From headphones to whiskey bottles to bespoke furniture, Joe Doucet is reimagining our world—one object at a time
Joe Doucet is a living blueprint for the 21st-century designer. He has produced brand identities for BMW, packaging for Procter & Gamble and concept appliances for Whirlpool and Braun. A fixture of the Brooklyn design scene, he exhibits his work around the world and, in 2010, curated a one-night show of designer-personalised Munny toys at the Ace Hotel New York that drew thousands, including midcentury modernist Vladimir Kagan. The 43-year-old Houston native has also launched Whyte Label, a high-end line of home furnishings made to order through his Manhattan-based Joe Doucet Studio (joedoucet.com), and created AMU, the first mobile phone game that takes place on the screen and in the world around us. Now, Doucet would like to tweak the way you think about his profession.
“Design is not just engineering and styling, but a way of approaching problems,” declares the multidisciplinarian, who rarely begins at the drawing board. “I start by writing a sentence or two about the objective, what the product should make people think or feel or do.”
(This story appears in the May-June 2014 issue of ForbesLife India. To visit our Archives, click here.)