#ADinfluencer: We present the top 100 creatives 2021

Dreamers, doers, icons! These are the top 100 creatives 2021: They shape the present and give us a glimpse of tomorrow's world today.

On the cover: Milanese modernism! In the apartment of a family, designer Hannes Peer conducts proud furniture soloists to the colorful choir. AD

One of the tasks of a journalist is to answer precise questions like "Who? When? What? Why?" so that you, the reader, receive accurate information. Everyday professional life, of course, teaches you that it is often the digressions that lead to the most interesting statements from an interview partner and provide the deepest insights. These are lucky moments - but as it goes in life: Fortuna cannot be summoned. But why not, we thought to ourselves in preparation for this issue, in which we introduce you to the one hundred most important designers in the world today, why not consistently fall through side doors into the house for once? So to speak. So we put the obligatory questions on the back burner and concentrated all the more on the freestyle. To questions like: What would you like to invent? What was your best mistake? Or: Which designer would you like to have dinner with one day?

On the cover: Milanese modernism! In the apartment of a family, designer Hannes Peer conducts proud furniture soloists to a colorful choir.

As hoped, many of the answers surprised and delighted us. We learn about an upset stomach that first led to fever dreams and finally to a brilliant product idea. About the obsession with staring at floor plans for hours. Of the secret desire to build a church. Or to invent a post-capitalist economic system. And about all sorts of highly curious ideas in the shower. In short: We experience a hundred creative people with a thousand facets - some of which have amazing parallels. For example, in response to the question "What would you have become if you had chosen a different profession?" we received the answers "cook" and "gardener" remarkably often. Both times it concerns a vocational field, which connects sensual creativity with the direct, intensive occupation with the plant world. And they are activities that can best be pursued as a hobby.

The Bold - Frances Merrill. When the Californian interior designer gets down to business, patterns, colors and textures swirl around and around, finally coming together to form a big, coherent whole - inviting and warm.

The Symphony - Pierre Yovanovitch. "Materials, textures, lighting mood, shapes, colors - everything that makes up my interiors and furniture designs I got from nature. It is the A ..." And the O? "Is the art. A strong interior needs dialogue, that's what gives rooms a spiritual dimension."

"We experience a hundred creatives with a thousand facets - some of which then again show amazing parallels."

In France, people don't talk about a hobby, but use the beautiful expression avoir un violon d'Ingres - after the painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' passion for music. Parisian design star Pierre Yovanovitch, for instance, turns out to be such a case of parallel interests. He cites classical music as a source of inspiration, but instead of a decorator, he would most likely have become a landscape planner. The park around his Château de Fabrègues in Provence would be a rich field of activity for him. However, at over 36 hectares, it is far too large for Yovanovitch to design on his own. So he enlisted the services of garden guru Louis Benech. And is now constantly learning as he gardens. "It's," he says, "like watching a child grow up. The park is now half-grown and becoming more legible in its character." Which brings us back to the topic at hand. A person's profile is rounded out by his or her loves, for they lie outside the daily constraints. They are to character what the ascendant is to the horoscope: not the main aspect, but still of enormous influence. My heartfelt thanks go to all hundred designers for these in-depth insights!

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