In Japan, Australia, and England there is such a strong youth culture.

But to me, to be original is to be yourself.

So if I want to buy a light in a shop and I don't find a light that I like, I think to myself what would I like? What would I like to buy? Then I started to imagine and design it for myself a lot of the time.

I never buy magazines, I never even buy books.

I'm so immersed in my little world that I don't often sit back and pay attention to what's going on around me. It truly stuns me when people recognize me. Obviously, I'm not a film star, but even at a design exhibition or art exhibition, if someone comes up to me, I'm sort of taken aback. I don't think of myself like that. But if I can have an effect on young designers, that's great - particularly young designers coming from Australia. Europeans grew up with design. The rest of us lived on tidbits of information.

I don't like to make my life like a book.

And where I grew up in Australia, surfing was a part of culture.