Neil Poulton is a Scottish product designer, living and working in Paris, France.

 

He specialises in the design of simple, mass-produced objects such as the LaCie D2 Hard Drive and has won numerous international design awards. The Centre George Pompidou Museum in Paris has six Poulton-designed objects in its permanent collection including the 1993 hard drive Le Coq and a 2002 model of the LaCie D2 Hard Drive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We chatted in February 2016. This is an abridged version of our full conversation during which we discussed the evolution of his design process for the LaCie hard drive that stars in the film. We also discussed the correct pronunciation of LaCie, being a Scot in Paris, Le Coq, the design culture of hard drives, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Charles Jencks and the Silent Butler, Design symbolism, The LaCie Pompidou collection, cloud data storage, the history & future of data storage, dealing with large amounts of data, Digital Vs Analogue, Vinyl Records, VR, film Vs digital, how technological artefacts will be represented in the future and smart phones vs. toilets.

 

This is an abridged version of our full conversation, a number of other subjects were also discussed that feature in the film.