THE FAILED CONNECTION
What’s the connection between Arne Jacobsen, the great Danish designer and architect, and McDonald’s, the not-so-great-although-bloody-delicious fast food chain? When the young Arne won an award in Paris in 1925 for an essay he’d written, his father peered down at the programme notes and, seeing the words ‘Artiste Arne Jacobsen’, exclaimed, “But Arne, you are too fat to be an artist.” Is obesity the missing link between the two then? We think not.
From that moment on Jacobsen junior kept what was a blossoming belly in pretty good shape. So, no, obesity is not the link. Indeed, I don’t think there is one. So why did McDonald’s feel the need to throw out the existing and entirely unremarkable furniture in some of its restaurants (should we even call them that?) and replace it with original Jacobsen designs? Why not go for something not quite so expensive but which still improves on what went before? By all means perk things up a bit, but we all know about McDonald’s. We go there knowing full well what we’re going to get. A choice paint job might have sufficed.
Despite many people’s reservations about such a peculiar partnership, perhaps they could make it work, perhaps they COULD improve on the somewhat brittle ambience, surgery lighting, cheap laminated surfaces and fake plants. If that was going to happen, they’d have to stick to their guns. Clearly they selected Jacobsen designs because they believe wholeheartedly in original design and wanted to provide its customers with a suitably cutting edge experience. Only the best, eh, nothing else will do. And, comforted by the knowledge that McDonald’s were doing this for all the right reasons, Jacobsen himself might have delighted in seeing his egg and swan chairs used for all the right reasons, symbols of modernism at its best, serving a mass audience without compromising on style.
Unfortunately for McDonald’s, they screwed things up. Really? McDonald’s? Surely not. Having bought up a bunch of Jacobsen originals and put them to good use in the first of its pilot stores (on the Edgware Road), they were recently found to have placed fakes right alongside them. So their premise, it seems, was this:
LET THE WORLD SEE THAT WE EMBRACE CREATIVE BRILLIANCE AND VALUE AUTHENTIC DESIGN (i.e. JUMP ON THE BACK OF A GREAT DESIGNER’S WORK AND CLAIM SOME OF THAT EQUITY FOR OURSELVES), BUT THEN, WHEN NO ONE IS LOOKING, BUY RIPPED OFF IMITATIONS IN THE HOPE THAT NO ONE WILL NOTICE.
Predictably, the world did notice, and Fritz Hansen, manufacturers of Jacobsen products, pulled the plug on their multi-million pound deal and demanded all its furniture be removed from the stores immediately. CEO Jacob Holm released a statement:
"We simply will not cooperate or trade with companies who accept piracy, cost what it may. The fact that McDonald's has chosen to use pirated copies is even more surprising since the company itself is legendary across the world in pursuing trademark and copyright suits to safeguard its product and name."
So McDonald’s remains a monolithic corporation so devoid of imagination that they go ripping off other people’s. Having passed off all sorts for genuine beef down the years, perhaps they thought they could repeat the sting with this. We say stick to what you do best Ronald - making damned good but totally inauthentic beef burgers.
And to finish, a quote of Jacobsen’s that describes his own take on the creative process, one not far removed from our own:
“The key thing is seeing everything grow, setting out with a small sketch and seeing the whole and the details spring to life. It may sound affected - but it is the act of creation itself, and it is equally exhilarating whether one is working on a teaspoon or a national bank. There is always a point when one senses one's lack of skill, the doubt. Carrying out the thing, getting it to the point when one might say: There, now it is good - that point is hard to reach. Often, one sets very high goals for oneself. Perhaps too high.”
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very good.