From Image To Icon
Clinton Friedman’s Timeless Images And Award-Winning Design
Words: Kent Lindiwe
Email: [email protected]
Follow: @thewordcurator
Winner of 100% Design South Africa’s* “Best Surface Award” (2017), Clinton Friedman is one of a limited number of contemporary designers whose images have become icons. Almost two decades since his first publication, “Subtraction” (2003), Clinton has translated the photographic images that appear in his book into a range of fine-art, fashion, and lifestyle designs.
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His latest concept, a fine-art rug — made to a limited edition of three, with one artist’s proof — is probably the design that tipped the “Best Surface Award” in his favour. Viewers are arrested at once by the transparent kidney-beans of lapis-blue, ultramarine-green, medallion-gold, and mulberry-purple that float across the surface of Clinton’s hand-tufted woollen rug.
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While these colours might be the initial pull towards the rug, what holds our admiration are the different insects, of varying sizes, measuredly arranged from one corner of the rug to the other. A kidney-bean of colour momentarily accentuates their flat-white structuralism. Or, as with the largest insect, despite the way its form is essentially flattened onto the rug, the stippled holes of darker colour that poke through the beetle’s white armour, inject the rug with architectural texture.
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Specifically created to be launched at 100% Design SA, the rug has been received with equal amounts of awe, and excitement by fellow designers, traders, and the public alike. Endearingly coined the “bug-rug” by some, this design was naturally the “next-step” for Clinton — his design-fair booth is rendered complete by the rug, and framed with sophistication by one of his signature wallpapers, three artworks, and an array of scatter cushions.
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The artworks and wallpaper framing Clinton’s booth are smooth, and metallic. Yet like the rug, brief injections of textural colour render the effect dynamic. Interior designers through to art collectors praise the easy elegance with which Clinton curated his booth — these traders note that Clinton’s careful curation enables them to visualise his products into the homes, hotels, and luxury wine estates they are looking to decorate.
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Although many are already familiar with, and followers of, the “Clinton Friedman” brand, the way in which his images have become icons holds an important lesson for fellow designers seeking to build their brand, without threatening its authenticity or exclusivity.
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Clinton explains that “Subtraction” essentially marks the birth of the brand. The botanical images within the publication are the core images for all his products, from his phone-covers and notebooks, umbrellas and fashion items, scatter cushions and wallpapers, all the way up to his limited edition artworks.
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Take the three artworks, with bespoke chromed steel frames, that Clinton has hung in his 100% Design SA booth — the images here, “Protea Cynaroides”, “Aloe Krausii", and “Strelitzia Nicolia", are those same ones that we can trace right back to his earliest design products.
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A primary factor that renders these images singular is the slightly “off-beat” way in which they are captured. For example, while the king protea is known for its burning red, in Clinton’s steel-framed “Protea Cynaroides”, the colour is sucked from the flower, allowing for a focused engagement with its tactile centre.
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Likewise, the word “strelitzia” immediately evokes the image of an exceedingly sculptural flower, that we might see captured on the cushion of just another chain of homeware retail stores. Instead, the area of the plant that Clinton has captured, an image which he has now repeated throughout his brand, is that of the strelitzia’s slightly-asymmetrical leaf.
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In this sense Clinton’s images are iconic because of his attention to the often over-looked areas, shapes, textures, and intricacies of his subject — whether this subject is an insect or the leaf of a strelitzia.
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Then, there is their “single-origin”. This means that, Clinton — in contrast to other artists, photographers, and designers who have “caught-on” to the aesthetic appeal of botanical photography — has stayed true to one original, and authentic image.
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Where others follow trends, Clinton transcends them. Where another might produce countless images of one protea, Clinton’s considered repetition of an original, unconventionally-captured image is what renders it synonymous with the “Clinton Friedman” brand.
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So, before it’s too late, go and enjoy Clinton Friedman’s timeless, and iconic design at 100% Design South Africa!
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*Open to the public, Saturday 12 Aug, and Sunday 13 Aug, from 10.00 - 18.00 at the Gallagher Convention Centre, Midrand. . Photographic Images: Clinton Friedman
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