If you read MoCo Loco regularly, you know we are a fan of theaptBlog, Stefan Boublil’s daily dish on what is hot and not on the web. Stefan the blogger was interviewed here recently, but we decided it might be time to interview Stefan the designer - he's the creative director for design consultancy The Apartment. The designer studied music at the conservatory, photography at Parsons School of Design and film at NYU's Tisch School for the Arts. The blogger is really a sideline (don’t know how he finds the time), his main line is design. So even if all we talk about in this interview is his design work, like his blog, the answers are no less entertaining... SMK

The interior of Swich, a new sandwich concept store chain designed by The Apartment.

When did you decide to become a designer?
haven't quite yet actually. i'm still deciding between professional designer and needle disposal specialist for the cdc. i figure you really get to help people avoid contamination in both jobs, great benefits and you get to work with pretty cool logos both places. but the clencher is that with the needle disposing, you get a moped and in the designing, you get to meet really interesting people, so i'm not sure yet...

Can you give me some examples of really interesting people you’ve met? What about them was so interesting?
sweetu patel who started citizen: citizen with his wife nicole is one of the most compelling characters i've met in this industry filled with posers and swill merchants. it's hard enough starting a company from scratch (trust me) but starting a design gallery with objects that border on artistic dementia in a brooklyn space unseen from the street and in a neighborhood heretofore unbeknownst to most design buyers takes a big set of balls. and whole lot of passion. speaking with sweetu and nicole is an exercise in nudity as they force you to strip off your affected self and just be you, provided you know who that is. now run by philip wood, their left coast counterpart, with equal zeal and fearlessness, the brand has exploded onto the scene as a prime purveyor of thoughtful, intelligent wares for the thoughtful, intelligent crowd (now available at theaptShop...). and it all started with passion which is what interests me most in people. anybody, it seems, can design a chair these days, few people have a good reason to and the ones who do are usually those with a passionate story to tell. other than them, i'm really not sure...

Where do you do most of your design work?
in a damp, sunless basement we call the asylum The Apartment Creative Department. we have set up our office where The Apartment Design Store used to be, a duplex on a street level, and some of the creative peeps chose to follow me and go downstairs as i can't stand the bright, scorching light of the sun. (it burns!)

Will you stay there forever or are you interested in relocating somewhere else within NYC (provided there are no windows)? It seems like with the apartment's growing popularity you might have a much larger staff in coming years. Do you even want to go in that direction?
very interesting question mr. LoCo [Ms!]. as you probably haven't noticed, The Apartment changes direction every 3 years (although not by design but out of restlessness and curiosity.) 2000-2003: the boutique years. 2003-2006: the agency era. 2007-2010: the ego age in which we are indeed contemplating a move to more spacious digs in one of our own projects. of course, the light ratio will make it difficult for me so we have installed blackout shades in my office as well as a musty dead rat for optimal inspirational conditions. as far as a growing staff, more isn't always better, we're actually more eager to refine our client list than to take on more work. we want need to do things that we haven't done before, that challenge both us and them, that's where we shine! anyone listening?...

Where, or from what, do you get inspiration for your work?
i don't believe in specialization, i believe in ideas. i don't care if a person has amazing skills, i care about what tv shows they can't miss and whose column they read and get mad at. i want their inspiration to come from places that have nothing to do with their industries or department because that's how the work gets richer, how the more complex stories are told. and that's where i get inspired. i watch as much tv, movies, listen to as much music, read as many magazines and newspaper as possible in order to constitute a repository of knowledge that is then put to use in brainstorms along with the entire team who have, each individually, their own set of inspirational tools. we are storytellers, not designers, and in order to tell good stories, we need background for our characters before we draw them and that can be borrowed from any numbers of sources that seemingly have little to do with the task at hand.

This is a very interesting statement. What you’re saying is you archive all sorts of different things in your brain (that you gather from different forms of media) and then you pick and choose which ones will influence your projects. Are there any specific television programs, movies, music, or magazines that you find yourself using over and over again for inspiration?
first and foremost, new york city. when i moved here from paris in 1989 without a clue about what to do with my life, i was only sure of the fact that whatever was to happen, it needed to happen in this town. back then, when disney and snapple hadn't bought it yet, when new york city looked, sounded and smelled like something to both marvel at and feel sorry for, the inspiration to focus creative energies caught me by surprise and i enrolled in parson's photography course only to switch to film at nyu a year later. that kinetic effervescence of the city that can make you jump from discipline to discipline and still feel like you're on the right path is quite a lifeforce. like when i stumbled upon wallpaper magazine and realized that stories could be told through what appeared to me to be a new form of theater: retail. today, as the city gets tamer and blander, i look to media to fill that void. on tv: current and trio (before it was ruthlessly yanked) inspire me. in music: los angeles philharmonic conductor esa-pekka salonen, d'angelo, jazzonova and herbie hancock because they continually push the boundaries of the genre they are supposed to dwell in. wired, wallpaper, frame and black tail are the magazines that provide me with the necessary inspiration needed to always think that we can do better.

The Apartment did the design, branding and marketing for Yelo wellness centers. "a new way to escape with 3 levels of reflexology and the ability to nap for up to an hour. rooms are designed for you and a yelo therapist to get all the tension of those burned-out muscles.".

What is your favorite part of the design process and why?
those first draft ideas are the best for me. they are the impulses that drive me to pitch a job in the first place. because my brain is so full of information at all times, the first brainstorming session on any project is the opportunity to unload some of it so that i can make room for the Night Gallery marathon coming up the following weekend. that said nothing would be done with those if my team, who is excruciatingly detail-oriented, didn't follow up and expand those initial brainstorms into fully-realized projects.

Are you met with a lot of prerequisites from potential clients? For instance, when designing the Black apartment, the client said “"at midnight, i want to feel like i am in a shanghai nightclub." From which areas did you pull inspiration from to create that space? Is this always a difficult process, or do you find it easy?
because our point of view was so well known thanks to the store, we are quite lucky in that respect. clients tend to come to us knowing that we will not address a problem head on, with solutions that seem obvious, for which we would then only become pairs of hands. we re-think because we do not know how to do otherwise, we do not accept the status-quo and, usually, our clients are fine with slowly get used to that. this approach usually demands more time but they eventually understand it's time well-spent. and that process, although time-consuming, feels easy because it is a natural one, the result of all that aforementioned drowning in media. the black apartment didn't take any more time in that respect than anything else we've ever done; we looked at all kinds of chinese artifacts, settled on a black lacquered chinese box and knew we had something unique to offer the client, who loved it on the first showing (which surprised the hell out of us!) the result of all this is that we depend of this databank at all times and rely on it when inspiration is summoned.

How would you label/categorize your work?
whether they are told through architecture, graphics, advertising or marketing, for private or commercial use, we tell our clients' stories. and we always do so with minimalism but never forgetting the history of the space, brand or person for whom we are working. we are, simply, teller of tales.

Do you find yourselves establishing a personal relationship with your clients before the conceptual process starts, as to be able to understand the image they want to embrace?
the first part of our process is indeed more akin to detective work than design work. we request to get close and, when permitted, do infiltrate every nook and cranny of a person's life or a brand's target market in order to monitor behavior as it impacts every step of design. intimacy, of course, is not always desired but after proper lubricants have been administered, we find that a first date is never far behind.

Do you have a signature style? If yes, what are the hallmarks of your style?
following up on the last question, we have coined our style romantic minimalism which captures the respect we have for the past as well as an obsessive quest for simplification. but farce is always an essential part of our work, we have to make fun of it all in order to arrive at any truth about ourselves and so it is about work.

Why do you strive for simplification?
look around! the very fact that i'm answering questions for a design blog as well read as yours means that our information sources have expanded so much as to make my mindless drivel interesting to someone other than my mother, and even she's asleep by now. and that's before being able to take this information and transferring it to portable means of information distribution, before deriving it into the top ten hit "inspiration perspiration" [for the record, Perspiration is our next series of interviews, ed.] by the MoCoLoCo Singers, before year's box office winner MoCo? LoCo! the movie, etc... we haven't had much time to really understand how all the content, including this interview, that we are producing and then leveraging, affects our way of life, we just know that there's a lot to digest. this is where design can have an impact, where it can come in, look at an object's function or the flow of a public space and make it easier for all of us to see and use the world around us, simplify it. until we figure out whether Diet MoCoLoCo Inspirational Raspberry Tea is absolutely necessary that is. which it just might.

Who are your favorite designers and/or architects?
my favorite artists are always those who are able to bridge categories or labels. they are the people or teams of people that are not stuck in one style, one set of shapes and ideas, those who can think about a particular problem as something to solve on its own terms, not as an opportunity to stick in an idea they've had in a drawer for two years. with that in mind, i immensely respect constantin boym, yves béhar, marc newson, droog design, herzog & de meuron, crispin porter & bogusky and mother to name a few.

What item (PC, pen, etc) can you not do without when you are designing?
information is my trade and so my mac is like one of my limbs.

If you had to make the choice to lose a pinky finger or not have a mac for 4 months, which one would you pick?
who needs a pinky? i mean, really, look at your hand right now, that's just bad design!

What's next?
death by firing squad. (after, of course, having built The Apartment into a provider of culture for, first, a niche audience located in hub cultures that then trickled down to the masses with theaptExpress outposts in every mall in america and international airport which helped nourish a cult of the personality and establish theaptChurch as well as theaptRehab as the entry brainwashing tool but masquerading as the not-for-profit arm which slowly gained a political front so active and influential in the now-overblown design-savvy populace that senate seats and eventually cabinet positions were won and a design police state declared after 9 years of which a coup was successful in bringing back democracy, as well as cheap toasters, and a war tribunal in the hague declaring me and my acolytes responsible for millions of low self-esteems and un-juiced lemons and sentenced to, well, you know...)

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VITAL STATS
Full name: stefan boublil
Location: new york city for ever!
Size of team: currently 10
In business since: 2000
Claim to fame projects: the apartment design store / the black apartment / the ymca / peep (thai restaurant)
Spare time: right!...

MEDIA FAVES
Favorite website(s): newsmap / curbed / the brilliance / re.luct / drunken stepfather / cinematical / goldenfiddle / vvork / engadget
What music is on your iPod or radio? too much to mention, i cannot live without music, i hate silence and radio dj's which is why my iPod is my closest friend. right now i've got some jazzanova / thelonious monk / d'angelo / gilles peterson / imogen heap as well as old broadcasts from orson welles' campbell soup playhouse.
Your favorite magazine(s): new york times magazine (getting better), wallpaper (better than ever), wired (best ever)
Last or current book you are reading: the jesus dynasty by james d. tabor - having been a student of theology since i was 17, i pretty much exclusively read religious books as i am fascinated with the origins of religion, particularly the schism between judaism and christianity.
Last movie you saw: before The Apartment, i used to see every single movie the weekend they came out in theaters. since that, about one a month and that is a true bummer as i am a huge fan of the communal experience. a big screen and hd have changed my life in that regard. last movie i saw? superman. last
movie i loved? syriana