Siam-Handmade: Propaganda's Sleek, Whimsical Products: Thailand on Design Map.

"The spirit of fun and the sense of humor can be found in every aspect of Thai culture. PROPAGANDIST tries to capture these spirits around the working environment into product under the brand PROPAGANDA!."

Westerners usually equate Thailand with leisure. It’s a country that offers beach vacations, expert massages, steaming platters of noodles, and ornate Buddhist temples elaborately decorated in colored tile and gold-hued metal. These images may be stereotypes, but they reflect truths. They emphasize the Thai appreciation for the ephemeral and the sensual: good meals, refreshing swims, spiritual uplift. Thailand is known for providing aesthetic pleasures, but within the sea of visual delights this developing nation offers, commercial art and design remain underacknowledged.

Anyone who visits Bangkok these days will be struck by the modernity of the massive city. It’s a true urban center that approximates an amalgam of New York, Los Angeles, Mexico City and Tokyo. And while Bangkok comes complete with the problems common to major metropolitan areas—smog, crowds, a dash of sleaze—it also houses an emerging community of notable contemporary designers.

The interiors of restaurants, bars, hotels and shopping malls maintain world-standard chic when it comes to design, cuisine and architecture (see architect Sumet Jumsai’s award-winning high-rise for the Bank of Asia, a.k.a. the Robot Building). Like other parts of Asia, Thailand is a shopper’s paradise, set up for nonstop strolling and bargaining. Perhaps surprising to some Westerners, though, the retailers, in high-end malls as well as funky street markets, include purveyors of impressively designed, cutting-edge clothing, graphics, furniture and home décor—all rich with color as well as bits of flashiness and wit that seem uniquely Thai. But innovative and eye-catching as they are, these products haven’t quite broken into global markets.

Propaganda is one of the few Thai design companies to bring its wares to the international shelves of museum stores and design boutiques—promoting Thai design not just as a side effect of its success but as part of the firm’s mission. Since the mid-1990s, the Bangkok-based group of designers and marketing experts has focused on making a Thai brand with broad appeal. The splash page of the company Web site employs bold type in pointing out that these products are designed in Thailand. It’s a matter of national pride.

The Propaganda products—kitchenware, lighting, gifts and a whole wacky line devoted to a comic character named Mr. P—possess an unusual mix of clean lines, sparkling plastics and a hearty, sometimes surrealistic, wit. Their extensive catalog of objects, which are sold in Propaganda boutiques in Thailand and also distributed to 20 countries across the globe, includes lamps in the shapes of matches and giant molars as well as molar toothbrush and toothpick holders. The base of their brightly colored rubber drain plug is imprinted with concentric circles, with an upstretched hand reaching from the center. Titled “Help!,” this novel incarnation of a household staple earned Propaganda the German Form award in 2002. Other products received Good Design awards from the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design: Saltepper, a combo salt/pepper shaker rendered in pewter; Melting Bulb, a freestanding light fixture that looks just like its name suggests; Ap-Peel, a boat-shaped plastic fruit bowl with a carving knife ingeniously concealed within the structure; and Shark, a goofy yet graceful bottle opener that adheres magnetically to the fridge.

Most of Propaganda’s products exude a whimsy that stems from a temperament unique to this Southeast Asian country. “We are a Thai company, and we often present the Thai character in our work,” says Chaiyut Plypetch, one of the company’s chief designers. “We like to party. We like to smile and joke. We have a cheeky sense of humor.” In a shy, soft-spoken manner (with help from a translator), he goes on to suggest that Propaganda’s products are an expression of how, in traditional Thai culture, even basic tools of farmers and fishermen are highly crafted and adorned. Propaganda takes the idea into the 21st century, styling everyday objects with new materials and processes.

Founded in 1994 as an offshoot of a video-production house called Phenomenon, which specialized in television commercials, Propaganda has grown to become part of a network of divisions with individual specialties, Propaganda’s being affordable home and gift items. Their headquarters is a modest suite of offices on Rachadapisek Road in a residential and new-business district in Bangkok, a city that, without zoning laws, sprawls in many directions. (Not far from the offices is a grand, neon light–covered Greco-Roman building that looks like a movie set but is actually a “massage parlor.”) The offices hold a staff of 35; with shop and warehouse employees, the total Propaganda team is a lean 65.

Propaganda created its first original products with the impulse to counteract the myth that Asian design is a copy of Western originals (think Louis Vuitton and Gucci knock-offs). “We wanted to prove that Thai people can do product design,” Plypetch says. Ironically, imitation Propaganda products currently are being produced in China.

In the major Bangkok shopping centers where Propaganda’s stores stand, the public knows the firm’s aesthetic, which is emphasized by window displays that reveal the company’s penchant for dynamic interior space. One features a male mannequin dangling from above, his head seemingly well planted into the ceiling.

Plypetch cites organic and aerodynamic modernist forms as his aesthetic interests—and 20th-century Italian industrial designer Achille Castiglioni and current lifestyling superstar Philippe Starck as practitioners he respects. And, yes, he does have a favorite medium. “Plastic is the best material,” Plypetch proclaims, with a coy smile.

The Mr. P products combine Plypetch’s interests. Developed by Plypetch (himself a Mr. P), Mr. P is a cartoon embodiment of the id, an oddly endearing hybrid of the Pillsbury Doughboy, anthropomorphic Alessi accessories, and the South Park kids. He’s round, smooth and marshmallow-white—and has been rendered in utilitarian plastic figures as well as on T-shirts, stationery, mugs and such. His character gives into physical impulses (passing gas, urinating) that are natural but socially inappropriate. “He came from the idea of all the things you cannot do—like fart in public—but he can do that,” says Plypetch. “He always does the ‘bad thing.’” He’s even a bit melancholic and prone to tears yet still manages to be perversely adorable.

Plypetch also is able to make the user of his products perform boundary-pushing acts. The switch of the Mr. P lamp, for example, is located at the character’s naked crotch. A version in which Mr. P’s head is covered in a lampshade stems from the designer’s invented narrative, in which Mr. P is caught red-handed having an affair and hides in shame beneath the shade. The piece also conjures up the idea of drunken revelry: dancing with a lampshade on one’s head. Still, Mr. P maintains a semblance of poise.

“He’s a character who can laugh and play. Japanese people are crazy about Mr. P,” Plypetch says. (In 1993, Propaganda was invited to design a café as part of a Thai design exhibition at the Hara Museum in Tokyo.) Propaganda is working to turn Mr. P into more of a brand, like Hello Kitty. There’s even discussion of an animated movie built around his character.

These Mr. P signature products may be difficult to translate to Western tastes, but is the character considered shocking in Asia? “He’s more like a cartoon. He is balanced on a line between being cute, but not ugly.” There are, however, more tasteful Mr. P items, like the company’s best-selling One Man Try tape dispenser, in which the character seems to be doing sit-ups; a strip of tape emerges from his mouth, tongue-like, and reaches to the serrated tips of his toes. It’s a formally pleasing object that manages to bring a bit of physical comedy to the workplace.

Like his creator, Mr. P is something of a loner, although there are rumors that Swan, a more recent product, is perhaps his girlfriend. She is as graceful as he is lumbering, a ballerina whose tutu doubles for a whisk broom or a serving tray. The domestic mixes with the fantastical, the mundane with the romantic. Imagine their progeny!

Next generations are indeed part of Propaganda’s mission. The company sponsors an annual Young Design Award, which honors student and fresh-out-of-school visions. A collaborative project of Propaganda and Elle Décor Thailand, the award provides a showcase—an exhibition in the very public setting of a popular shopping center—for new product designs and ideas.

This support of a broader design community is part of the Propaganda plan. “The design market in Europe is mature and always looking for something new,” says Plypetch. “The market in Asia is fresher. I think it’s the future.”