Vitals: Born in Valencia, Spain, 1974
Based in London, England
Occupation: Lighting, installation and product designer
Education: Master of product design, Royal College of Art, London (2000)
Bachelor of product design, ESDI CEU, Valencia (1998)

Selected exhibitions and installations
Salone del Mobile, Milan (2010)
Phish Festival 8, Indio, California (2009)
Waterdrop for Roca; Ten Again, 100% Design London (2008, 2007)
Spain Emotion, Tokyo Designers’ Week (2008)
NetObjects: My World, New Crafts, Experimentadesign, Lisbon (2005)
300% Spanish Design, Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, Japan (2005)
Twinkle Twinkle, Laforet Museum, Harajuku, Tokyo (2004)
Sentiers Lumineux, Villa Noailles, Hyères, France (2004)
Design 21: Love/Why?, Barcelona, Tokyo, Kobe, New  York, Paris (2004)
Brilliant, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2004)

Selected awards
Designer of the Year, AD magazine (2009)
Nachlux Award (2009)
Second prize, the New Bus for London competition with Miñarro García and Javier Esteban, Transport for London (2008)
Premio Nacional Diseños No Aburridos, Murcia, Spain (2002)
Peugeot Design Award, London (2000)

Selected clients
Roca, Moooi, Droog, Metalarte, Gandia  Blasco, ICEX Spanish Ministry of Industry Tourism and Trade, Phish

Boy with the bubble
One of my first projects at the Royal College of Art was inspired by a flour-filled balloon I found at a Paris market – a simple and cheap toy that changes shape as you play with it. At first, I didn’t know what my design was going to be. I tried filling balloons with glass beads, like those used for sandpaper, as well as other things; then I experimented with table salt. It diffuses the heat, so it’s warm but not too hot to touch. And it provides a translucent glow.

The result of my experiments was Super­patata, a soft, colourful latex lamp that can be used as a pillow or hot water bottle. Droog exhibited it in 2000 in its Milan showroom during the furniture fair; and the lamp also won the Peugeot design prize of £15,000. This gave me the freedom to start my own studio – albeit from my bedroom, but at least I could start entering design competitions and making things. In 2002, I did the Clothes Hanger Lamp, also for Droog, and got a real studio space in London.

Newer balloons
For the outdoor Phish Festival 8 last autumn in Indio, California, we were asked to do a project with an open brief but a tight budget. We wanted to do something really big, because it had to be seen by 50,000 people, outside in the dark. We had to design it in London so it could be shipped and assembled in Indio. So I thought, “Well, air is cheap.”

To heighten the experience of the music, we created this “parasite” design – a helium-filled blimp with balloons all over it and led lights embedded in the necks of the balloons. It lives off the music, changing colour and brightness based on the sound, and it can also be controlled by remote control or live through the Web. More than a thousand helium balloons were transformed into digital screens by the leds inside them, and by lasers projected onto them from the ground. I have worked with balloons a lot, but never with helium and blimps.

By Terri Peters
Read the full story in the print edition of our March/April 2010 issue

Above middle: The soft bounciness of Superpatata, a  salt-filled fluorescent latex lamp for Droog, makes it equally ideal as a soothing pillow and a plaything.

Right: To devise a dramatic, mesmerizing effect for a Phish concert, Serrano and Javier Esteban created Borealis by inserting LEDs into 1,000 helium balloons and projecting lasers onto them.