Target Practice

If your Michael Graves-designed toaster from Target makes you happy every morning at breakfast, you have George Washington to thank.

The project that brought the world-famous architect and designer to Target started out as an in-your-face gesture to the Minneapolis-based retailer's Arkansas competitor. In 1996, Wal-Mart sought to site a new shopping center in Virginia, on the spot widely thought to have been the place where the cherry tree that young George slew once stood. Local activists were outraged.

Wal-Mart eventually backed off, but Target -- sensing a public relations opportunity -- donated $100,000 to preserve the historic farm and upped the ante by agreeing to fund the scaffolding surrounding the renovation of the Washington Monument. Looking for an attractive solution to a potentially ugly construction project, Target executives asked Graves for help.

Graves's solution was inspired: a blue mesh sheath that covered the monument, with a pattern that mimicked the masonry underneath. It was such a success that Target considered re-using the scaffolding to construct a kind of shadow monument in Minneapolis. But, more importantly, the collaboration led Ron Johnson, a vice president in charge of home décor, to approach Graves about designing for the retailer itself.

It was a game-changing partnership. In league with Target, Graves and his team were able to bring great design to a wide audience. Five years later, Graves has designed over 800 products for the company, ranging from toilet brushes to free-standing pavilions.

We spoke with Graves at his company's offices in Princeton, New Jersey, about the early days of the collaboration, defining success, the importance of the mid-range, where good ideas come from, and the future of housing.

Fast Company: Before the Target partnership, your reputation was primarily as an architect. Had you done products for the home before?

Michael Graves: I had done a teakettle for Alessi. When we began that collaboration, one of the first questions I asked Alberto (Alessi) was, "What's a home run?" I wanted to know, if we made something good, if he'd keep it in the line. He said, "What do you think it would be?" I said one teakettle per day per store. He said, "If you do that, you will own the company." It was, in fact, one teakettle per week per store. That's still a lot of teakettles. About 2 million of them have been sold -- at about $125 each.

FC: What did Target have in mind when it approached you for the first project?

Graves: Ron Johnson took me to lunch and said, "What would you like to start with? Maybe something iconic that's not a teapot. Like a toaster." So we made a list of half a dozen things. But by the time the line rolled out, we had 160 products in our first year.

FC: The line debuted at the Whitney Museum. Were you worried at all about what its reception would be?

Graves: I was worried that the press and my colleagues in architecture would think we were outside our limits. It doesn't matter if Ralph Lauren does Ralph Lauren Home and Ralph Lauren horses and mallets. He could do all this. He's a designer! But an architect? I thought we'd get killed by some nasty critics, or by some of my colleagues because they're so competitive with each other. But we got killed by only one critic, and the rest of the world loved the line. They loved the price. They loved the motivation. They loved a big box doing it.

FC: What was Target's reaction?

Graves: What encouraged me the most was not the launch in New York or how people talked about the product, but that the next Monday morning Target's chairman called and said they wanted another whole collection immediately. If they'd sat on it a couple months to see how the numbers were going, I wouldn't have been surprised. But instead, they had such faith that this was going to work that they said, let's start now.

FC: What kind of challenges did you face in attempting design at this level?

Graves: People don't realize it's just as hard to make a cheap thing as it is to make an elite or expensive thing; in some cases it's harder. We're always fighting -- in architecture or object making -- budgets. Since Target's done so well with it, other people have realized they should get other designers to create things in the middle ground.

FC: Prior to signing you, Target buyers were accustomed to cruising the market looking for products. How did they adjust to having their first in-house designer?