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Marco Dragotta – www.dragotta.eu. Photo credit – Francesco Italia

How did you choose to become a designer?
Lego and drawings characterized my childhood, while during high school I approached graphic design self-taught. As teenager I felt in love for the first computers and I studied computer graphic. After a graphic design course with Mr. Gianni Li Muli, which I thank, I moved to Milan to discover better my passions. Intrigued I attended occasionally the IED lessons, but only when I visited the industrial design department I saw my future.

You are graduated at IED school. What would be your choose now if you had to restart studying?
I would like to get a good design methodology with professional teachers, a multidisciplinary attitude through the essential skills, the opportunity to work in multicultural teams and to perform simulations along with companies. I wish schools would stimulate in neo-designers alternative visions of this profession to weave new relationships between designers, producers and consumers.

Watch designing is one of your core activities: what is your relationship with time?
I’m very Zen in it. You cannot do nothing but to accept its inexorable flow and to do your best to organize it. In our work, sometimes you wish you had days of 36 hours to be able to bring together different activities. It is natural that the organization of activities plays a decisive and preliminary stage to any project if you do not want to live with chronic gastritis. Today I prefer to select and to choose to do fewer things with more serenity.

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Rose water | Funscuba watch with deepmeter designed for Swatch Group (2004). In the palette of colors and details, the watch was inspired by an underwater photo shoot taken by the designer, a passionate lover of the submarine nature.

You have designed for Colombo Design a furniture handle and knob: what would you compare the link handle-door an handle-furniture?
The door or furniture handles, have always inspired me the concept of the apostrophes in grammar, that links harmoniously two words avoiding cacophonies. So the handle for me takes this symbolism and itself becomes a means of connection between two essential and harmonious environment for doors or between the macro environment experienced by humans and the micro environment experienced by the objects contained in the cabinet.

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F137 furniture handle FORMAE| Design: Marco Dragotta (2015)

You say that multidisciplinarity is very important for your job; what influenced you on the designing the products for our company?
In the specific case of Formae furniture handle, I’ve been influenced by my tactile sensitivity and I’ve simply entrusted to the common sense of design as to combine a desire to “feel” tactilely with the fingers a pleasant handle to grip because is rounded inside, and to “see” a handle with a timeless design that would fit well in a wide range of design solutions.

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F532 furniture knob FORMAE | Design: Marco Dragotta (2015)

Regarding the Italian designers of your generation, what’s the approach to the global market?
Our market that for several reasons is still generationally connected to traditional patterns of doing business will shortly understand the global market evolution as not to set back. I hope the new generations of designers are realizing that the Made in Italy love by foreigners is not enough. This except for the fashion and the food industry in which the gap is still big with the other countries, where nowadays there are very promising designers and companies.

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Galaxy| Revolving self-refrigerated display designed to be compatible with most of the bottles, wine bottles, champagne bottles or others. Designed for Cantina Arredo Group (2013).