International Boat Industry article on the J&J Design book celebrating the firm’s 40 years
Winners of the recent Designer of the Year award, J&J Design Studio release new book detailing the landmark designs and inspirational people behind the firm’s success.
J&J Design, which last month was award the Designers of the Year award at the Boat Builder Awards for Business Achievement, held in association with Raymarine, has released Forty Years of J&J Design Studio published by leading Croatian boating publishing house Morski Vodic.
The hardcover book contains 320 full-colour pages in English, 158 photographs, 69 drawings, 37 painted portraits and 48 illustrations documenting the rise of the Slovenian design house that was founded by brothers Japec and Jernej Jakopin in 1983. Edited by Shannon Jamieson Vazquez of SJV Editorial from New York, the book is divided in 3 sections: The Story, The Boats and The Work. The first section covers the history of the office from 1983 to 2023; the second presents 40 selected projects with their profile drawing, technical data, and the insider story of the selected yacht. The third part illustrates the main accomplishments of the office’s efforts in the fields of conceptual, naval architecture, exterior and interior design, comfort and convenience features, materials & engineering, production process/tooling and green boating work.
The office developed a deep hands-on knowledge of all elements of boat production, including all areas of cost, man-hours count and needs, factory layout optimization, marketing and branding and other sales-related elements.
The book features paintings of boating legends: Winfried Herrmann, Bavaria founder and owner
Possibly the main element of work has been intertwining disciplines and know-how with all components of new boat development, with the design coming together in a harmonic full swing of comprehensive and aggregate integration of features.
J&J’s attitude is constant optimization of all elements of design, and their harmonization, guided by productivity and sustainability. Having it all covered by one in-house team has been very important for its prosperity. Sitting in the same boat with their clients, in a true partnership, also seems critical to the achievement. At the same time these intense relationships were extremely valuable for the office: working closely with the heads of the builders and with their development offices brought J&J into direct contact with the knowledge, experience, and wisdom of the best brains in the industry.
Boating legend, Doug Peterson, multiple America’s Cup winning naval architect, 1945-2017
J&J was directly involved in creation or co-creation of many boating brands established in the four decades, like Sun Odyssey, Prestige, Dufour Classic, Salona, Shipman, Skagen, Greenline, Monte Carlo Yachts, Aquila, Limitless, BMW/Tyde, Yot and Saxdor.
J&J founders, Japec and Jernej Jakopin
Possibly the most interesting part of the book is the four-decade voyage through the boating industry. J&J worked closely with the majority of large boatbuilders, and collaborated intimately with world’s top design, concept or technology experts. The book talks about the boating legends J&J worked with in the past four decades, many of them not always appearing on the media scenery but equally important for development of the industry: names such as Thomas Mangold of Jeanneau or Dieter Gust of Beneteau fame; leading authorities in boat design like Robert Rigaudeau, Doug Peterson, and Guillaume Verdier; conceptual gurus like Francois Chalain, Hugues Husson, Jean-Francois de Premorel, Giuseppe Giuliani, Lex Raas, and John Braitwaite; company leaders like the Shoechl brothers, Winfried Herrmann, Olivier Poncin, Bruno Cathelinais, Frank Xiong, Bill McGill, Norberto Ferretti and Aldo Cranchi; and technology/equipment/sailing heroes such as Olaf and Peter Harken, Bill Green, Giovanni Belgrano or Michel Desjoyeaux. Not belonging to any of the well-defined boating culture, and coming from a small nation which always needed to adapt (and to speak several languages), J&J communicated and functioned successfully in all of them, be it Italian, French, German, British, Scandinavian, American or Chinese. ”J&J team was fortunate to work with - and learn from - all of them,” says J&J’s Japec Jakopin. ”The main issue is that all legends die, and so does the history connected to them if we are not careful. That is why we felt it was so important to recollect and document all these stories J&J was involved with - and celebrate the world’s boating history over these 40 years.”
Lex Raas, South African sailing and powerboat catamaran legend
Forty Years of J&J Design Studio is priced at €40 and can be purchased here.
Essential facts about J&J Design:
• Founded in 1983 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, by brothers Japec and Jernej Jakopin
• Designer of power- and sailing yachts for production builders worldwide
• Close to 400 projects for 70 boatbuilders from 30 countries with over 75,000 boats and yachts built from 20 to 150 feet in length
• The projects and the J&J Design office won 126 Boat of the Year, Environmental or Design awards
• Pioneers of carbon-epoxy and hybrid-electric power technologies
• The office has 24 naval architects, designers and engineers, and operates a tooling, milling and prototyping operation with 45 technicians and
two 20 metre milling machines.