I have long felt that Ray and Charles Eames’s metaphor of the Designer as a Good Host was a good one and noticed that I hadn’t written about here. So I will make up for that now with this quote from the Power of Ten website:
“Since the Eameses felt the guest/host relationship was one of the most powerful relationships in the world, it is fitting that their most famous film, Powers of Ten, should center on a picnic. Charles and Ray argued that the guest/host relationship existed everywhere: in the tent of a nomadic herdsman, in the layout of a railroad station, in the way you are greeted by the circus. It also exists in design: how you make a chair or begin a film, and in all the subtle equations and gestures of welcoming in every day human existence.”
And this from an interview with Rolf Fehlbaum, CEO of Vitra in Fast Company:
“When I was a teenager, I served as an interpreter between Charles Eames and my father. Charles used to talk about the “guest-host relationship.” You, as a designer or a salesperson, are the host, and your customer is your guest. You have to think about how your guest will perceive whatever you’re offering him. You don’t try to please your guest because you want to sell him something. You try to please him because he’s your guest. You serve him because you respect him.”