Malcolm Gladwell in his excellent book Outliers postulated that mastery occurs after about 10,000 hours of doing something. That’s a long time, especially when you factor in sleeping, eating, and using the john. I don’t know if that applies to knife design, but it is an interesting idea, especially in the era of self-published blades. There are a lot of people out there making runs of knives that probably aren’t masters in the 10,000 hours sense. But the knife market is one that follows trends and so you can make a trendy knife with many fewer hours behind the grinder. The fact that you can get a CAD rendering made in China with excellent fidelity only makes it easier for someone to follow a trend, render a blade, and then get 500 made.
This is the democratization of industrial design and it is unquestionably a good thing. I am not sure why Joseph Vero’s designs didn’t get picked up by a major production company, but they didn’t. Thankfully, because of this democratization of industrial design we get new offerings from him pretty often. Berg Blades is another self-published blade brand. His designs are all very evocative. They have a certain look and feel that makes them both classic in their shapes and bold, kind of like the knife equivalent of cel-shaded art (though there are now actually cel-shaded designs as well, see Guardian Tactical).
The article does a good job explaining the situation for designers in this current market climate. Interesting stuff as always from Sculimbrene.
Read the whole thing at EverydayCommentary.com
Read the full article here