Death By Design
I’d like to introduce Leon Fitzpatrick, an industrial designer for Motorola. He’ll be guest blogging for Design Hole during our trip to the Salone del Mobile in Milan which starts on April 15th. Leon and I were students together at The College for Creative Studies. Our hard work as students won us a trip to the Salone three years ago. Leon was a wellspring of design knowledge during our trip. I know you’ll enjoy what he has to say.
So to kick things off, here is Leon’s first post regarding, in part, his thoughts on the world of celebrity industrial design. Take it away Leon.
When people ask me what it is I do, I tell them I’m an Industrial Designer. This, more often than not, draws a blank stare followed by a moment of realization and then a response such as ‚Äúis that like engineering?‚Äù I then go on to explain, using various hand gestures, pointing, and other descriptive motions how most things they come in contact with have been thought out, developed, refined and realized by some kind of design professional. More specifically, industrial design is that which covers everything from shoes, furniture, lighting, appliances, cutlery, packaging and cell phones to trains, planes and automobiles‚Ķ to say the very least.
Perhaps it’s a cultural disconnect, but then again people seem to understand what a car designer is, they know what a fashion designer does and could name a few rather easily, and both graphic and web design are instantly recognizable today as our consumption of both digital and printed media increases. So it always comes as a slight shock that not many people fully understand what (arguably) the most common form of design is all about. To me it’s not about ‚Äúmaking life easier‚Äù or selling things based on the way they look to window shoppers. Industrial Design should uplift people’s everyday experience of their physical world by providing a human layer with which to interface with utilitarian functionality.
This sounds simple, yet all you need to do is walk into a mall to see how it’s become just the opposite. Good design is literally good packaging; cell phones package the technology inside, a shoe surrounds a foot, a vehicle envelops a space and an engine in which to make it mobile.
You would of course think that with the rise of celebrity Industrial Designers, such as Philippe Starck, Karim Rashid, Marc Newson and so on, there would come a heightened sense of awareness about Industrial Design as a profession. They and others like them tend to wear the ‘designer’ label with such pride and advertise themselves so well that many of them now have a carte blanche approach to design that provides them an unlimited bankroll with some of the biggest design-centric clientele on Earth. Yet here, unfortunately, is exactly where it all falls down.
I truly believe that the original intent of Industrial Design, by definition, has been lost (if not slaughtered) by shelves full of faux-functional products and endless overly-analytic praise by a mille-feuille of design publications every time some a so-called Product Designer creates a gun-shaped lamp, a useless piece of “playfully metaphoric” yet inane furniture, or a conceptual bubble car that would never have any right being put into production simply for the sheer ludicrousness of it.
We live in a world with increasingly serious issues that need serious and thoughtful solutions. That is not to say that we return to a function-over-form pre-Bauhaus existence. Should designers with the world as a captive audience not use that momentum to create things with some real social and environmental benefit? Instead we have cone-shaped vacuum cleaners, enormously impractical juicers that surprisingly haven’t been involved in any violent crimes, and a rather pricey ‘concept jet’ which of course doesn’t actually fly.
So when it comes down to it, perhaps it’s purely semantics‚Ķperhaps the label of ‘designer’ should be separated as much as possible from ‘artist’. Not that design isn’t a form of art; it most certainly can be. Yet mass-produced art isn’t really art, and art disguised as functional design isn’t really design. So perhaps we should develop a new category for designers who have lost sight of what good design is all about. ‘Wankist’ comes to mind, but I’m sure I could come up with some other options; most would not immediately identify themselves as such.
So when people ask me what it is I do‚Ķinstead of saying ‚ÄúI’m an Industrial Designer, you know like -(fill in the blank)-‚Äù, I instead point, gesture and describe not only what it is I do, but what I should ultimately be doing as a good designer and good global citizen.
This is to say I’d rather take what I do seriously and not lean on a crutch of self-promotional sensationalist crap sold under the guise of Industrial Design.
