

epre

sent

s her

e is n

ot.

Oak

ey a

nd In

terf

aceF

LOR

hav

e put

per

sona

l fre

edom

, cr

eativ

e ene

rgy,

and

the c

onst

ant s

timul

atio

n of

art

no

t jus

t with

in o

ur g

rasp

, but

als

o un

der o

ur fe

et.

1 . USE LESS ENERGY

“Using less” is a simple idea that has been part of our core busi-ness philosophy for 15 years. Since 1996, our total energy use in North America is down 38%. Just as important, today 44% of our total energy use comes from renewable sources. One example is our landfill gas project, which uses landfill gas instead of natural gas to power some of our LaGrange, GA, operations. 2. USE LESS MATERIAL

“Using less” is a principle that influences the design and manu-facturing of all our products—for the better. Since 1995, we’ve reduced the amount of nylon fiber in our carpet tile by 15% and improved its performance at the same time. Nylon is petroleum based so the less we use, the better. It will help us get off oil. 3. MAKE IT BEAUTIFUL; MAKE IT LAST

Beauty and performance are fundamental to us for practical reasons. It doesn’t matter how ‘green’ a carpet tile is unless its

style sensibility is relevant. Just as it wouldn’t prove comforting to know a product could be recycled if it needed to be replaced too soon. Making high-style, high-performance products that last isn’t just basic to sustainability. It’s basic to our business philosophy.

4. TURN BACKING INTO BACKING

Turning old products into new products is a critical step in our plan to get off oil. For thirteen years, we’ve been reclaiming and recycling old carpet backing into material we use to make new carpet backing. Our process for turning old backing into new backing (a product we call GlasBac®RE) increases our recycled content. This, in turn, reduces our dependence on oil and has allowed us to create a robust carpet reclamation and recycling program.

5. TURN FIBER INTO FIBER

working with recycled nylon has the potential to reduce global

warming effects by 36% when compared to traditional nylon. Since 1997 we’ve been recycling not just the nylon used in our products but those of our competitors as well—both types 6 and 6,6. This means we can provide clean, post-consumer raw material to create our Convert carpet tile designs as well as provide it to other industries. This is a major technological breakthrough not just for us, but also for the carpet industry as a whole.

OFF OIL: THE RIGHT THING TO DO

Regardless of the debates over peak oil, the discovery of new oil sources and extraction techniques, we know this much is true: The less dependent we become on oil as a resource, the more secure we are as a company and the more stable our prices. Ultimately, it protects the earth we live on not just today, but tomorrow.

TO LEARN MORE VISIT: www.INTERFACEFLORBLOG.COM

“THIS COMPANY MAkES DECISIONS AND COMMITMENTS BASED ON THE URGENCY

OF AN ISSUE—NOT ON HOw EASY wE THINk A GOAL wILL BE TO ACHIEvE. AND wE’RE

CONFIDENT wE CAN MATCH OUR ABILITIES TO OUR vISION.”

—Peter GreeneVICE PRESIDENT OF MARKETING, INTERFACEFLOR

“THE ELEPHANT, BOTH POwERFUL AND vULNERABLE, IS A POIGNANT METAPHOR FOR ALL NATURE. ITS REMARkABLE COLLECTIvE MEMORY REMINDS US OF HOw MUCH wE HAvE FORGOTTEN AND HAvE DISCONNECTED OURSELvES FROM OUR ORIGINS.”

—Andries BothaSCULPTOR AND FOUNDER, THE HUMAN ELEPHANT FOUNDATION

wHAT’S THE PLAN?

GETTING OFF OIL wON’T HAPPEN OvERNIGHT. BUT IT wILL HAPPEN. HERE ARE THE FIvE BIG STEPS INTERFACEFLOR HAS TAkEN SO FAR IN GOING OIL FREE:

we admire them because they are like us. No animal is more “human” emotionally than an elephant. They live a life span like ours; mature at a similar rate; live in families, and forge friendships that last years. They play, laugh, care for their young, and weep when death takes their loved ones. They have instincts, deep and mysterious, that guide their survival. Their memories, of course, are legend. They are sacred in some cultures and a wonder in all. And besides, they are beautiful. The most famous elephants in history: Airavata, the spotless white “ele

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Should the commercial and industrial worlds concede that oil is a permanent fixture in their products or processes? InterfaceFLOR thinks not. Even better, the company has a plan. Peter Greene, the company’s new vice President of marketing, shares the details. FOLIO: Since 1994, InterfaceFLOR and its parent company, Interface, Inc. have inspired not just its own industry, but the manufacturing world, to look for ways to break the cycle of take-make-waste systems.

PG: Yes. That’s now part of our DNA.

FOLIO: But even for a company like yours, making a com-mitment to get off oil completely is a tremendous thing. Much larger than an elephant.

PG: This company makes decisions and commitments based on the urgency of an issue—not on how easy we think a goal will be to achieve. And we’re confident we can match our abilities to our vision. That said, once you acknowledge the elephant in the room, the question becomes, “How are you going to get him out?”

FOLIO: Let’s talk about that oil/elephant for a minute. Tell us more about where and how oil is used today.

PG: Oil is the one material, the one resource, that’s in almost everything around us. Not just the obvious, like fuel and heating. But everyday things like permanent-press clothes, stuffed animals, freezer bags, credit cards, telephones, and lipstick.

FOLIO: Stuffed animals?

PG: It’s everywhere. If oil isn’t an actual component of a product, it’s used in the form of energy during the manufacturing process. And carpet tile is no exception.

FOLIO: For a company on a mission to eliminate its negative impact on the environment by 2020, working with oil in its core product can’t feel right.

PG: You’re right. That’s why we want to be off oil by 2020. off oil is really a pragmatic, tangible aspect of our Mission Zero® commitment you spoke of. “Off Oil” is extremely relevant

today from every perspective: sustainability, geopolitics, and environmental concerns.

FOLIO: As you said, sustainability is part of the Interface DNA. It is built in, so to speak, to every product line. But is there one particular product line we could refer to as your most

“Off Oil” carpet?

PG: Actually there is. we incorporate everything we’ve learned into the products to various degrees. But the Convert™ design platform combines the big three: Post-consumer content fiber; GlasBac®RE backing; and TacTiles®, our glue-free installa-tion system. All that, and you won’t believe how gorgeous the color is.

FOLIO: I’ve seen it. I believe you. I have to ask you about the elephant you are bringing to Chicago this year.

PG: Nomkhubulwane. By the South African sculptor Andries Botha. Her name means “Mother Earth” in Zulu. She’s made entirely of recycled truck tires, by the way.

FOLIO: You pronounce her name beautifully. You’re a linguist, aren’t you? And speak several languages?

PG: Yes. But not Zulu. Andries chose the elephant as a metaphor to represent all that we, as human beings, have forgotten about our connection to the earth and our responsibility to it. This is so close to our feelings, and to the feelings of our founder, Ray Anderson, that we felt it an honor to sponsor Nomkhubulwane’s visit to Chicago.

FOLIO: For NeoCon?

PG: Not just for NeoCon, no. She’s actually staying almost a month. Doing some work on the IIT Campus first, then she’ll move to the Merchandise Mart during NeoCon. Afterward, Mother Earth will spend a little while at the Field Museum trumpeting an exhibit they are having on mastodons.

FOLIO: will Nomkhubulwane have her own Facebook page?

PG: She already does. She’s a big star.

FOLIO CHATS UP: PETER GREENE

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREw ZUCKERMAN

46%THE VIRGIN MATERIAL

wE’VE REDUCEDFROM OUR PRODUCTS

SINCE 1995

44%HOw MUCH OF OUR

OVERALL TOTAL ENERGY COMES FROM RENEwABLE SOURCES

13YEARS THAT wE’VEBEEN TURNING OLD

CARPET BACKING INTO NEw BACKING

16YEARS SINCE wE

STARTED ON THE ROAD TO

SUSTAINABILITY

15%THE AMOUNT BY

wHICH wE’VE REDUCED FIBER IN OUR CARPET

SINCE 1995

16%THE POST-CONSUMER

FIBER CONTENT IN OUR MOST “OFF OIL”

CARPET TILE

10YEARS LEFT TO GET

“OFF OIL” COMPLETELY AND ACHIEVE

MISSION ZERO

wHEN IT COMES TO SUSTAINABILITY, OIL IS THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM. IT MAY BE THE ONE RESOURCE THAT EvERYBODY USES, BUT IT’S ALSO THE ONE SUBJECT THAT MOST COMPANIES DANCE AROUND wHEN IT COMES TO MAkING THE wORLD A GREENER PLACE.

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ELEPHANT?wHATELEPHANT?

18

BABY’S GOT BACKSTORY

“This is the brand that inspires designers,” says Mike Toth, Founder and CEO at Toth in Cambridge, MA. “They consis-tently provide new insight and creative inspiration in every aspect of modular carpet — from its manufacturing and design to its marketing.”

Creative Director Robert valentine is no stranger to work-ing with InterfaceFLOR and its challenges. He and the com-pany’s CD, Russ Ramage, met and worked together for the first time under a project of similar scope almost 15 years ago and have worked together ever since.

This time, however, valentine was newly at work at Toth with his long-time friend and collaborator, Mike Toth. In short, Robert valentine + Team Toth = force of nature. For a client like InterfaceFLOR, that was as good as it gets.

And this campaign—which ultimately included four major print ads, a magazine, augmented reality, social media, a short film, video vignettes, themed shopping bags, and micro-sites—is also as good as it gets.

Not just because of the work itself, or the fact that the cam-paign is an integrated one. Such things have happened before in advertising. And not just because it is based on sound strategy for its multiple audiences.

This campaign is remarkable for two reasons: It is a first in the commercial carpet industry. And the product was the catalyst for all of it.

Here’s how it all came down.

PRODUCT AS PROVOCATEUR

The 2010 InterfaceFLOR® Memphis-inspired product lines tease the eye and push boundaries just as the movement that inspired them did. Further, they were created by a company that has also pushed boundaries and turned its world, the world of manufacturing carpet, upside down.

So in other words, safe, soft, traditional solutions could just keep on walking. As InterfaceFLOR’s Peter Greene put it, “The Memphis Movement was about exploring and breaking the rules, so we challenged Toth to do the same thing. That’s one of the things that led them to add augmented reality to the plan. An-other was that patterns within one of the product lines (the Mem-phis to Milan and Back™ Pattern Library) closely resembled the markers used as entry devices into the few AR experiences being tried commercially today.”

“we added digital media to traditional advertising early on because of the products,” says Robert valentine. “we used different mediums not just because they were fun—but because the very playfulness of those mediums was relevant to the product and to reaching certain new audiences.”

TRIPPING IT THROUGH THE 80S

Blondie. Pink Floyd. Madonna. Air Supply. Lipps, Inc. Olivia Newton-John. The Pet Shop Boys. whatever else the 1980s might have been about, it was all rock and roll to Billy Joel.

Because the Memphis Movement was born in the 1980s and steeped in its history, Team Toth started their work research-ing the decade and creating a library of imagery and candidate ideas that could connect with the products as well as work hard on multiple levels to connect with audiences.

Much of that imagery would be multi-purposed across each medium of the campaign: FOLIO™, the magazine Interface-FLOR launched in 2008 specifically to talk with its customers in a less formal, but more detailed way about its products and is-sues; the advertising campaign; and the augmented reality work.

Like the Memphis Movement itself, which made a point of pushing boundaries in the combination of colors, shapes, and even materials, each medium of the product launch would set that as its creative standard.

PHOTOGRAPH BY GEOF KERN

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LIGHTSCAMERAS

ANDAUGMENTED

REALITYACTION! IT ISN’T OFTEN THAT A NEw PRODUCT INTRODUCTION COMBINES THE MYRIAD OF ELEMENTS AND MEDIUMS AND DIGITAL MEDIAS AND HISTORIES AND ILLUSIONS THAT THE LAUNCH OF INTERFACEFLOR’S NEw MEMPHIS-INSPIRED PRODUCTS HAS DONE. IN FACT, IT HAS NEvER HAPPENED IN THE CARPET INDUSTRY BEFORE. BUT THEN, INTERFACEFLOR IS A COMPANY ACCUSTOMED TO SETTING INDUSTRY STANDARDS, NOT FOLLOwING THEM.

“DON’T GIVE THEM wHAT THEY ExPECT. GIVE THEM SOMETHING THEY NEVER THOUGHT POSSIBLE.” — ORSON wELLES

MEANwHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH.

with the advertising solidly in production, and the technology side of the augmented reality underway, FOLIO came into focus. FOLIO played a role no other element in the campaign could: Education. The more fully audiences understood the Memphis Movement and its relevance, the more richly they could appreciate the new collection and incorporate it into their lives. “Hearing David Oakey talk about the impact of Memphis over time and the freedom it gave designers to create a more personal sense of style brought it home,” says valentine. “Then the question was, what to dial up and what to dial down? Since this was Memphis, I think we dialed almost everything up.” For Designer Jack whitman, working on FOLIO was the heart of the whole campaign. “FOLIO ties everything together,” says whitman. “It tells the big picture, it gives the story behind the story, and it gives the advertising richer context.”

SHOwTIME AT THE SHOwROOM

NeoCon, 2010. The Showroom is where all of the preparation and the products come together in the industry’s biggest show of the year. Some companies have a formal style (products marching in orderly lines), but InterfaceFLOR prefers to build a total branding experience around their prod-ucts. “we’ve taken a different approach,” says Russ Ramage. “we’ve brought all the wit and whimsy of the Memphis experi-ence right into the showroom.” Sets from the “white Room” and “Playground” heighten the sense of theatre. visitors can play on the real sets and then visit the real showstopper—the multi-dimensional world of Memphis-inspired Augmented Reality. Hosted AR stations will allow visitors to use one of the ‘From Memphis’ carpet tiles to enter the AR world realized on oversized television screens nearby. Customers will also be treated to the company’s first “Behind the Scenes” film on the creation of the campaign. And of course, everywhere you look, the new lines will be underfoot. Memphis inspired, but InterfaceFLOR through and through.

PUBLISHERSINTERFACEFLOR

Peter Greene Vice President / Marketing

Russ RamageCreative Director

Rhonda Mitchell Director / Marketing

TEAM TOTH

Mike TothChief Creative Officer

Robert valentineExecutive Creative Director

Jack whitman Designer

Dianna EdwardsWriter

Bob FouhyAccount Director

Mark Sullivan Interactive Project Manager

Danny CalidicottProject Manager

Stephanie Cotherman Assistant Project Manager

Danny PellegriniPiggyback Films

Yvonne BarrigaShoot Producer

Anne kefferArt Buyer

Bobby ForgioneProduction Assistant

Marpi MarcinowskiFlash Developer

Andrew kolesnikovLead Developer

ken Michaels3-D Modeler

Doug Bowker 3-D Modeler

PHOTOGRAPHY

Geof kern Photographer

Debra Allen kern Set Stylist/Director

Renai Taylor Set Stylist Assistant

Michael Allen, Todd klein and Henry Piedra

Set Construction

Michael Thomas Hair and Make Up

Phillip Groves Wardrobe

Erica Felicella, Austin Lochheed Photography Assistants

Chris Stoll, Mary Brandt Imaginary Lines

PRINTING

Earth Enterprises 315 west 36th Street

Second Floor East New York, NY 10018

PAPER

Mohawk Fine Papers465 Saratoga Street

Cohoes, NY 12047

FOLIO is a carbon-neutral publication printed with no VOC, no solvent, 40-60 per-cent vegetable inks by Earth Enterprises, which runs its plant off renewable energy. FOLIO is printed on paper from Mohawk, one of the first large-scale production facilities in America to use wind-generated electricity. Isn’t fine print educational?

INTERFACEFLOR, LLC1503 Orchard Hill Road

LaGrange, GA 302401.800.336.0225, Ext. 6511

www.interfaceflor.com

INTERFACEFLOR CANADAwww.interfaceflor.ca

INTERFACEFLOR LATIN AMERICAwww.interfaceflor.com.br

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TH

E E

ND

CHARMED REALITY CHECK

ITS ALL GEEK TO ME

For any non-techie to describe what it took to turn the “Ode to Joy” fantasy playground into augmented reality would be sheer folly. There is still the child in all of us that wants to be amazed by three dimensions, four dimensions, floating and moving objects. Better that some things remain mysteries. For Mark Sullivan, Interactive Project Manager, shepherding Toth’s digi-tal group to wrap the technology around the business strategy was intensely exciting. Sullivan lives in two worlds at once: strategic and engineering. “Once we determined we wanted to do augmented reality from a business point of view,” says Sullivan, “the challenge was engineering the technology to do exactly what we wanted to do.” That’s where Developers Marpi Marcinowski and Andrew kolesnikov took over. The two men loved the complex task of creating the world of InterfaceFLOR in AR. “Developing the technol-ogy was the most diffi-cult aspect,” says Marpi.

“Then using it to pres-ent the product in three dimensions came next.” [Use the marker on the inside front cover to expe-rience the augmented reality we’ve been talk-ing about.]SHOOTING STARS IN TExAS

Before the AR team could work their magic, photographer Geof kern had to work his. kern has worked for decades with both Russ Ramage and Robert valentine. kern was the perfect choice for this assignment because he’s an intellectual with deep references and amazing conceptual skills. In this case, the look and style of the photographs was very much a collaborative effort, says kern.

“I received specific direction from Robert and then visualized what the sets should look like. Then I worked on sketches and drew up the plans.” Take the “white Room” ad for example. That wall is composed of re-purposed items, painted white, to symbolize the modularity and sustainability of the client. There’s a cubbyhole built into the wall that’s strong enough to support a human being. To bring the plans to life, Debra Allen kern collaborated with valentine on almost every detail, finessing color palettes, props, background paintings—you name it. Once approved, Ms. kern’s master builders built the sets with extreme attention to detail. A good thing, since two of those sets are making the trip to Chicago for NeoCon. while kern was shooting the advertising, another photographer was working on set at the same time, for a different reason. Danny Pellegrini of Toth’s Piggyback Films shot behind the scenes for a video that will also debut at NeoCon—another industry first. Says Pellegrini, “I was shooting for the film, the vignettes, and maybe a little AR. All the pieces work together to tell a larger story.”

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