Desma 10Design Culture - an Introduction

Meeting 5 (Oct 31, 2014)

Design, Consumers, Corporations

Professor Erkki HuhtamoUCLA, Dept. of Design | Media Arts

Design Is Everywhere

-Design has to be present in everything: ”from a lipstick to a steamship, from a paper-clip to a locomotive, from an ash-tray to a model industrial community”.

”Design is one of the gears in a train that also includes management, sales promotion, advertising, engineering and research.”

(Harold van Doren and Walter Dorwin Teague: Design This Day, 1940

Bike racks by David Byrne, New York City

Full Industrial Automation Since the 1950s, many factories have become ‘fully automated’ with computer-controlled industrial robots working on the assembly lines. This is different from the mechanization that developed in the 19th century. Mechanization was based on unskilled workers doing simplified operations by the assembly line. Workers lost their freedoms and were subordinated to the machine. How does full automation affect the role of the worker?Has the worker been liberated or rather alienated, because replaced (displaced) by the machine? Full automation was feared to lead to mass unemployment, because robot took the jobs from humans.

Automation

The word was first used by Leonardo Torres in 1913 about automatic control of industrial machines. Only achieved in the industry since the 1940s.

Automation "is a process which substitutes programmed machine-controlled operations for human manipulations. It is the fruit, so to speak, of cybernetics and computers."

(Daniel Bell, Preface to Bagrit, The Age of Automation, 1965, p. xvii.)

Mainframe computer - a cartoon, 1958

Push buttons to program the automatic washing machine

The “Liberated” Housewife? Does the automatic washing machine really liberate the housewife? Ellen Lupton does not think so. In the 1950s this only meant that this had more times to do other things, like serving her husband and children.

Design Issues of the 1950s and 60s

- “Full Automation” realized in factories and other workplaces. Industrial robots came to use. The first “mainframe computers” appeared in the late 1940s.

- The postwar “baby boomer” generation: ideal of suburban living; a house of one’s own; tight nuclear family.

- Private car essential. ”Drive-in”becomes a design idea: hamburger restaurants, drive-in movie theaters, shopping malls, Disneyland (opened in Anaheim August 17, 1955).

- The emergence of youth subcultures creates a need for “mobile design”: transistor radios, portable TV sets, mopeds and scooters. Taming the youth rebellion into a consumer lifestyle also becomes a design challenge.

- New consumer market emerged after World War II (post 1945), beginning in the United States. It was driven by strong economic growth and population growth (“baby boomer generation”). Other countries followed with slower pace. Europe had been severely destroyed in the war and recovery took years.

- The single family home became important as an ideal (symbol of the new social environment), but also consumer items were emphasized as symbolic tokens of a new prosperous life style.

- Symbolic manifestations of the new design culture: “Kitchen of Tomorrow” (Wonder Kitchen) was a popular type of touring exhibit; the Television Set also important, and the ”Dream Car.” These ideas were often associated with Americanism by people living in other countries.

Designing for Consumption

Levittown - the New Ideal of Suburban Living

Levittown ”A dream house is a house the buyer and his family will want to live in a long time…an electric kitchen-laundry is the one big item that gives the homeowner all the advantages and conveniences that make his home truly livable.”

-William Levitt

William Levitt was a real-estate developer (1907-1994). First housing project was Levittown, NY, 1947-

Components of a Levittown home before assembly, ca.1950

The New Ideal: a Suburban Home of One’s Own

Watching the television as a new family-oriented pastime activity. Television broadcasting was introduced on a broader scale in the USA in 1946. In about a decade it spread to cover most of the country. Watching television was a new kind of family pastime, although it had been anticipated by radio listening (since the 1920s) and before that by family rituals like sitting by the fireplace telling stories or singing together. Television set was often compared to a fireplace, it was an “electronic hearth.”

The wireless remote controller was introduced by the Zenith company in 1956 (USA). Its inventor was Eugene Polley who died in 2012. How did its introduction change the habits of watching television?

At least it contributed to the “couch potato” phenomenon. It was no longer even necessary to get up from the sofa to change the television channel. “Couch potato” was often seen as something ridiculous, a symbol of a lazy and passive lifestyle.

The children’s TV program Winky Dink and You (CBS, 1953-57) suggested another way: by means of a plastic transparent “screen” attached on the TV screen and a set of “magic crayons,” children were asked to draw directly on the screen, according to the presenter’s instructions following his finger with the crayon).

Planned Obsolescence

- A concept proposed by Bernard London (1932) to fight the Great Depression. It meant the artificial shortening of the lifespan of consumer commodities. Suggested that every product should have a label with expiration date, and not used after that (or a tax would be imposed)!

- Retail expert Victor Labow (1955): “We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing pace.”

- Achieved in different ways. Models are planned to go “out of fashion” and be replaced regularly (the styling of cars at General Motors). Graphic design and marketing strategies are used to manipulate consumer taste (including the viral use of the Internet: blogs, youtube, twitter) to embrace novelty and impermanence. Peer pressure; fear of being “outdated”.

- Designing disposable and throw-away objects has become a huge field!

‘Built-in’ Obsolescence: an Extreme Case of Planned Obsolescence

- Obsolescence deliberately ‘built into’ the object. The design process consists not only of creating good and durable products, but also its reverse: products that function only for a certain length of time (the warranty period?), and break down. Built-in obsolescence is part of the total planning & production cost, and can be charged from the customer as part of the retail price.

- Built-in obsolescence can be achieved by limiting the consumer’s possibilities of modifying and repairing the device or adapting it to new uses (by programming, hacking, etc.).

- Examples: new computers and operating systems often don’t run earlier software; devices are designed as “Black Boxes”: not to opened by the customer. Mobile phone and even laptop batteries cannot be easily changed by the owner; plastic covers that are glued shut and get broken if opened by force.

Battery junk vs. Sanyo’s rechargeable Eneloop Batteries (1000 recharges!)

Which option do you choose?

Built-in Obsolescence: Batteries

To learn more about planned obsolescence and what to do about it, check this book: Giles Slade: Made to Break. Technology and Obsolescence in America (Harvard University Press, 2006)

Design and Universal Entropy

- Entropy refers to the tendency toward chaos and disorder (derived from the laws of thermodynamics); “all falls apart.”

- All designed and constructed things deteriorate, and require maintenance and servicing. Read Alan Weissman’s book The World Without Us ( http://www.worldwithoutus.com/ )

- Built-in obsolescence vs. “graceful aging” - a huge difference! The concept “Designed Deterioration” has been suggested for products meant to age gracefully. “A beaten, worn, scratched Rimowa (suitcase) ... is actually a point of pride.” (Khoi Vinh: “Designed Deterioration,” http://www.subtraction.com/2007/07/16/designed-det ).

- Are scratches and dents on a laptop’s cover a source of pride and satisfaction (something that personalize it, give it character), or just annoying? What about a broken iPhone screen - does it “personalize” it?

Millions of alarm clocks, and most have very similar function and features; why and how does one choose one and not another?

Branding: selling things with pictures, slogans, and ideas embedded in the mind

Branding Quaker Oats

- As mass production and marketing gained power, the need to identify the product with a “brand” became urgent.

- In 1882 Henry P. Crowell opened the first automated oatmeal factory: the market was tiny, so he decided to ship it in graphically attractive containers.

- Crowell adopted marketing tricks: contests, box-premiums. Brand-name recognition was enforced.

-1888 Crowell’s company merged with a large American Cereal Company. It used the quaker image and was renamed in 1901 as The Quaker Oats Company.

Peter Behrens (1868-1940) was a pioneer of corporate design, early advocate of modernism.

Became the artistic advisor for AEG (Allgemeine Elektrizitäts Gesellschaft, Germany) in 1907. First task: to design a new logo.

Created recognizable, standardized and rationalized products: electric kettles with interchangeable parts, electric clocks, etc.

Everything in the company was associated with “AEG” and the designs surrounding it. At AEG, Peter Behrens was occupied with all forms of design, including graphic design, fonts, and industrial design objects.

Branding Products - Branding Companies

Peter Behrens c. 1913

Corporate Identity and Consumerism

- Became particularly important after the Second World War: economic growth, fierce consumerism, competitive market. - A corporation needed a uniform design extending to all its manifestations: products, posters, logos, ideas, notions in consumers’ minds.

- A corporation must have a recognizable identity from micro to macro level. It must be constant, but react to social and cultural currents.

ABC and Westinghouse logos by Paul Rand

The Consumer as the Product of Design

According to design historian Bevis Hillier, design is not just about creating products. It is also about ”designing a consumer for the product”...

”Human personalities are shaped by social conditions, from ideals of family life and norms of gender behavior to the economic opportunities available to people based on their cultural identities. The self is, to some degree, a manufactured object, a social product.”

(Ellen Lupton)

An alternative view of the consumer

Redesigning Corporate IdentityThe Lucas Identity Program by Pentagram (1970s)

Before... ...and after (”The Lucas Diagonal”)

The Risks of Rebranding: The GAP Controversy

- Rebranding a company is very expensive, and may be useless, and risky.

- Brand-attachment by the consumers may be strong, and lead to revolts. Recently the redesign of the GAP logo led to protest that forced the company to re-adopt its old logo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEojV_gq9fQ&feature=related

The eBay Logo Redesign, Fall 2012

See discussion at: http://www.logodesignlove.com/ebay-logo

Some Pioneers of Corporate Design

- Dieter Rams: chief designer of Braun A.G. (Germany), 1960-97. Task to create corporate identity. “Less, but better.”

- Eliot Noyes: worked with Bauhaus-designers Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer in the 1930s; was director of industrial design at MOMA. Became design consultant at IBM in 1956. Re-designed IBM’s corporate identity: it pervaded everything from buildings to graphic design and products. Design linked to technical innovations (Selectric Typewriter, 1961). Invited Paul Rand to work on the graphic identity.

- Olivetti: a pioneering company in corporate design; star designers in 1950s and 60s: Ettore Sottsass, Mario Bellini: ”exercising ’yoga’ on design: stripping from it every attribute, sex-appeal, deception.”

Braun Design

- The Braun company (Germany) pioneered an austere, simple, ’timeless’, immediately recognizable style. Design department founded in 1956. Dieter Rams became chief designer in 1960. Rams’ basic policy: Domestic gadgets must be visually distinct from office or factory equipment, but match the company brand.

-”One of the most significant design principles is to omit the unimportant in order to emphasize the important. Good design means as little design as possible.”

-”Every manufactured item sends out signals to the mind or emotions. These signals - strong or weak, wanted or unwanted, clear or hidden - create feelings. But the most important factor is whether the item can communicate its use.”

-”Much design today is modish sensation and the rapid change of fashion outdates products quickly. For me there is only one way: discipline.”

Dieter Rams: “Omit the Unimportant”

The Braun family of products...or a small part of it

Logo on the right by Paul Rand, 1961: “The key to good design is taking the essence of something that is already there and enhancing its meaning by putting it into a form everyone can identify with.”

The BMW (Bayerische Motoren Werke, or “Bavarian Motor Company,” 1916-) logo has changed very gradually. Blue and white - Bavarian colors, have remained in the logo from the beginning.

Compared with that, the IBM logo has changed much more radically.

IBM’s Logo was re-designed in 1956 by Paul Rand (“Think” motto invented by the IBM C.E.O. Thomas Watson)

“Ideas do not need to be esoteric to be original or exciting”. (Rand)

Eye Bee M - packaging design by Paul Rand for IBM, 1970s.

A famous effort to update IBM’s stern corporate image to be more in line with the times (pop, hippies, psychedelia, counter cultures).

LensCrafters’ “See what you love, love what you see” logo (2010) - a stolen design or acceptable ‘intertextual’ play with existing brands? Was accused to have been stolen from Paul Rand’s “Eye Bee M” logo for IBM.

www.breezycreativedesign.com

Apple’s Super Bowl Commercial, 1984, announcing the first Macintosh computer. Directed by Ridley Scott. Teh commercial

Apple Computer’s original logo, 1976

Designed by founders Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne (not professional graphic designers!).

It features Isaac Newton under an apple tree. A quotation from poet William Wordsworth says: “a mind forever voyaging through strange seas of thought...alone.”

This was the only Apple logo that featured the company’s name.

It was soon abandoned and replaced by the “rainbow apple” designed by Rob Janoff. Both the apple and the colors may still refer to Isaac Newton. The biblical “Tree of Knowledge” may also be referred to.

The Evolution of the Apple Brand

Tim Cook, Apple’s follow-up CEO, branded as “a cool guy” in the style of Steve Jobs (no neckties and corporate suits, please!). On October 31, 2014 Cook came out, revealing he is gay as the most well known CEO of a huge corporation ever to do so. There is much speculation about how this will affect Apple’s corporate image. Early reactions were mostly positive.

Apple’s “Think Different” campaign featured at least 29 different posters with carefully selected cast of celebrity characters.

“Think Different”- Slogan for Apple Computer, 1997. Created by the LA branch of TBWA/Chiat/Day. It playfully refers to IBM’s “THINK” motto.

Graphic designer Paul Rand featured in one of Apple’s “Think Different” posters

Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

"In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is

the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or

service."

– Fortune magazine, 2000

“A declaration of love carved into a tree trunk” (Milton Glaser, 1976)

Milton Glaser’s original sketch on a paper napkin, 1976, is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York

Branding a city with one of the most successful logo designs of all time...

The most copied logo design of all time?http://iblanknewyork.tumblr.com/

Enduring Brands - Enduring Designs

The Moka Express coffeemaker was first designed in the 1930s by Alfonso Bialetti. It is made in cast aluminum with a plastic handle. It continues to be manufactured by Alberto Bialetti, Alfonso’s grandson.

Instant Brand Recognition: Kikkoman soy sauce bottle. Designed in 1961 by Kenji Ekuan / GK Design consultancy)

Naomi Klein on Brands and Branding

According to Naomi Klein (No Logo, 2001) since the mid-1980s, corporations primarily produce brands, not products.

For Klein, this reversed the principle of the classic American economy, “the basic and irreversible function of an industrial economy is the making of things.” (Fortune magazine, 1938).

However, since the late 19th century the brand - embodied in the corporate logo - has been used to affect and channel consumer desires and expectations.

Brand is graphic and advertising design for the mind of the consumer, just like many forms of industrial design are for the body.

Brand concentrates ideological, economic, and social power into a semiotic sign. This sign is meant to be omnipresent.

Culture JammingA term coined by the San Francisco based audio-collage band Negativland in 1984. According to them, “The skillfully reworked billboard... directs the public viewer to a consideration of the original corporate strategy.”

Adbusters magazine is an influential advocate for culture jamming. It played an important role in the “Occupy Wall Street” movement

Brand or no Brand - how to avoid becoming branded? (Even when you are Naomi Klein?)

What’s Hidden Behind the Brand?

Watch the Film named Food Inc.!You may never think about brands and their relationship to the food products they are used to sell the same way again!