Thursday 7 February 2013

Objectified not Ancient

First there was Helvetica and now this documentary.

Look around us. There is stuff. A lot of stuff. And someone designed it. (Not one person designed everything, but you know what I mean.) Who are the people who design things, and what do they do? This documentary talks to many of them. And mostly they are interesting. Certainly more to it than I thought there was. Although only a small part on sustainability in the face of ever inventing new things that we are all supposed to want.

One valid point they made was that form lo longer links with function. They used the example of spoons and chairs, before talking about the current mobile phone, but the phone by itself is enough of an example, in particular the headset. It was two speakers (one input, one output) that was positioned with plastic to be in front of the mouth and ear. Now, it's a rectangular object that doesn't fit comfortably to the head and often doesn't even reach the entire distance, and it makes people speak louder so everyone can hear! (Or that might just be me.)

Anyway, I certainly have a lot of designed stuff, and this wee documentary is a small look into how that came about.

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