Kramer Studio

Why Philip Kramer makes.

Award-winning designer Philip Kramer fantasises about full-time employment. “I have a fantasy where I earn a salary. Yeah, I'll tell you that. I have a fantasy where, like, it's the 28th (of the month) and I have R50,000, and I have my expenses covered, and my job does not require me to spend half the money I make on the job itself. It’s like, you don't work in an office, and then they're like, Phil, it’s your turn to buy paper for the office, and you're in it for R10k”. He’s referring, of course, to the cost of prototyping new ideas. Every new project can represent around R20,000 in material costs, which may or may not be recoupable depending on whether you find a willing buyer for the final product. It’s a common problem in the design world, and it explains why some studios only have one or two new products a year. It also means Kramer has a very long list of ideas waiting to be pursued, from beautiful computers to video game hardware to bi-directional loudspeakers. He tells me he lies in bed at night, turning them over in his mind, thinking of all the things he’d like to make and do – the right way to make them, a better way to do them. He finds it comforting. “I don’t really think of anything else anymore,” he says. There’s work to be done.

Words: Shannon Devy 

We meet on a particularly blustery Wednesday evening in Cape Town. Kramer is refreshingly candid about the economics of running a design studio – it’s not easy. But while the idea of having a boss telling him what to do “sounds weirdly relaxing”, he wouldn’t have it any other way. “I’m not suitable for any other type of work,” he says. “I love it dearly, and it is very much a part of who I am.”

And we can all be grateful for that. Kramer’s work is exceptional, standing apart even amongst the increasingly excellent (and increasingly crowded) field of South African design. His signature hand-built loudspeakers and monitor speakers sound as good as they look, delivering high-fidelity audio via a sleek, brutalist design, softened by sound and colour. His moody, colourful Gradient Light won the New Design Award for lighting at the inaugural CTFW X Visi Awards, and the Quiet Cabinet is a future heirloom to be coveted. 

I ask him how it started. After matriculating, Kramer studied animation, but struggled to find animation work after the stock market crashed. He worked at a record store, started DJing full-time, then opened a recording studio. But the bedroom production era was taking off. Everyone had a sound card and a microphone, and they were loath to pay for proper recording time. Kramer pitched music for ads and threw some successful parties. But when a flatmate moved out and asked to take the dining room table with him, Kramer decided to make a new one – one that fit the space better. He borrowed welding equipment from a friend’s mom, looked up how to use it on YouTube, and he was off. “I was shocked that people were more interested in the table than anyone had ever been in anything I’d ever written musically... I was like, well, I like making things. People care more about this…and this was a first try. I could probably do better than this on a second try, on a third try. And I just kept going.”

Over the years, he’s developed a unique set of skills, simply figuring things out as he went along (“Everything I know is, to be totally honest with you, from YouTube videos”). Now, he makes work only he can make – each piece, whether it be a loudspeaker or the most beautiful computer you have ever seen, is a product of his singular confluence of interests, skills, history and ambitions. He makes great speakers because he has an audio engineer’s ear from his time running the studio. His animation background allows him to work easily in CAD, producing 3D renderings of designs and speaker horns, which he can then 3D print and cast in resin. The rest is just problem-solving and trying really, really hard. “At a certain point,” says Kramer, “if you throw your body against the wall enough times, you are going to get some kind of result… and if you don’t know how to do something, you’re doing your research.” It’s a refreshingly accessible design philosophy, because it implies that the ability to make – to bring something into being and effect change in your environment – is available to anyone willing to put in enough work, research and persistence.  

And Kramer certainly puts in the work. He’s in his garage workshop seven days a week, unassisted, with very little time off. It’s physically extreme. “I am aware of the fact that I genuinely do think it is killing me,” he says. So why continue? “Making things is my whole life. I think you know you’re doing the right thing when, even in your darkest moments, you still wouldn’t be doing anything else.” He leans in across the table. “I have a new speaker I’m working on right now,” he tells me, a certain glint in his eye. “It was so complex to make. It took weeks to work through all the steps and stages…But like, man, it's gonna be nice when it's done.”

PHILIPDKRAMER 

www.kramer.studio 

@thebijouobservatory