Design with an edge

Dan Rose holds up what looks, for all the world, like a tile. In fact, it’s a thin veneer of slate stuck to a piece of wood – an idea he’s currently experimenting with. “You couldn’t just use slate,” he points out, referring to the manufacture of furniture. “I found this on the internet. I spend a lot of time researching things.” You certainly get this impression; that indeed much of his time is spent seeking out new forms and having great fun exploring them.

Dan, 33, is one half of the creative team behind Raskl – the other being his long-time friend, 37-year-old Dave Angus. It’s hard to categorise exactly what they make – so hard, in fact, that they don’t bother advertising. Much easier is to define their aesthetic, which is sleek and industrial – the epitome of modern minimalism. Within that, they cover pretty much anything, from shop signs to bar and office refits to kitchen floors.

Working in close collaboration on designs, Dan and Dave are based in an office above their workshop in Newcastle’s trendy Ouseburn Valley, where three staff operate heavy machinery. For them, it’s the ideal set-up, allowing them to oversee the whole process from inception to realisation. They see themselves first and foremost as artists.

“We are in this more for the love of creating the thing than as business people,” says Dan. “We are creative people who happen to work in a business environment. We’re able to make whatever is required and I think over ten years of doing what we do, we’ve got the confidence to tell people what we think they need.

“People do come to us with a brief. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence that people are going with minimalism because it’s more cost effective to make things in our style. It’s what we’re into, so if you ask us what should be done with a certain space, that’s what we’ll suggest.”

Being in business, however, Dan and Dave have to balance their creativity with commercialism. Dan thinks of it as a Venn diagram encompassing art, craft and design. “Design is creating things to a budget – doing a specific job for a price, but it’s very price-driven. Art is something you feel compelled to create, and craft is something in between,” he says. “There are things that we’ve done when there was no job and no commission. It’s no way to make money, but we’ve sometimes got to do these things just to try something out. If you say you’re just designers, people don’t realise there’s a craft element to it. What people want now is craftspeople because of the huge hipster movement and Shoreditch in London. It’s cooler to be a down-to-earth craftsperson than an edgy design person. We’re trying very hard to blend all these things.”

When they first started Raskl ten years ago, Dave admits they weren’t sufficiently commercially minded. Having studied engineering at Newcastle University, he began by working on commissions from his garage, with Dan pitching in. Their shared aesthetic and willingness to push the boundaries, experimenting with materials to come up with innovative design solutions, meant they naturally fell into the joint company. They learned on the job, which Dan feels has been invaluable.

“I think Dave would say he’s probably learned more in the workshop than he did at university,” he says. “I didn’t go to university so I’ve definitely learned more at work and ideas will evolve while we iron out practicalities, functionality, manufacturability and stuff.

“I think the main thing is we’re materials specialists. We’ve got a really, really broad experience of a lot of different types of materials and we’ve worked out lots of different ways to combine them to look interesting. There’s a zeitgeist for material honesty. MDF is not a thing that should be the core material for a structure, so generally you can really see the raw materials in what we make.”

For Dan and Dave, form follows function – they adapt their materials, in a way that’s as aesthetically pleasing as possible, to do a specific job. Key to their manufacturing are two industrial machines – the Computer Numeric Control (CNC) for large-scale cutting and the laser for fine detail. Using this technology provides a high degree of accuracy while freeing Dan and Dave to concentrate on the creative side.

“We turn a picture into a numeric code, which then gets put into a robot which cuts the shapes that we’ve designed,” explains Dan. “Most things using that machinery are mass-produced because you have to mass-produce to be cost-effective. We generally use plywood, which is great for fresh, natural-looking things. The laser cutter is mainly for plastics, fabric and leather, and the advantage is that you can work to a much finer detail. The nice thing about the laser cutter is that it can either burn or etch the detail onto things, so it fits with the material honesty thing.”

Much of Raskl’s work comes through the like-minded architects xsite, also based in the Ouseburn Valley, and it was with this firm and the Newcastle designer Electrik Sheep that it recently won the contract to redesign the promenade at Whitley Bay. With a budget of £250,000, Dan and Dave will help to create artworks connected by a giant wooden ribbon.

“The only work we chase is design competitions and we’re looking to do more public design and public art because it’s less designing to a brief and more being truly creative,” explains Dan. “We’re really thinking, what’s the cultural history of the area? Did they have an economic problem? It’s trying to make it a rewarding place to go, which is very fulfilling for us as artists and designers.”

The other big thing – and what is equally a labour of love for Dan and Dave – is their plan to create a shipping container complex next door to Raskl. “The idea was to find a space that was undevelopable and have converted shipping containers that we’ll rent out to artists,” says Dan. “It will help slow down the gentrification of the area and create a bit of revenue for us so we can pick and choose our work a bit more.

“It’s going to be quite an interesting space, and it should be quite a kinetic, exciting thing. There are lots of shipping container villages elsewhere, but hopefully this will be Newcastle’s first.”

In the meantime, Dan and Dave will continue looking for new and unconventional ways to express their creativity – and just go with whatever sticks. “We’re just trying to do as much as we can and seeing what develops,” says Dan. “Either we’ll be container developers or we’ll be public artists or we’ll continue what we’re doing. We’re just keeping an open mind about the future.”

W: raskl.co.uk