Much like the earlier project for Sony, this camera design for Canon never made it to production. Canon had asked me and Marc Newson to propose designs for 35mm film cameras; maybe it was a strategy to show their internal design team some new approaches. In any case we were obliged to give lectures on our work after presenting the projects. At the end of my design presentation one of the designers stood up and said “Excuse me but what is concept?” Thinking about it later I realised the concept was to design a camera which had the character of a camera and not to do an exercise in styling and trying to be different. Sometimes Concept should be given a rest in favour of allowing an object to be what it is.
Extract from Everything but the Walls by Jasper Morrison (Lars Müller Publishers, 2006)
