I was brushing my teeth one day (as you do) using my extortionately expensive $250 Oral-B Pro 5000 electric toothbrush that my family’s dental insurance paid for, and I thought to myself, “I’m still not 100% happy with this product. There are things that could have been done better.” Before you call me a spoiled brat, I would like to clarify that I am appreciative of the things I have, and by no means do I take anything for granted. However, I do have an annoying habit of critiquing every object I come across and suggesting how it can be improved. Critiquing a design is usually the first step of my design procedure, as this provides me with insight into more effective methods when I design my own products.
Oral-B Pro 5000 Electric Toothbrush (Shaver Shop 2018)
The wireless charging slot was too narrow to clean as grime slowly built up, and hence a larger slot would have been more ideal. The three-bar battery indicator was far too imprecise for a 2-week battery life, and would be better off implemented numerically onto the screen of the Bluetooth smart timer that came with the toothbrush. The red pressure indicator light looked too much like a car’s rear brake light, and although the colour red is more symbolic, a blue light would suit the aesthetic of the toothbrush a bit better. Although these points may classify as “nit-picking” or subjective, and I understand that there may be a reason why the existing product is made the way it is, the critiquing procedure is more an exercise for myself to determine what I personally see as “good design”. The term “good design” is not so simple to define – it is said to be “measured in relation to the intentions of the designer”, meaning that the criteria for “good design” is purely dependent on the designer. This is not to be confused with “good taste” however, which is a “socially constructed” standard (Christoforidou et al. 2012, 187-191).
This leads me to the next point. For a designer to have an intent for “good design”, they must have a set of rules to follow. My rules are simple – a product must be: 1) Aesthetic and 2) Functional. So to summarise, my definition of good design is something that looks great, and works too.
Here is a phone amplifier I designed and 3D-printed. It certainly works, but is that grille at the front necessary? Probably not. But it does look nice doesn’t it?
It is no coincidence that I used the Oral-B toothbrush as an example. Oral-B is powered by Braun, the German consumer products company whose head designer was industrial design icon, Dieter Rams. And he too, had a set of rules, known as the “The Ten Principles for Good Design” (Vitsoe 2019).
According to Dieter Rams, good design: 1) Is innovative 2) Makes a product useful 3) Is aesthetic 4) Makes a product understandable 5) Is unobtrusive 6) Is honest 7) Is long-lasting 8) Is thorough down to the last detail 9) Is environmentally friendly 10) Is as little design as possible
Dieter Rams (Vitsoe 2019)
You can probably tell that I took inspiration from Dieter Rams’ principles. My principles are essentially a more brief version of his, with points that matter the most to me. Because after all, you can’t please everyone. The best you can do is to do your best and enjoy it.
Bibliography
Christoforidou, D., Olander, E., Warell, A. and Holm, L. 2012. Good Taste vs. Good Design: A Tug of War in the Light of Bling. The Design Journal 15, no. 2: 187-191.
Last month I visited Collingwood’s pop up gallery ‘408 Smith’ to see Melbourne Design Week’s exhibition ‘Elasticity’ which called upon various Australian designers to produce a piece under the theme of elasticity. Upon entering the gallery space, I was greeted by two friendly ladies informing me about the exhibition and its accompanying online auction on Instagram which you can find here. The exhibition was held in a small, plain white room with no music or other atmospheric qualities, making it feel almost institutional. There were however pieces of tape zig-zagging along some walls, making reference to the theme of elasticity.
A design of particular note was ‘Yield’ by Melbourne industrial designers Mechelle Shooter and Richard Greenacre from Shacre Studio. The work is comprised of various illuminated forms which at first glance I mistook for lamps. Through the design, the duo wanted to “question individual and societal understandings of value in relation to materials” and draw on the idea of an elastic mind by stretching the audience’s thinking [1]. The work is created from repurposed dyed and pressed corn husk, illuminating how rubbish can be elastic and adapted to make new desirable forms. It is challenging the audience to see food waste as a potential material form, or to think of possible aesthetics and values in rubbish. It was a very abstract interpretation of the theme of elasticity but created beautiful, aesthetically pleasing pieces out of repurposed rubbish.
This reminded me of how understanding the rationale behind a design and not simply taking it at face value can heavily influence its level of taste. In today’s society it is increasingly tasteful to have sustainable products because it shows that you are socially progressive and care about your environment [2]. The more educated and wealthy members of society with high social and cultural capital can afford to acquire sustainable alternatives that embody this idea of ethical tastefulness while the less educated try to emulate the taste and integrate sustainability into their lifestyle [3].
The male-female duo also made me consider the lack of female designers in the exhibition. It was extremely hard to spot a female name on the list of contributing designers. In the 80s, a study found that very few female industrial designers existed due to various hurdles that they faced [4]. Females were limited from studying industrial design, finding jobs, or raising to higher positions due to the misconception that they wouldn’t have the capacity to understand the technical information of the industry. While today’s society is starting to eliminate the stigma, there is still a long way to go before it is filled with equal opportunities. Duos like Mechelle and Richard are an example of how an integration of both genders can lead to the creation of tasteful and innovative designs.
In next year’s Design Week exhibitions, I look forward to seeing how Melbourne’s tastes have developed and hope to see more female designers. Next time you visit a gallery, take a look at the people who have contributed and consider whether the genders were equally represented or not.
[2] Peter Dobers and Lars Strannegard, “Design, Lifestyles and Sustainability. Aesthetic Consumption in a World of Abundance.” Business Strategy and the Environment14, no. 5 (2005): 324-336.
[3] Pierre Bourdieu, “Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste”, (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1984), 1-7.
[4] Margaret Bruce and Jenny Lewis, “Women Designers – Is There a Gender Trap?’ Design Studies 11, no.2 (1990): 114-120.
The Restoration of Eileen Gray
Eileen Gray is one of design’s many forgotten superheroes. She was an Irish architect and furniture designer who spent most of her career in France, running a successful business designing for the wealthy and famous. Gray heavily influenced the modernist perspective of design, influencing people such as the famous architect Le Corbusier, and was given ‘terrible places’ in major exhibitions due to her gender [1].
Image 1: Portrait Photograph of Eileen Gray, unknown location.
Working in the early 1900s, Gray was working in a ‘man’s world’ and would have been one of very few female industrial designers at the time. It was a struggle for females to succeed as industrial designers due to prejudices against them not being able to understand the technical aspects of the design or men not wanting to take their orders. They faced obstacles entering the field and finding formal education or apprenticeships, struggled to gain recognition for their work and were rarely given prestigious contracts [1]. Despite these industry hardships, Gray was not overshadowed by her male peers, but was essentially forgotten from design history. Gray tended to work alone, meaning that her designs were never connected to the fame of a male designer [2]. Perhaps this lack of masculinity in her work was the reason she slipped from the conscious view.
The main legacy Gray left behind was her E-1027 house; a small concrete and steel house built on stilts in the South of France. It has sat neglected for more than half a century, hovering dangerously near a cliff and long awaiting recognition and restoration. Gray built the house for herself and her partner Jean Badovici, making its name E-1027 a code for their names. The house was designed to be a place for love, sun and sensuality and featured a very minimalistic design which housed many of Gray’s furniture designs which have subsequently become classics from the 20thcentury [3]. The house heavily influenced famous architect Le Corbusier who never publicly recognised her in the development of his own design thinking. Le Corbusier was also supposedly so enraged that Gray, a woman, was capable of creating such a magnificent design in what he considered his field, that he defaced her walls with a garish sexualised mural after she fled the house after her partner’s infidelities [4]
Image 2: Eileen Gray, E-1027 House, France.
Image 3: Eileen Gray, E1027 living room with furniture and rugs designed by Eileen Gray and Le Corbusier’s mural, Paris.
Gray was born into an affluent aristocratic family, studied at the Slade Art school in London and was affiliated with many wealthy and masterful individuals. This upbringing and social circle according to Bourdieu means that gray had a very high social and cultural capital [5]. Perhaps this is why the E-1027 house had such great modernist design aesthetics and Gray tended towards natural colours, sleek, clean lines and created timeless design without ornamentation. Gray’s E-1027 house and the furniture within it are still considered tasteful in today’s environment due to their minimal and modernist style and sets a bar for aesthetic that many aspire to achieve.
Image 4: Eileen Gray, E-1027 table.
Image 5: Eileen Gray, S-Bend Chair
Image 6: Eileen Gray, Bibendum chair.
The house has recently begun to be restored to its former glory and pay homage to the great design work of Eileen Gray. Hopefully this restoration will help to bring Gray the recognition that she truly deserves for being a pioneer of modernist design.
Are there any other people that you would consider forgotten heroes of design?
[1] Margaret Bruce and Jenny Lewis, “Women Designers – Is There a Gender Trap?’ Design Studies 11, no.2 (1990): 114-120.
The amazing black and white photographs displayed in the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Sydney Australia provides us seven decades of a very naked truth of the life of South Africa’s rich history in a series of images taken by David Goldblatt. David Goldblatt’s Photographs of 1949-2018) draws us and inch closer to understanding the reality within the apartheid era through his camera lens. With just a display of black and white images and a short explanation next to each image, speaks volumes than a history lesson taught in school because not only is the work exquisite but a harsh reality that many I not ready to visualise, which the fact of matter is that the apartheid era was cruel and inhumane.
Image 1: Sleeping man, Joubert Park, Johannesburg, 1975
Image 2: David Goldblatt, Anna Lebako, a washerwoman from Soweto carrying the week’s laundry to a white suburban family, Harrow Road, 1961.
Image 3: Lashing shovels retrieved from underground, Randfontein Estates, Randfontein 1966 Silver gelatine photograph on fire-based paper
Here are images that have been captured from Goldblatt’s lens where he portrays the lifestyle of a black South Africans. In Image 1 we see a man sleeping on the ground, with an additional context this man has been using the park as his bed because he needs to catch a kombi (South African version of a taxi) early in the morning to go and mine to earn money for himself because where he stays in the township restricts him to catch a kombi on time, so Joubert Park is where he took refuge during the week. In Image 2 Goldblatt photographed more than just two people of colour but a gender comparison of what a male and females’ role was during the apartheid time. A woman had to commit to being house maid with minimum pay and the man being a miner or do any other occupation which involved serving under the white man and finally in Image 3 Goldblatt displays the shovels that belong to black miners who dug into the ground for more than 14 hours a day and after finishing their jobs they would stack their shovels together so it would be easier to collect at the start of shift. David Goldblatt’s images reflected something deeper than just racism or colonisation but how deep the conformation of the oppressed have become to their oppressor. In questioning Goldblatt described his images as “visual timeline”. “Apartheid became very much the central area of my work, but my real preoccupation was with our values … how did we get to be the way we are?” stating this in interview regarding his work.[1]
In the article “the history of apartheid in South Africa quotes a law made by the National Party government in 1959 where they forcefully removed black natives out of their land, “This Act caused much hardship and resentment. People lost their homes, were moved off land they had owned for many years and were moved to undeveloped areas far away from their place of work.”[2] This is a similar act that occurred within the Aboriginals in Australia when their land had been stripped away from them through unimaginable massacres. Hence is why the “, Australian Indigenous design charter” [3] outlines clear guidelines for designers when designing aboriginal themed work. They encourage the designers in section 3.4 of the research article to be “deep listeners’ to understand their ways and their culture for these natives have been generationally scared, and David Goldblatt photographs makes viewers understand this norm or struggle and hardship. The apartheid era had been described as “a light on sometimes unpleasant realities of history, as well as enduring aspects of human nature. For those who are willing to seek out the details and contemplate the contradictions, the end of Apartheid leaves a legacy of insight most valuable in our turbulent age.”[4]
The spectacular fashions on display in the NGV International exhibition Viktor & Rolf: Fashion Artists provide critical insight into contemporary discourse in design practice.
The design duo—Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren, have engaged with cerebral approaches to art and fashion through their haute couture and ready-to-wear collections since the 1990s. Their approach to design practice is as much about the performance of fashion on the catwalk as it is concerned with the laborious hours of craftsmanship that are involved in garment construction. This idea is perhaps most clearly represented in the exhibition through the display of the Russian Doll collection. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boccaN98V90
Here a series of eight exquisitely sewn garments highlight the work of the atelier, where delicate beading, hand painted lace, and elaborate embroidery is contrasted with the rough hewn fabrics of wool, hessian and burlap. These garments formed part of an impressive catwalk production in 1999, where Viktor & Rolf proceeded to dress their model in progressively more elaborate (and heavy) garments throughout the duration of the show. The result was a Russian Doll clad in 70kg of haute couture where the final layer revealed only the models head. Underlying this collection is a set of ideas that have continued to be explored throughout the designers’ careers, that is the rapid change inherent to the fashion system, and the way in which fashion makes women in particular subservient to a consumer system dictated by designers. As such these works underscore the central concern for institutional critique that has repeatedly appeared in Viktor & Rolf’s collections where the settings, agendas and frameworks that are central to haute couture and the fashion system in general are called into question.
This is particularly true of the designers’ collection ‘Credit Crunch Couture’ (2010). On display in the exhibition are two of the original chopped and sliced tulle garments along with a fashion doll dressed in one of their more spectacular gravity defying creations. At the time Viktor & Rolf were responding to the global financial crisis quipping that ‘with the credit crunch and everybody cutting back, we decided to cut into tulle ball gowns.’[1] In fact these garments can be understood more critically within the context of deconstruction design. As described by design historian Ellen Lupton, deconstruction in design emerged in the mid-eighties derived from Jacques Derrida’s post-structuralist concern for exposing how representation is constructed through institutional systems and ideologies. In design this was conveyed through a range of forms that sought to expose the inner structures of process and form; for example exposing the layering and cut-and-paste processes of graphic design.[2] In fashion deconstruction came to be represented through the dismantling of clothing, exposing hems and seams, cutting and destroying fabric.
Image 1: Viktor & Rolf Credit Crunch Couture (2010), exhibited at NGV International, Viktor & Rolf: Fashion Artists, 21Oct-26 Feb 2017.
Throughout their collections Viktor & Rolf draw on a heritage of deconstruction in fashion from punk, to the garments of Martin Margiela and Rei Kawakubu that conveyed anti-fashion stances by creating distressed clothing. By cutting away the tulle of their ball gowns and punching holes in their skirts like pieces of Swiss cheese, Viktor & Rolf engage with the process of design deconstruction to expose not only the inner workings and structure of their garments but also metaphorically convey ideas about the position of haute couture within a failed economic system. In jokingly suggesting that due to the global financial crisis of 2009 people might only be able to afford half a dress, Victor& Rolf deconstruct the fashion system by highlighting the high costs of haute couture and its associated labour as well as drawing attention to ideas of value and satirising the idea of the bankrupt nature of haute couture. These conceptual ideas are revisited throughout the exhibition and replayed in a number of contexts from Hyeres 1993 to the Wearable Art collection A/W 2015 and the Vagabonds collection A/W 2016. As such these garments underpin a key philosophy in deconstruction design which involves not only using techniques, forms and processes to expose the inner structures of the design object or image itself but also to expose the institutional systems and ideologies within which design practice operates.
[2] Ellen Lupton, “Deconstruction in Graphic Design” in Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller,Design /Writing/Research: Writing on Graphic Design (New York: Kiosk, 1996).
Design and Everyday Life 