A Conversation With Ora Ito

An article by Ayelet Noff    2 Comments

While I was at the DLD conference back in January I was lucky enough to get the chance meet Ito Morabito the famed industrial designer who designs under the name Ora Ito. He is something of an Internet pioneer; while at a magazine called Crash he created virtual products for virtual brands. The idea, he said, ”was to make fake publicity for fake products that looked real”. He put these products on the Internet, and soon a Swiss collector was asking to buy the nonexistent watch he had seen on the Web site. Since then he has built the Ora Ito brand into an international tour-de-force in the world of industrial design. His impressive client list now includes Nike, Heineken, Adidas, the furniture manufacturer Cappellini and the lighting giant Artemide.

More recently he was also on the judging panel of The Crane TV contest. A good video about his life and work can be seen here.

I sat down with him for a conversation about technology, design and where the two meet. See the full interview below.