"As a designer I am inspired by my surroundings and different life experiences. I strive to infuse both motivations into my design work to create meaningful objects that both challenge and communicate with contemporary culture", shares the designer in his bio. Check out his interview below and get to know what made him use keyboards as the subject of his artwork:
Nolan, please introduce yourself to E-junkies.
Hello E-junkies! My name is Nolan Herbut. I am an industrial designer from Edmonton, Canada and I try to work on a verity of projects but my main focus has been furniture design.
Enlighten us with your wonderful artwork.
The main inspiration for the series of keyboard objects is my grandfather, Wolfgang, after whom the keyboard bench is named. He is a semi-retired Electrical Engineer who could never bring himself to discard the old electronic parts from projects he was working on. This resulted in him having quite a few sheds full of old electronics on his acreage. During one of my summer breaks, while I was in-between classes, I was looking for a way to keep my design skills sharp. So, I went out to his acreage several times to inspire a self directed project. I ended up spending a lot of time taking apart old keyboards and playing with all of the interesting parts. My goal was to rearrange the parts into new objects that did not look recycled at first glance.
Why did you choose only keyboards to recycle? Is there any specific reason behind it?
I think I was initially drawn to keyboards because of its tactile nature and they had a lot of interesting parts to play with. I accumulated a lot of parts and I didn’t want to throw them away after I finished the bench so I started making more objects. So I guess you could say it snow balled a little bit.
What is the process your creations go through?
Each of the objects had a different process in its creation even though they came from the same initial inspiration. In my design process, I usually bounce back and forth from sketching, sketch modeling and 3-d modeling to refine an idea. The Bench was created in this manner and required a lot more planning compared to the lights because of its scale and complexity. The lights were smaller objects and the material was a lot more forgiving allowing me to jump right in once I had an idea and letting it evolve as I went along.
Share the best compliment you've ever received for your work.
I think it would be when my Mom told me my bench was amazing. You can’t get higher praise than from your Mom.
What is your vision for your work as a whole?
My vision for this series of recycled objects is to reflect contemporary cultures struggle with the waste from mass consumption.
Other than recycling work, what are the things that interest you?
I am basically interested in any creative field like architecture, art, industrial design and fashion. I think it’s important to keep learning from a broad range of interests to draw inspiration from.
Nolan, thanks for this wonderful interview. We really appreciate you for taking out time out of your hectic work schedule to talk to us. You're doing an excellent job and we wish you all the best for your future endeavors.
Check out Nolan's portfolio.
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