We prefer to have the initiative. Usually when designers show us something to be taken up in our collection, they do this on the basis of Droog products they know. They try to fit in, whereas we are always looking for new stuff and new ideas. Droog Design is not a style. We are heading for the unknown. So far we have never chosen anything that was brought to our attention from outside.

We are head of IM Masters at the Design Academy since 2002. The program is based on a conceptual and contextual approach. We expect that our students have been trained as decent designers, equipped with technical skills. During the two years at our school the students concentrate on research and creative concepts. We have a lot of Asian students. During the first half year they are quite mixed up because they are not used to think in concepts, but in the end some of them turn out to be brilliant.

In 1991 Renny Ramakers noticed interesting new products by young Dutch designers and she felt it as a sign of the time and decided to bring some products of these designers together and to present it as a common mentality. She organized small exhibitions in The Netherlands and Belgium. Beginning 1993 she met Gijs Bakker, her present partner in droog. He was preparing a presentation of the same kind of products in Milan for the International Furniture Fair. So they decided to cooperate and droog was born. The presentation in Milan was immediately a big success. Reason for them to continue and to set up a foundation. In the first years they did the work for droog in their private studios: after all it was restricted to the yearly presentation in Milan. From ‘99 they started to work in a small office together with a secretary. By that time, the work load had increased enormously. In 1996 they started to initiate experimental projects, beginning with Dry Tech which meant experimenting with high tech fibres. In 1997 Droog received the first commission of a company, i.e. the German porcelain manufacturer Rosenthal. In 2000 droog became involved in the IM masters course at the Design Academy in Eindhoven. Since 2003 droog is leading this course. In 2003 the droog bv started, a separate company producing and distributing a number of the products in the droog collection. And in 2002 droog started a small gallery in Amsterdam. In 2004 droog moved to a bigger location – in a beautiful historical building – which gives space for our office, a shop, exhibition space, reading room and a kitchen in which design dinners can be prepared.

The droog mentality could be summarized as ‘dry’. ‘Dry’ as in dry wit, unadorned informality, ascetic irony. ‘Dry’ as that essentially Dutch inclination to ‘do normal’ and at the same time critically investigate what you’re doing and the way you do it.

We have initiated droog bv, the company that is producing and distributing a part of our products. This company has now started production in countries like China and Turkey. We presented in our show in Milan in 2005 the first results, presenting products that are 1/3 of the price they had before.

We work as an art director amidst a loose network of designers. Sometimes we ask familiar ones, sometimes we select new people, and sometimes we do both. Based on the kind of commission we consider who are best suited to work on it. We may organize a small competition. The designers are guided by us from the brief in the beginning right until the completion of their tasks.

Well, it was in the beginning, because The Netherlands is where droog started. But since inspirational quality is paramount and can occur anywhere, it is no longer the case. Products and designers can be from all over the globe.

Yes, sometimes there is a lot of discussion. We tell the designer what we don’t like and sometimes we come up with possible solutions. A good example is our yearly presentation in Milan. We formulate an overall theme and invite a number of designers to participate. They come up with sketches; we discuss these sketches with them. In some cases we do not continue with a designer because we don’t believe in their proposals at all, in other cases we make a selection and discuss with them how it could fit better in the overall theme, and in some cases the designers come up with brilliant ideas which influence our theme.

You could indeed say that droog is the voice of Gijs Bakker and Renny Ramakers. They initiate, select, guide, correct and polish. Conversely you can also say that they follow designers, being inspired by their work. If a designer presents something that initially is not droog, droog is not interested in it. It happens that a designer presents a concept that could be really droog but Gijs and Renny don’t like the way the concept has been executed. In such cases they guide the designer towards a product that satisfies them and the designer in all aspects.

droog is a brand and a mentality: design of products that do what they should and think about why they’re doing it in the first place: function? fun? wit? criticism? All of the above?
droog is a curatorial collection of exclusive products, a congenial pool of designers, a distributed statement about design as cultural commentary, a medium, working with cutting edge designers and enlightened clients, taking the production and distribution of its collection into its own hands, being unique in its conceptual and contextual approach towards design.

We visit studio's and exhibitions, monitor graduation projects and read magazins to keep informed.

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