Hunter-Gatherer of Cool Commodities

Although Stuart Karten has designed eye-catching signage for such diverse clients as the Sony Music Campus in Santa Monica and Gold Ranch Casino in Reno, his office is a study in understatement. A tiny plaque marks the galvanized door of the Stuart Karten Design Studio, which is tucked into an industrial lot in Marina del Rey, a mile from Venice Beach.

The modest identity is appropriate. Although an award-winning industrial designer whose mark is on a number of familiar items from automobile floor mats to computer printers, Karten is not a star. In a world where designers have become celebrities and such glittering names as Philippe Starck and Michael Graves are turning out chairs and teakettles for Target stores, Karten is one of many industrial designers who toil anonymously on the staffs of corporations or in their own firms.

“We design all the products that people use in their daily lives, but ‘industrial designer’ is hardly a household word,” said Karten, in a friendly and laidback manner. His small firm is attracting industry attention for the diversity of its projects. “The general public probably has no idea there are people out there thinking about the shape of a light switch,” he said.

He was sitting at his desk in a minimalist office with blond furniture and concrete floors, its white walls hung with modern art. The office is one of the few enclosed spaces in the open, spacious SKD studio with exposed beams, skylights and a line of workstations separated by curved translucent panels. It’s here that Karten and his staff of 16 think about the shape of light switches, automobiles, medical equipment, toys, tools and myriad other products.

No commodity is too humble to be transformed. SKD recently was asked by Avery Dennison Corp. of Pasadena, whose office products division is a leading provider of binders in the United States, to shake the three-ring notebook out of its vinyl-covered cardboard rut.

“The target for this was junior high and, secondarily, high school students,” said Angela Fitzgerald, Avery’s director of marketing for binders. “They do care about style, design and look, and the standard, squared-off binder wasn’t going to cut it. We asked Stuart Karten to look at the benefits that plastic brings to the party in terms of flexibility.”

Karten embarked on a process he calls “connecting creativity with commerce.” To generate a “must have it” response from the Gen-Y consumer, his staff spent days shopping where kids hang out. “We found the Block in Orange, which is a mall targeted toward kids and complemented with a skate park,” he said. “And we hung around Melrose and the beach. We thoroughly analyzed the users, the target market. We explored new shapes and produced a totally new product for Avery.”

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The resulting Profile binder, now in Wal-Mart stores for back-to-school, is an iMac generation translucent plastic with a curved spine that makes it easy to carry, rubber accents for grippability and shots of color, and an innovative single-snap latch. “We asked for design to be built into it, and he took it to the next level,” said Fitzgerald. “Our research shows that teens are very excited about it, and the binder is getting picked up by magazines like YM and Teen People for their back-to-school fashion spreads, which is great. We most definitely expect it to be hot.”

Karten, 43, is a transplanted New Yorker who formed his company in 1984 with the specialized idea of taking projects from concept through manufacturing. Today, he competes with such large national firms as New York-based Smart Design and Frogdesign in San Francisco. Although he does mostly client-based work, he’s getting ready to launch a line of furniture and watches, “as a way of expressing our own vision about where things are going.”

Over the years he has seen dramatic changes in the industrial design world. “When I started the firm, we were still educating our business clients about design and why their products should have an aesthetic aspect. We really had to sell our ideas. Now we are in a renaissance in which design has trickled down into all aspects of life.”

No corner of a household seems undesigned these days, much to Karten’s pleasure. “People will pay for performance and people will also pay for a cool factor. In fact, people are becoming highly emotional about their stuff.”

That means designers have a much bigger role in shaping even mundane objects. Karten picks up a brightly patterned pleated sunshade for a car windshield. His company redesigned them a couple of years ago for Axius Inc. of Moorpark, producer of auto interior accessories.

From the old “boring cardboard,” SKD came up with a vinyl model with a UV-protection coating and Mylar in a variety of colors and patterns. “For $19.95 drivers can choose their own personal expression,” said Karten.

Is he concerned that such products contribute to a throwaway society? “Yes, we sometimes feel that way, but we look for materials that can be recycled after their life span,” he said. “And we are involved in a lot of serious medical products that balance out the frivolous things.”

Growing up on Long Island, Karten had no idea that he could have a career as an industrial designer. “I didn’t even know they existed. As a kid I was always taking thing apart--razors and clocks and stereos--everything in the house.”

Although he liked to work with his hands and loved his shop classes in high school, he didn’t like math, which ruled out engineering as a career.

“Luckily, my older sister studied fashion at the Rhode Island School of Design and she said to me, ‘Hey, there is this program called Industrial Design and it is you!’ She was right.”

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He thrived on the Rhode Island program, with its emphasis on problem-solving and conceptual thinking, rather than only drawing and sketching skills. After graduation, he came to Los Angeles for a vacation before starting work in New York. He’s been here ever since.

He went to work for a Beverly Hills consulting firm, then got corporate experience with Mattel Inc. designing Barbie accessories, and later with American Hospital Supply, which became Baxter Healthcare, designing disposable medical products before starting his own firm.

The diverse experience is reflected in the range of products SDK has under its belt, from a prototype DNA testing device for Clinical Micro Sensors, a biotech firm, to a Star Projector lantern for Wild Planet toys. At Clinical Micro Sensors in Pasadena, Chief Executive Jon Faiz Kayyem said that SKD gave his futuristic product the perfect back-to-the-future look the company needed.

“It pleased us so much we had him do our corporate identity work, including a logo,” said Kayyem. “Now we are using his services for more than a product.”

The DNA analyzer was one of two Karten designs that received an excellence award this year from the prestigious Industrial Designers Society of America. The second was a set of durable-but-sculptured shipping containers for Abex Displays, which moves trade-show exhibits around the country.

“It’s extraordinary to see entries as diverse as this,” said Patricia Moore, the show’s jury chairwoman and a design professor at Arizona State University. “It underlines the importance of an eclectic, multidimensional design group that can turn out something as mundane as containers, and as Captain Kirk as the DNA analyzer. That’s what thrills me about the Karten group.”

Karten tries for a balance of serious and lighthearted projects. “We like to do toys because a key element to our creativity is being unfettered, like kids,” said Karten, who subscribes to more than 200 magazines and likes the learning process of taking on a new product.

He thinks of himself as a cross between an engineer and an artist. In designing for corporate clients, he says, his firm is focused on research that will enable them to make products easier to use, or safer, or more attractive, or all of those things.

“We’re the hunters and gatherers of culture,” he said, “and we have to develop a creative affinity with the user.”

He recently converted a second building behind his office to a loft-like open space that he thinks of as a big playroom. “It’s a place for creativity and is ever-changing to meet our needs, from staff movie nights to client presentations,” he said.

Keeping creativity flowing is a priority for Karten. “It’s all about fun,” he said of the design process. Although it’s unusual for a small company to tackle such a range of projects, he says the diversity works for his team. One of his favorite projects is the sculpture that hangs in the main tower of the new Skirball Cultural Center north of the Getty Center.

“We took the logo, which incorporates a lot of Jewish metaphors into a birdlike flame and made it into a three-dimensional sculpture,” he said. “It’s kind of like a beacon on the 405 Freeway.”

He thinks Los Angeles is the perfect place to be. “It’s the pulse point where things are started, where trends are happening.”

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Karten and his wife, Vickie Sawyer Karten, who designs books at the Getty Museum, have a daughter, Rachel, 9. They live on a Venice canal in a wood-shingled “seaside cottage look” house with a porch and a “loose and flowery” garden design. A golden retriever, a cat and a hamster round out the household.

“Travel is our No. 1 hobby, and we also spend lots of time at the beach,” said Karten who has just returned from kayaking in Alaska. “And we like to row our big inflatable boat around the canal.”

He describes himself as a “short-term futurist.” Scouting furniture trends in New York recently, he was impressed by the interest in midcentury styles.

“It’s interesting to watch this whole retro craze where people are looking back at old products and reinterpreting them, such as the VW Beetle and the Chrysler PT Cruiser. You see it in cameras like the Olympus with a leather body and in the furniture world where everyone is focused around 1950s modernism.”

Despite appreciating the sentimental value of such icons, he also considers the retro trend to be something of a design crutch and predicts a future in which designers will be challenged to come up with the truly new.

Right now SKD is involved in several futuristic projects including a device to monitor brain waves to detect drowsiness in truck drivers.

“We are also working with Volvo on vehicles that are three to four years out, and we’re involved with Jabra Corp. on the next generation of cellular phones--the ear sets that make people look like they are talking to themselves.”

He is optimistic about technology.

“What I see ahead is a merging of functionality to highlight innovation.” A perfect example, he said, is Samsonite, known for its luggage, which is making travel apparel such as a jacket with a blowup headrest, and jackets for hiking with built-in compasses and walking sticks.

“In technology design, I also think we’ll see more emphasis on the user experience, with attention paid to every point of the product from cradle to grave.

“So instead of the VCR that no one can program because it’s so complex, we will have more applications like the Palm Pilot with its simple concept of having your phone book and address book move around with you. That’s just a beautiful use of computing. I think we will see more design that reconciles technology with user ease.”

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Connie Koenenn can be reached at connie.koenenn@latimes.com.