Saloni Meghani

Michael Foley, head of design at Titan, gets candid about his concept of the timeless beauty of form

Inside this mind were born the designs of Titan’s FasTrack range of watches, the signature look of Café Coffee Day and a space-age tandem bicycle. Considering the mental calisthenics that go into creating such concepts, you would expect this mind to belong to someone with outrageous attire and an irreverent demeanour.

But Michael Foley, industrial designer and head of design at Titan, breaks the clutter by being strikingly simple. "I don't have to look different to be different. I may not show externally what I am internally. I like to create a comfort zone around me inside which I can do what I feel like. In fact, I’m uncomfortable being the centre of attention," says Foley.

You may choose to leave the man alone after hearing that. But it is difficult to look away from his creations. It does not take Einstein’s IQ or Picasso’s perceptiveness to figure out that Foley has a unique vision.

Foley does not see design as something external or cosmetic. He believes that it is not the cherry on the top but the essence inside the cake. It can affect and shape the product. "Good ideas are intrinsically different, not superficially," he says.

He was particularly focused on this philosophy when designing Edge, the Titan range of the slimmest commercially available watches. "Effort has gone into more than just the styling of the product," he says. "All the elements — the technology, interface with the user, convenience and cost, and even the constraint of space for display — have to be considered."

He is also working on a wireless device, starting outside in. "That is why the project started inside out. I created the interface boundaries within which the company should engineer. The company believes in prioritising the consumer's point of view over the electronic aspect," he says.

Foley’s industrial concepts surf on the play between what people want and what he wants them to have. He says that industrial designers are different from artists in that the former have to involve others while the latter concentrate on self-expression.

The 33-year-old from the National Institute of Design has chosen this mature approach not as a compromise but because in suits his temperament better. "I have never considered being an artist," he says.

Foley has not painted in 10 years even though his memories of childhood are replete with images of the canvas and palette. His parents, both artists by temperament, gave him an early start with exposure to the masters. He copied masterpieces on weekends starting at 8 am and painting into the sunset.

Now he indulges himself by decorating the interiors of his apartment with his failed designs. He held his only exhibition four years ago where he displayed his version of home accessories — including fruit juice glasses with crawling ants etched on them!

It is the science of Nature and organic forms that Foley has always found fascinating. "Phenomena like refraction, reflection, sensorial and visual representations in Physics, and growth patterns in plants are inspiring to me," he says. The rides he has designed for a children’s park, for instance, are based on fractals that cannot be represented by classical geometry. His fences and benches at Bangalore's Cubbon Park resemble trees.

Water clearly also sets the creative juices flowing. Foley has designed a bowl with steel spikes in the manner of a splash of water. Some of his vases look like water has been dropped on them. He enjoys playing with transparency. For watch designs, he enjoys combining glass and steel and often uses fusion.

Titan, where he has spent 10 years now, has given him an eye for the minutiae. He draws a lot of influence from the art of letters. "You can control the proportions in a watch exactly like in typography," he says.

Foley has created a large document with tips for time trendsetters. He has discovered that the diagonal on an A4-sized sheet of paper has proportions that can be used for the watch dial. For the feminine forms he has found a link to the ratio of the golden rectangle.

The important role of design, Foley feels, is that it has to solve a problem. "But if you get attached to a formula of doing things, you will get approached for a particular style and not for problem solving," he says.

He specifies, however, that this does not mean that designers don’t have their signature styles. "The essence of originality is that you have a mind that nobody else has," he says.

Among his favourites are pop artist Andy Warhol and Keith Harring, comic books and illustrations. Phillipe Starck, the industrial designer who reinterprets everyday objects — ranging from pasta to powerboats — and Jonathan Ive, who heads the Apple design studio, are also his role models.

Ironically, he believes that the more products society creates, the more its problems are going to be. "This is a conflict inside me. I enjoy designing products. But at the same time, the less you have, the more you can control life. You don’t need five different things to handle five different functions. I try to minimise complexity," he says.

This struggle inside him leaves the simplicity and functionality of his work unhampered. Or on the other hand, it may be the reason behind it. But he is not about to make a big deal about his opinions. So, we will have to make do with guessing from outside his charmed aura.

Also read in Tata Voices

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	Patrick McGoldrick, with his fondness for people and cultures and a penchant for languages and cuisines makes a rather unusual technology maven
	Bachendri Pal, head of the Tata Steel Adventure Foundation, the first Indian woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on the new heights she is scaling

Uploaded on November 4, 2004